Anna Guevarra and Gayatri Reddy’s Displacement Project Celebrates the Launch of an Uptown Public Mural
Dis/Placements: A People’s History of Uptown Project (https://dis-placements.com) celebrated the inauguration of the Winthrop “Block Party” mural by artist Tia Etu. The mural is inspired by conversations with members of the Winthrop Family and research from the Dis/Placements Project archive.
The Winthrop Family are descendants of African American families who were restricted to live on one block of Winthrop Avenue due to race-restrictive covenants. Gayatri Reddy and Anna Guevarra have been working with the family on documenting and archiving their histories since 2018.
The mural is located in the Winthrop Historical Garden, originally created by NeighborSpace (http://neighbor-space.org/winthrop-family-historical-garden/) in 2009 through the efforts of community members like the late Joyce Dugan and Deborah Baumgartner and dedicated by then Alderwoman Helen Shiller. The garden was redesigned by the landscape architecture firm MKSK(https://mkskstudios.com/projects/winthrop-family-historical-garden-in-uptown) in 2022. Funding for the mural was through a POP! Grant facilitated by Uptown United (https://exploreuptown.org/community-gardens/).
The inauguration took place on September 14, 2024, at the Winthrop Garden, located at 4628 N Winthrop Ave in Chicago’s northside neighborhood of Uptown. In attendance were several members of the Winthrop Family, the 46th Ward Alderwoman Angela Clay, and various community members.
Learn more about the process of painting the mural, the stories of the Winthrop Family, the artist, Tia Etu, and the Dis/Placements public history project, by going to (https://dis-placements.com/winthrop-mural). You can also follow the Dis/Placements social media pages (IG: @displacementsproject and FB: @Dis/Placements: A People’s History of Uptown) for additional information.