Curious City

Tammy Gibson wants you to visit the gravesites of your deceased relatives. “Have you checked on your ancestors?” said Gibson, the founder of Sankofa TravelHer, an organization dedicated to honoring the legacy of African-Americans who were often denied dignity in death. As we learned last episode, Chicago’s long history of segregation affected both the living and the dead, as many area cemeteries once offered burial space “for the exclusive use of the Caucasian race.” So where did African-Americans bury their loved ones in the 19th and early 20th centuries? “From my research, African-Americans could not get buried in Chicago,” Gibson told Curious City. Instead, she said many African-Americans buried their dead in the South Suburbs, at cemeteries like Mount Glenwood in Glenwood, Ill., and later Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill. In this episode, Gibson tells us about the people who first started these cemeteries and the notable people buried there. She talks about the work she does to continue honoring the deceased, including offering a reinterment ceremony years after the 2009 grave-stacking scandal at Burr Oak Cemetery. Gibson also works to get headstones for notable Chicagoans who do not have them. This includes Eugene Williams, whose death sparked the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, and journalist Ethel Payne from Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, who was known as the First Lady of the Black Press.

Mayor Harold Washington is buried in a cemetery that was once for “whites only.” Protests and legislative fights desegregated area cemeteries.

Lakeview once had a thriving Japanese community, but it fell victim to a push for assimilation. As one Japanese-American puts it: “You had to basically be unseen.”

If you’ve had your car towed in Chicago, there’s a decent chance you had to journey down to Lower Lower Wacker Drive — likely not in the best of moods — to open your wallet and recollect your vehicle. “It's supposed to be a happy process,” said Michael Lacoco, the deputy commissioner of the city’s bureau of traffic services. In our last episode, we answered some of your many questions about Lower Wacker Drive, a.k.a. Chicago’s basement. Today, we try to demystify a notorious Chicago landmark within: the Central Auto Pound. Lacoco is a 33-year veteran of this department, the perfect person to help us on this journey. He explains why you shouldn’t try to steal your own car from the lot, why that white inventory number they draw on your window is so hard to wash off, and what you can do if you think you were wrongfully towed.

Curious City has gotten several questions about Wacker Drive over the years. We head down to the lower levels in search of some answers.

Nuclear fallout shelters are still among us, though they are not exactly ready for the apocalypse. These remnants of Cold War-era infrastructure do exist across Chicago, often in places you might not expect.

Tucked in the city’s municipal code is a law that prohibits the production, storage and launching of nuclear weapons in Chicago. We find out why the city decided this law was necessary.

It’s typical to see moving trucks winding through streets and alleys of Chicago on the first day of any month. The act of moving hardly sounds like a luxury, but as we heard in the last episode, it could be worse. About a century ago, Chicagoans only moved on May 1 and sometimes Oct. 1. That meant thousands of moving wagons clogging the streets, price gouging and exploitation. Today, people move any time of the year and there are more protections for tenants. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use some advice to make moving and renting in Chicago easier. Host Erin Allen talks with local U-Haul representative Constance Turner about best practices when it comes to packing up and moving in. Then, she sits down with Sam Barth, staff attorney with Law Center for Better Housing, to talk about what renters can do to protect themselves.

You think moving is hard work? For about 100 years, Chicagoans used to move at the same time. Moving Day: May 1.

Samuel Gompers fought for the eight-hour work day and helped create child labor laws. But for all he achieved, he was also fiercely anti-immigrant. We explore Gompers’ life, legacy and the statue built to this complicated man.

In our last episode, Curious City question-asker Emily Porter sent us on a quest exploring the world of local fashion designers, all after she found a thrift shop sweater with a tag that reads: “Maria Rodriguez Chicago.” Who is Maria Rodriguez? How did she get into the industry? And what is it like to be a fashion designer in Chicago? To answer those questions, we take a trip to the basement of the Chicago History Museum, where collection manager Jessica Pushor has archived several Maria Rodriguez ensembles and a case file of news clippings, photos and look books. We also stopped by El Nuevo Mexicano, a Mexican restaurant in Lakeview that Rodriguez now owns and operates, to get the story from the fashion designer herself.

A question about a sweater in a thrift store turns into a search for a prominent Chicago designer of the 1980s. Along the way, we discover the city’s golden age of fashion designers.

Folk music surged in popularity across America in the late 1950s through the ‘70s, including here in the Chicago area. Last episode, we looked at how a few area coffeehouses catered to many patrons in their teens and early twenties. These were alcohol-free spaces where people could listen to live music and hangout for hours. Curious City host Erin Allen looks at one of those beloved coffeeshops of the 1970s: AmazinGrace, which was born out of Vietnam War protests on the campus of Northwestern University and later moved to the heart of downtown Evanston. She was joined by a panel of AmazinGrace founders, performers and patrons at last year’s Evanston Folk Festival. WBEZ is a programming partner of the Evanston Folk Festival, which is taking place this year Sept. 6-7, 2025. A pre-sale is happening now through April 22. Enter the code EFFWBEZ to access the sale.

In the 1960s and 70s, Chicago coffeehouses were popular spots for young people. These were alcohol-free establishments where people in their teens and 20s could listen to live music or just hangout for hours.

Introducing WBEZ's latest podcast series, Making: Stories Without End. Host Natalie Moore takes you on a journey to learn about daytime soap operas and their broad reach on television. From the early radio days in the 1930s through the invention of TV to streaming, this way of telling immersive stories has endured. There are intergenerational family stories, discussions about divorce and abortion, groundbreaking storylines dealing with queer representation. And all these threads go back to one Chicago woman, Irna Phillips. The queen of soaps originated, wrote or supervised more than a dozen daytime serials for more than 40 years… and left a lasting mark on the television industry. You’ll hear the story behind the stories from scholars, actors, writers – from the past and now – as well as fans.

Extremism in America has been on the rise. Last episode, we looked at extremist groups in Chicago and how they terrorized select groups of people and influenced housing policy in the city during the 1950s. But what does extremism look like today? Curious City host Erin Allen talks with Odette Yousef, a national security correspondent focusing on extremism at NPR, about why it’s less about fringe groups and more about ideology that has permeated our culture. “January 6 was a good example of how everything has changed,” she says. “That to me was really a milestone in terms of how extremism looks in this country, because I think we have long expected it to come out of small cells or groups. And here it was just everyday Americans who had gotten really kind of radicalized until the point where they participated in the violence that day.” She also talks about how extremism has shown up in Chicago and how the city compares with other large American cities.

Extremist groups of the 1950s played a violent part, alongside real estate and neighborhood organizations, in keeping Chicago segregated.

Chicago is home to thousands of feral cats, and some people are looking after them.

Jun Fujita is the Japanese-American photographer behind some of the most recognizable photographs taken in Chicago in the 20th century, including his shots of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, the Eastland passenger boat disaster of 1915, and the 1919 Chicago race riots. Fujita was also a published poet and something of a regional celebrity, known for socializing with William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Fujita’s foreign identity also made him the subject of government inquiry and suspicion on multiple occasions — during both World War I and World War II — according to Graham Lee, Fujita’s great-nephew and the author of a new Fujita biography, “Jun Fujita: Behind the Camera.” After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Fujita’s assets were frozen, his business was shuttered, his cameras were taken away, and he constrained himself to Chicago to avoid possible internment, Lee said. How did Fujita navigate this perilous time for an immigrant in Chicago? We sat down with Lee to discuss how Fujita, a “supremely confident person,” came to rely on both the support of his community and his wits.

Chicago is in the national spotlight when it comes to the immigration debate, but that’s nothing new to the mayoral office. We take a look back at how mayors have either embraced or rejected new arrivals.