In the first half of the twentieth century, Chicago was being transformed by successive waves of black migrants from the rural South who brought visions of a better future and a desire to find a home to freely express their creative potential—a place unbound by racial repression. 

This exhibition explores the work and careers of the ground-breaking artists, such as Margaret Burroughs, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Eldzier Cortor, Charles Sebree, Gordon Parks, Archibald Motley, Katherine Dunham, and Elizabeth Catlett, who created the South Side Community Art Center and made the city a hub of black cultural life.