Chicago 1977: People, Places, and Cultures

In 1977, a team of cultural fieldworkers supported by the American Folklife Center (AFC) of the Library of Congress fanned out across Chicago to document cultural traditions in over two-dozen cultural communities. A main aim was to assess the need for institutional support of people’s cultural livelihoods and bolster the sustainability of their traditions and practices. We need your help to transcribe the history of this important work!

The resulting Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection consists of 344 sound recordings (e.g. interviews and music), more than 14,000 photographs, and the detailed paper documentation we'll be transcribing. The papers include field notes, logs, and reports that provide invaluable insights into the layered cultures of Chicago, the second most populous U.S. city at the time. Documented communities include: African American; Latinx; Asian American; Irish American; Polish American; Italian American; Ukrainian American; Lithuanian American; Scandinavian American; Greek American; German American; and Russian American communities; as well as Jewish, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, and Macedonian American artists and groups. 

The materials document diverse traditions and interviews with community leaders and artists, as well as performance halls, clubs, restaurants, shops, and places of worship. Fifty years later, Chicago remains a ‘city of neighborhoods,’ thanks in large part to the historical legacies of migration and immigration kept alive by its cultural communities and the many cultural centers they established at the time through strong senses of pride.