Friday 2/28 – Thursday 3/6
1 SATURDAY Black labor activists had a tough time during the civil rights movement, says Bob Bruno, cochair of the Chicago Center for Working Class Studies. While many fought for (and won) equal rights inside the union, “outside the workplace, organizations promoting civil rights saw the labor movement as being part of the problem.” How the Great Migration affected labor in Chicago–and vice versa–will be the focus of today’s conference, Labor’s History in the Black Metropolis. Speakers include Timuel Black, former president of the Negro American Labor Council and author of Bridges of Memory: Three Generations of African Americans in Chicago, as well as Addie Wyatt–the first woman and the first African-American to head a Packinghouse Workers of America local–and other representatives of various unions. The free event takes place today from 2 to 5 at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, 9525 S. Halsted; call 312-996-2491.
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5 WEDNESDAY Last month NASA released pictures taken by its Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP), a satellite that traveled 1.5 million kilometers into space to send back images of how the universe looked when it was just a baby (380,000 years old, a tiny fraction of its current 13.7 billion). The probe measures minute temperature changes in the universe to depict the afterglow created by the Big Bang. “It’s like looking at a picture of a 60-year-old man taken when he was 17 hours old,” NASA’s Charles Bennett said last month. The findings will be the focus of the two-session class MAPping the Cosmic Microwave Background, which takes place tonight and Wednesday, March 12, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Adler Planetarium, 1300 S. Lake Shore Dr. Tuition is $40; to register call 312-922-7827.
