Art News

Sculpture honoring the legacy of civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells to be built in Chicago

CHICAGO (AP).- For six decades, civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells was woven into the fabric of Chicago’s South Side as the namesake of a public housing project. A Rosa Parks-like figure during her era, the journalist and suffragist was so revered that 1930s leaders put her name on a project that promised good, affordable housing for working class families. Within a few decades, however, the homes deteriorated, growing more violent and becoming riddled with gangs and drugs — not as notorious as the city’s Cabrini-Green public housing high rises or Robert Taylor Homes, but certainly not a monument to Wells’ legacy. Then, nearly a decade ago, the city tore the Wells housing project down, leaving the activist’s great-granddaughter Michelle Duster and her family worried Wells wouldn’t be remembered at all. Now, to mark