About Shame of Chicago, Shame of the Nation
The Story
Shame of Chicago, Shame of the Nation is a four-part documentary series that lays bare the story of how Chicago devised the nation’s most sweeping system of racially segregated housing—and how it diminished the lives of generations of Black families, creating the vast racial wealth gap that persists to this day.
Told by the people who experienced it, the journalists who documented it, and the scholars who’ve studied it, this series unpacks a pivotal part of American history that textbooks often gloss over or leave out entirely. Centering Black voices and experiences, the series also brings to life the resistance Black Chicagoans mounted throughout the 20th century in the face of systemic and often violent discrimination in the private sector and at nearly every level of government. The series shows how these policies provided the model for other American cities and towns, such that the wealth gap between Blacks and whites deepened throughout the country.
This is more than just a documentary series. It’s an urgent educational tool that will open eyes, join hearts, spark debate, and inspire action. Each episode is designed to stand alone for classroom and community use, as it unfurls a key part of a riveting larger history.
“Our approach to Black people in this country has long been to beat them, stab them, kick them, leave them on the ground bleeding, and congratulating ourselves because we stop doing it”
– Ta-Nehesi Coates
Executive Producers
Bruce Orenstein
Director, Editor, Producer
The lead producer and director for the Shame of Chicago is Bruce Orenstein, currently Artist in Residence in the Arts of the Moving Image Program at Duke University and group leader on residential segregation at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. Uniquely positioned to produce a documentary series about residential segregation in Chicago, Orenstein is a native Chicagoan and former community organizer who worked in Seattle and Chicago around race and housing-related issues throughout the 1970’s and 80’s. He became a filmmaker in 1991 when he founded the Chicago Video Project—a non-profit organization known for its award-winning short and long-form documentaries produced for social change organizations addressing issues of economic and racial inequality.
His past credits include the 2002 Emmy-award-winning documentary No Place to Live, which, in part, tells the 1959 internationally heralded story of how white suburban residents of Deerfield Illinois blocked upwardly-mobile black families from purchasing homes in their community. The following year Orenstein produced a short documentary about the harrowing story of black families seeking to integrate a white public housing development, Trumbull Park, in the early 1950’s.
Orenstein is also known for two nationally broadcast PBS documentaries, “The Democratic Promise: The Life and Legacy of Saul Alinsky” (co-produced in 1999) and “American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver,” (2008).
Bruce Orenstein
Director, Editor, Producer
The lead producer and director for the Shame of Chicago is Bruce Orenstein, currently Artist in Residence in the Arts of the Moving Image Program at Duke University and group leader on residential segregation at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. Uniquely positioned to produce a documentary series about residential segregation in Chicago, Orenstein is a native Chicagoan and former community organizer who worked in Seattle and Chicago around race and housing-related issues throughout the 1970’s and 80’s. He became a filmmaker in 1991 when he founded the Chicago Video Project—a non-profit organization known for its award-winning short and long-form documentaries produced for social change organizations addressing issues of economic and racial inequality.
His past credits include the 2002 Emmy-award-winning documentary No Place to Live, which, in part, tells the 1959 internationally heralded story of how white suburban residents of Deerfield Illinois blocked upwardly-mobile black families from purchasing homes in their community. The following year Orenstein produced a short documentary about the harrowing story of black families seeking to integrate a white public housing development, Trumbull Park, in the early 1950’s.
Orenstein is also known for two nationally broadcast PBS documentaries, “The Democratic Promise: The Life and Legacy of Saul Alinsky” (co-produced in 1999) and “American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver,” (2008).
Chris L. Jenkins
Producer, Co-Writer
Chris L. Jenkins is Shame of Chicago, Shame of the Nation’s producer and co-writer. He is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker who has served as the producer and writer for the award-winning documentary, Trapped: Cash Bail in America streaming on YouTube Originals, and producer of the feature documentary Anthem, currently airing on Hulu.
For nearly two decades, he was a reporter and editor at The Washington Post where he covered and led award-winning journalism around politics, criminal justice, immigration, culture, and race. He has also served as Managing Editor for The Root.com and producer and writer for ESPN’s HBCU Football: Our Time special; the independent film Rikers: Innocence Lost; and story producer for the feature documentary, Van Jones: The First Step, which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. Forthcoming work includes Hussle, a five-part series on the life and times of Nipsey Hussle, which he serves as writer and story producer.
Talent
Davarian L. Baldwin, Ph.D.
Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Trinity College, and author of Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life and co-editor, with Minkah Makalani, of the essay collection Escape From New York! The New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem.
Charles Branham, Ph.D
Taught history at Chicago State University, Roosevelt University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University and Indiana University Northwest and Chicago Lab School. Also, former head historian at the DuSable Museum of Afro-American History and creator of a 1970’s Emmy Award-winning television series on black history.
Adrienne Brown, Ph.D
Adrienne Brown is an associate professor in the Departments of English and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago, where she also serves as director of the school’s Arts + Public Life initiative. Brown’s scholarship focuses on American and African American cultural production in the 20th century, emphasizing the history of perception as shaped by the built environment.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
An award-winning author and journalist. He is the author of the bestselling books The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between The World And Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. His first novel, The Water Dancer, was released in September 2019. He was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship that same year.
Ta-Nehisi also enjoyed a successful run writing Marvel’s Black Panther (2016-2021) and Captain America (2018-2021) comics series.
Erik Gellman, Ph,D.
Associate Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina, and author of Troublemakers: Chicago Freedom Struggles Through the Lens of Art Shay and Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights, and co-author of The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in New Deal America.
Adam Green, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History and the College at the University of Chicago, and author of Selling the Race: Culture and Community in Black Chicago, 1940–1955, and co-editor of Time Longer than Rope: Studies in African American Activism, 1850–1950.
Don Hayner
Author of Binga: The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s First Black Banker, Northwestern University Press. Veteran journalist with extensive experience managing coverage of politics, race, demographics, crime, business and a broad range of urban issues. Managed a staff of up to several hundred at all levels of the Chicago Sun-Times news operation with responsibility for all departments as managing editor and editor in chief.
D. Bradford Hunt, Ph.D.
Vice-President for Research and Academic Programs at the Newberry Library and author of Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing.
Ethan Michaeli
Ethan earned a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and was a copy editor and investigative reporter at The Chicago Daily Defender from 1991 to 1996. He left The Defender to found the Residents’ Journal, a magazine written and produced by the tenants of Chicago’s public housing developments, and an affiliated not-for-profit organization, We The People Media.
Dominic A. Pacyga
Dominic A. Pacyga specializes in the History of Chicago, Polish American History, Urban History, U.S. Ethnic History and Working-Class History. He received his Ph.D. from UIC in 1981.
Mary Pattillo, Ph.D.
Harold Washington Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and author of Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class and Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City.
Beryl Satter, Ph.D.
Professor of History at Rutgers University, and author of Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black America.
LaDale Winling
LaDale Winling is an associate professor of history and core member of the public history program at Virginia Tech. His research and teaching explore urban and political history in the United States, especially how space, architecture, and geography shape politics, economic life, and daily experience. His book, Building the Ivory Tower, examined the role of American universities as real estate developers in the twentieth century..
Davarian L. Baldwin, PH.D.
Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies at Trinity College, and author of Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life and co-editor, with Minkah Makalani, of the essay collection Escape From New York! The New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem.
Charles Branham, PH.D
Taught history at Chicago State University, Roosevelt University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University and Indiana University Northwest and Chicago Lab School. Also, former head historian at the DuSable Museum of Afro-American History and creator of a 1970’s Emmy Award-winning television series on black history.
Adrienne Brown
Adrienne Brown is an associate professor in the Departments of English and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago, where she also serves as director of the school’s Arts + Public Life initiative. Brown’s scholarship focuses on American and African American cultural production in the 20th century, emphasizing the history of perception as shaped by the built environment.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
An award-winning author and journalist. He is the author of the bestselling books The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between The World And Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. His first novel, The Water Dancer, was released in September 2019. He was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship that same year.
Ta-Nehisi also enjoyed a successful run writing Marvel’s Black Panther (2016-2021) and Captain America (2018-2021) comics series.
Erik Gellman, PH.D.
Associate Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina, and author of Troublemakers: Chicago Freedom Struggles Through the Lens of Art Shay and Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights, and co-author of The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in New Deal America.
Adam Green, PH.D
Associate Professor of History and the College at the University of Chicago, and author of Selling the Race: Culture and Community in Black Chicago, 1940–1955, and co-editor of Time Longer than Rope: Studies in African American Activism, 1850–1950.
Don Hayner
Author of Binga: The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s First Black Banker, Northwestern University Press. Veteran journalist with extensive experience managing coverage of politics, race, demographics, crime, business and a broad range of urban issues. Managed a staff of up to several hundred at all levels of the Chicago Sun-Times news operation with responsibility for all departments as managing editor and editor in chief.
D. Bradford Hunt, PH.D.
Vice-President for Research and Academic Programs at the Newberry Library and author of Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing.
Ethan Michaeli
Ethan earned a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and was a copy editor and investigative reporter at The Chicago Daily Defender from 1991 to 1996. He left The Defender to found the Residents’ Journal, a magazine written and produced by the tenants of Chicago’s public housing developments, and an affiliated not-for-profit organization, We The People Media.
Dominic A. Pacyga
Dominic A. Pacyga specializes in the History of Chicago, Polish American History, Urban History, U.S. Ethnic History and Working-Class History. He received his Ph.D. from UIC in 1981.
Mary Pattillo, PH.D
Harold Washington Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and author of Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class and Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City.
Beryl Satter, PH.D.
Professor of History at Rutgers University, and author of Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black America.
LaDale Winling
Filmmakers
Bill Glader
Bill Glader is an Emmy Award winning filmmaker whose filmography includes documentaries for PBS as well as independent narrative films, advocacy films, and extensive work in the healthcare space.
Lisa Roberts
Lisa Roberts is a private archivist and research specialist. Roberts studied film and video at Columbia College with a strong focus on documentaries and received her MLIS-Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Archives & Cultural Heritage Resources & Services from Dominican University.
Chi-Ho Lee
Chi-Ho Lee is a film and television editor with over twenty years of experience in broadcast documentary television and films. His broadcast work has aired on PBS, AMC, Sundance Channel, Discovery, BBC, Smithsonian Channel, Smithsonian Museum and numerous streaming services.
Vanessa Maruskin
Vanessa Maruskin has worked in the commercial and documentary fields for over fifteen years. Her work includes consulting, developing and archival and story producing on films for PBS, SHOWTIME, HBO/MAX, HULU and other streaming platforms, as well as feature documentaries, narrative films and advertising.
Bill Glader
Bill Glader is an Emmy Award winning filmmaker whose filmography includes documentaries for PBS as well as independent narrative films, advocacy films, and extensive work in the healthcare space.
Lisa Roberts
Lisa Roberts is a private archivist and research specialist. Roberts studied film and video at Columbia College with a strong focus on documentaries and received her MLIS-Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Archives & Cultural Heritage Resources & Services from Dominican University.
Chi-Ho Lee
Vanessa Maruskin
“People on the westside and southside (of Chicago) were being blamed for things that were not of their own making. White folks created the ghetto. And it drives me crazy today even that we don’t admit that.”
– John Macnamara,
Lead organizer for the Contract Buyers League
Advisors
Martha Biondi, Ph.D.
Professor of African American Studies and History at Northwestern University, and author of To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Post War New York City and The Black Revolution on Campus.
William Darity, Ph.D.
William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. He has served as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and was the founding director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke. Previously he served as director of the Institute of African American Research, director of the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program, director of the Undergraduate Honors Program in economics, and director of Graduate Studies at the University of North Carolina. at Chapel Hill
Paul Fischer, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus Political Science Lake Forest College, Board Chair of Housing Choice Partners, and researcher and consultant on racial segregation and housing issues.
Lisa Yun Lee
Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Executive Director of the National Public Housing Museum.
Nancy MacLean, Ph.D.
William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University and author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry, The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan; Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace; and Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Rights Stealth Plan for America.
Larry McClellan, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology and founding member of Governors State University, and author of The Underground Railroad of Illinois.
Natalie Moore
WBEZ South Side Reporter, Chicago Sun-Times Columnist, and author of the South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation.
Gordon Quinn
Artistic Director and founding member of Kartemquin Films. Quinn has been making documentaries for over 45 years and has produced or directed over 30 films, including the critically acclaimed 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams.
Aurie Pennick, J.D.
Former President of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, retired Executive Director of the Field Foundation, and appointed by Henry Cisneros to the U.S. Delegation for the International Habitat Housing Conference.
Martha Biondi, Ph.D.
Professor of African American Studies and History at Northwestern University, and author of To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Post War New York City and The Black Revolution on Campus.
William Darity, Ph.D.
William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. He has served as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and was the founding director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke. Previously he served as director of the Institute of African American Research, director of the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program, director of the Undergraduate Honors Program in economics, and director of Graduate Studies at the University of North Carolina. at Chapel Hill
Paul Fischer, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus Political Science Lake Forest College, Board Chair of Housing Choice Partners, and researcher and consultant on racial segregation and housing issues.
Lisa Yun Lee
Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Executive Director of the National Public Housing Museum.
Nancy MacLean, Ph.D.
William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University and author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry, The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan; Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace; and Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Rights Stealth Plan for America.
Larry McClellan, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology and founding member of Governors State University, and author of The Underground Railroad of Illinois.
Natalie Moore
WBEZ South Side Reporter, Chicago Sun-Times Columnist, and author of the South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation.
Gordon Quinn
Artistic Director and founding member of Kartemquin Films. Quinn has been making documentaries for over 45 years and has produced or directed over 30 films, including the critically acclaimed 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams.
Aurie Pennick, J.D.
Former President of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, retired Executive Director of the Field Foundation, and appointed by Henry Cisneros to the U.S. Delegation for the International Habitat Housing Conference.