Rewriting History, Reversing Progress

May 4, 2023

The second event in our Civil Rights at a Crossroads series focused on the intersection of history, education, and critical race theory. History — and how it’s taught — is a powerful tool to help shape the future. It reveals attitudes and judgments that framed the laws that govern us today. Structural racism is embedded in our institutions and the policies they enforce. The consequences are clear: an enormous racial wealth gap, political disenfranchisement, and glaring disparities in health, education, employment, and housing.

Opponents of critical race theory foster fear and false narratives about the role of race in our history and its connection to present-day systemic biases affecting people of color. On May 4, 2023, we had a conversation with policymakers and social justice advocates about how continuing to whitewash American history holds us back from real progress.

Featured Speakers

Adam Green

Associate Professor
University of Chicago

Adam Green is a long-time collaborator of the Sargent Shriver Peace Institute. He appeared in the documentary about Sargent Shriver, American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver, and contributed to the planning and proposal of the Sargent Shriver Fellows Program at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Adam is currently leading the efforts to edit and annotate the forthcoming memoir by Sargent Shriver, We Called It a War. The memoir outlines Sargent Shriver’s efforts to lead the War on Poverty.

Adam’s academic home is the University of Chicago, where he is Associate Professor in the departments of History and of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity. His field specialties include modern US history; African American history; urban history; comparative racial politics; and cultural economy. He is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture; a Faculty Board Member at the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture; and a Senior Fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the College.

Adam is the author of Selling the Race: Culture, Community and Black Chicago, 1940-1955 and co-editor of Time Longer Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism. He has lectured on campuses and at community venues, appeared in multiple film documentaries, and on WTTW (PBS) Chicago, WBEZ Chicago (radio), Al-Jazeera, BBC (radio) and C-SPAN. He has been involved in community-based initiatives in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles related to police accountability and educational justice.

Adam is also currently involved in a Columbia University project to create the official oral history of the Obama presidency.

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Molly Minta

Higher Education Reporter
Mississippi Today

Molly Minta, a Florida native, covers higher education for Mississippi Today. She works in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit news organization focused on higher education. Prior to joining Mississippi Today, Molly worked for The Nation, The Appeal, and Mother Jones.

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Cydney Wallace

Co-Founder
Kol Or

Cydney Wallace sits on the board of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA) and was a co-founder of Kol Or, JCUA’s Jews of Color Caucus. As an advocate for police accountability, Wallace created content for and facilitated JCUA’s first ever Racial Justice Training for members and the Congregation Partner Racial Justice Training.

Wallace is an alum of the Avodah Justice Fellowship, a diverse community of people who are passionate about exploring justice, Jewish life, and the powerful intersections between the two. She enjoys attending Beth Shalom B’Nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation with her husband and four children.

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Audra Wilson

President & CEO
Shriver Center on Poverty Law

Audra Wilson has been a champion for racial and economic justice for more than 20 years as a public interest lawyer and teacher, policy shaper, community mobilizer, and experienced executive manager. Throughout her career, Wilson has focused on the voices and experiences of communities of color and communities most impacted by injustice.

Wilson began her legal career as a Welfare Advocacy Staff Attorney with the Shriver Center on Poverty Law, where she focused on welfare reform implementation and food security issues in Illinois. She was then tapped by then-state-Senator Barack Obama to serve as the Deputy Press and Policy Director on his U.S. Senate campaign.

After the U.S. Senate race, Wilson returned to her public interest roots, serving as Director of Diversity Education and Outreach and Adjunct Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law for 7 years. At Northwestern, she co-founded the first formal consortium of law school diversity professionals in Chicago, seen as a national model. During this time, Wilson also served as a policy advisor to leading candidates for U.S. Senate, Illinois State Treasurer, and Lieutenant Governor.  

In 2013, Wilson accepted a position as Deputy Chief of Staff for United States Congresswoman Robin Kelly in the Second Congressional District of Illinois, where she oversaw all district operations and served as a surrogate for the Congresswoman while she was serving in D.C.

Among Wilson’s other responsibilities, she served as lead Illinois coordinator of the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls.

As Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Illinois, Wilson led critical change to expand the mission of a 100-year-old civic engagement organization with nearly 4,000 members and over 40 chapters statewide. Wilson advanced the League’s advocacy on issues of race equity and voting rights and built organizational capacity for fundraising and communications. In October 2019, Wilson was appointed chair of the Cook County Commission on Women’s Issues by Cook County Board President, Toni Preckwinkle. 

In her free time, Wilson enjoys playing music. She is a lifelong student of piano, including spending seven years at the Westminster Conservatory of Music in Princeton, New Jersey, where she grew up. Currently, Wilson studies with Dr. Daniel Baer at the Music Institute of Chicago, where she sits on the MIC’s Board of Trustees. Wilson runs the PianoForte Piano Performance Group, an amateur piano group that meets quarterly at the beautiful PianoForte high-end piano store and performance space in the South Loop. She is also an accomplished alto saxophonist.

Wilson holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Spanish from Bucknell University, and a J.D. from Valparaiso University School of Law.

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