A plaque commemorating a contentious moment in Chicago history is tucked behind an electrical box on a Rogers Park intersection.
The Indian Boundary Lines, the northern edge of land taken from Indigenous peoples by the US government to become the city of Chicago, is marked by a plaque. The line ran through modern-day Rogers Avenue, where the plaque on a building commemorates the event on Rogers and Clark St.
This plaque is one of 40 being reconsidered under the Chicago Monuments Project, an initiative started by Mayor Lightfoot to gain public feedback on "problematic" monuments across the city.
According to the official website, the project aims to promote public discussion because of the following issues:
- Promoting narratives of white supremacy
- Presenting inaccurate and/or demeaning characterizations of American Indians
- Memorializing individuals with connections to racist acts, slavery, and genocide
- Presenting selective, over-simplified, one-sided views of history
- Not sufficiently including other stories, in particular those of women, people of color, and themes of labor, migration, and community building
- Creating tension between people who see value in these artworks and those who do not