Facing Freedom

Facing Freedom is temporarily closed for updates for and will reopen on July 4, 2026. The Chicago History Museum is grateful to The Guild for their lead sponsor support of the Facing Freedom refresh.

The United States began with certain freedoms outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but the framers didn’t have the last word. Over time, people have shaped freedom through civic action, service, innovation, and advocacy. In demanding their freedom and creating change, various communities chose to unite, speak out, struggle, and defend.

Workers joined together to be heard as one. Suffragists and students voiced their messages for positive change. Unjustly incarcerated people and abolitionists strived for their own freedom and the freedom of others. Indigenous rights activists and house music fans supported themselves and protected their community spaces.

This exhibition uses images, artifacts, and interactive elements to explore eight familiar and not-so-familiar stories in Chicago’s and the nation’s past and asks the question: What can we do for freedom?

Continue exploring these stories at facingfreedom.org.

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Thank You to Our Stewards of History

The Guild of the Chicago History Museum

Presenting Sponsor

Carole and Gordon Segal

Lead Sponsor

Darcy L. Evon | Catherine L. Grahn
David D. Hiller
D. Elizabeth Price
Mary Kay and Stephen Wysham | Helene Zimmer-Loew

Benefactor

Patricia Herrmann Heestand
Jill Kirk and John Darrow
Erica C. Meyer
Bill and Penny Obenshain
Nancy Robinson
Alicia and David Schafer
Karen Zupko and Mike McCahon

Original Exhibition Sponsors

The Naphtali ben Yakov Pritzker American History Wing is made possible through a generous grant from Tawani Foundation, through the support of Col. (IL) J. N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (retired), President and Founder, Pritzker Military Library and Tawani Foundation.

Featured in the Exhibition

Portrait of Mary Richardson Jones taken sometime after 1883. CHM, ICHi-022363; Baldwin & Drake, photographer

Yellow pro-suffrage button that reads, "I march for full suffrage June 7th. Will you?," c. 1916. Maker unknown. CHM, ICHi-186881

Flyer for strike notice addressed to all Pullman porters and maids, Chicago, 1928. CHM, ICHi-061916

The barracks at the Denson, Arkansas, incarceration site, 1943. Courtesy of the Chicago Japanese American Historical Society

Exhibition-Facing Freedom-school march-i020840

This flyer reads "Wanted—Thousands of Freedom Marchers," promoting a march on City Hall to protest school segregation on October 22, 1963. CHM, ICHi-020840

United Farm Workers "Boycott Grapes" bumper sticker, c. 1970. Courtesy of the Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Flyer advertising a talk in Chicago by Ellen Moves Camp, who was a leader at Wounded Knee, 1973. CHM, ICHi-061921

DJ, producer, and house music songwriter, Steve 'Silk' Hurley mixing his own records at Hinge Studio on the Near North Side, Dec. 30, 1996. ST-12001627-0005, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM

Meet the Curator

Peter T. Alter, PhD

Gary T. Johnson Chief Historian and Director of the Studs Terkel Center for Oral History

In his role as CHM’s Chief Historian, Peter works on exhibitions and online projects and teaches in DePaul University’s public history program. As the Director of the Studs Terkel Center for Oral History, he develops new Museum oral history projects. He has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions at CHM, including Back Home: Polish Chicago (2023); American Medina: Stories of Muslim Chicago (2019); Lincoln Treasures (2009); Is It Real? (2007); A Compassionate Eye: The Photographs of Declan Haun, 1961–69 (2004); Outspoken: Chicago’s Free Speech Tradition (2004) at the Newberry Library; Harold Washington: The Man and the Movement (2003); Chicago Sports! You Shoulda Been There (2003); and the original Facing Freedom exhibition, which opened in 2010.