The unsung legacy of Margaret Burroughs: ‘We called her mama’

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Investigation, Chicago, Radio, Arts, Society & Culture, Public, Education, Curious, City

4.6 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Margaret Burroughs was a force to be reckoned with. An artist and a poet in Chicago from the 1920s until her death in 2010, she was also a teacher, an organizer, and the founder of the DuSable Black History Museum. Her birthday is November 1. Curious City and the Burroughs Legacy Project at the Invisible Institute tell the story of one of her lesser-known passions: educating people incarcerated in Illinois.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Curious City is supported by the Poetry Foundation, with a reminder that Chicago is the pulse of poetry.
0:07.4	Coming up, an evening of poetry and music, celebrating the Rapprary, Chicago's library, preserving rap and hip-hop as vital literary art forms.
0:17.1	October 16th at the Poetry Foundation building in River North.
0:20.6	Learn more at poetry foundation.org.
0:24.5	Federal funding is gone, and that changes everything.
0:28.0	Every day this gap lingers, the shows and reporting you rely on are at risk.
0:32.6	We've still got $200,000 left to close our funding gap.
0:36.6	We're making progress, but we're not there yet.
0:38.9	The programs and conversations you count on every day depend on your support. When you give now,
0:44.4	you help close the gap and keep trusted, independent news here for Chicago. Make an affordable
0:49.5	monthly gift online at wbiz.org slash donate.
0:56.7	What's up Chicago? I'm Erin Allen, and this is Curious City. When it comes to Chicago
1:02.2	icons, Margaret Burroughs is definitely on a list. She was a prolific writer, artist,
1:08.5	activist, among many other things. And her birthday is coming up November 1st.
1:13.9	In honor of the late grade, we are bringing you this encore episode from the Burroughs Legacy
1:19.4	Project at the Invisible Institute, which gets into one of Burroughs' lesser-known passions.
1:25.3	Student Tierra Hicks is going to take it from here. When it comes to Black History, the only people I really learned about in school were
1:32.3	Emmettill, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks. Oh, and Harriet Tubman. And me being a scholar,
1:39.3	I listen anyway. But are they really going to keep repeating the same thing?
1:45.0	It's like when your mom keeps telling you to do the dishes.
1:48.0	It just makes you not want to do the dishes.
1:50.0	If I was teaching history, I'll tell you about Dr. B, Margaret Burroughs.
	...

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