Roderick "Midas Wells" Jackson
I am a second-generation Black Chicagolander and PhD Candidate in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. I am also a Mellon/ACLS Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). I graduated cum laude from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with a bachelor's degree in Anthropology. I also have an Associate Degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences with High Honors from Holyoke Community College.
As the principal photographer and curator for Black Chicagoland Is..., I employ visual ethnography through a multimodal approach to thicken our understanding of Black life across the Chicago Metropolitan Area (Chicagoland). I have worked as an event photographer for SF Moma, Mount Holyoke College, and UC Berkeley.
I am also a musician, producer, and composer, and I am part of the Grammy-certified production duo Tensei with Chris Kramer. Our music has been featured on the television shows The South Side on HBO Max and The Blacklist on NBC. Click here to check out our music. I also produced the Chicago hip-hop classic "Dennehy" by Serengeti and work as a producer, writer, and composer with Sony | KPM.
Dr. april l. graham-jackson
I am a third-generation Black Chicagolander, and the geosonicologist and geographer behind Black Chicagoland Is... I document how Black Chicagolanders use music, sound, geography, and acoustic ecologies to take up space and make place across Chicagoland while (re)shaping the city, the suburbs, villages, towns, and unincorporated areas that have been their home since the 1800s.
I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where I am also a Postdoctoral Research Affiliate with Chicago Studies, the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), and the Urban Theory Lab (UTL). I am also a Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and a Scholar-in-Residence and Long-Term Fellow at the Newberry Library.
I hold a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, where I was also the first Berkeley Black Geographies Fellow. I graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Mount Holyoke College, becoming the first person with a bachelor’s degree in Black Geographies. I am also a proud community college graduate. I have an Associate's in General Studies with Honors from Harold Washington College — City Colleges of Chicago.
I am the author of the Black Geographies Library Guide and the Archiving Black Suburban Life in Chicago Southland Library Guide.