state:
Illinois
Local history:
Legacies and Voices
What do you want your legacy to be?
DePaul University | Inside/Out Prison Exchange Program
Exhibiting Partner:
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
800 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60607
May 16, 2017August 13, 2017

States of Incarceration is now at the Levine Museum in Charlotte, NC

States of Incarceration is extended in NC! September 23, 2023 - January 31, 2023 at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, NC!

401 S Tryon St, Charlotte, NC 28202

go to www.museumofthenewsouth.org for more information.

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Illinois: Legacies and Voices
What do you want your legacy to be?
DePaul University | Inside/Out Prison Exchange Program

During a prison exchange program, DePaul students and incarcerated men asked each other: What do you want your personal legacy to be?

Some wanted to become grassroots organizers or teachers, making a difference in their world. Others simply wanted to be remembered as a good person. Some incarcerated students hoped to show what prisons do to people, families, and communities. Others recalled dreams incarceration took from them—becoming a baseball player, a rock star, a doctor, a fireman. Some said they never had the chance to think about legacy.

What do we, the people of Illinois, want our collective legacy to be? Our state’s criminal justice history includes torture, racism, wrongful convictions, the first supermax. This is our legacy now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. For generations, activists, reformers, legal advocates, and prisoners themselves have struggled to rewrite Illinois’s incarceration story.

Our Point of View

In taking up questions about Illinois’s legacies of mass incarceration, our history class partnered with DePaul’s Inside-Out program, led by Dr. Dominica Kimberly Moe. We visited Dr. Moe’s class, held at Stateville Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Illinois, and exchanged essays with fellow students, half of whom are currently incarcerated. This project—and this unique collaboration—provided us the rare opportunity to reflect on our pasts and together envision a future.

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Illinois: Legacies and Voices    DePaul University
What do you want your legacy to be?
Illinois: Legacies and Voices
What do you want your legacy to be?
  DePaul University

National Exhibition Venue    Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

Public Dialogues and Events
| May 16 – August 13, 2017

See Full Exhibition & Events Schedule
“My father was incarcerated on Ellis Island in 1941-1942 for nine weeks. He was arrested 36 hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor as an "enemy alien." He was Jewish, born in Austria. Had he been deported, I would not be here to tell his story."”  — Hull House Visitor
“I feel that once you are rehabilitated after committing a crime, you should be welcomed fully back into society and allowed to reach your potential as a productive citizen. ”  — Alana, Lansing, MI

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