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Mr. Rami had a front-row seat to a who’s who of literary, political, entertainment, and civil rights icons who changed the course of history for Black people in this country.Robert Townsend, actor, director, comedian, and writer

Join us as Pemon Rami, a Chicago native and Black culture advocate, shares about his decades-long and multifaceted activism for Black lives. During this engaging and informative talk, hear about organizing methods, photographic history, reviewing FBI student files, and more. Rami’s legacy of activism sits uniquely at the confluence of the Civil Rights Movement, the Chicago Public Schools student movements, and the Black Arts movement of the 1960s–70s, and continues today.

This program supports CHM’s newest exhibition, Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s–70s.

Mock funeral for Board of Education at Civic Center Black students stage mock funeral for the Board of Education during high school boycott, at the Civic Center Plaza, 50 West Washington Street, Chicago, Oct. 28, 1968. ST-16002900-0016, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM
Black students stage mock funeral for the Board of Education during high school boycott, at the Civic Center Plaza, 50 West Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois. Black students stage mock funeral for the Board of Education during high school boycott, at the Civic Center Plaza, 50 West Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois. ST-16002900-0013, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM
Mock funeral for Board of Education at Civic Center Black students stage mock funeral for the Board of Education during high school boycott, at the Civic Center Plaza, 50 West Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois. ST-16002900-0020, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM
Mock funeral for Board of Education at Civic Center Black students stage mock funeral for the Board of Education during high school boycott, at the Civic Center Plaza, 50 West Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois. ST-16002900-0023, Chicago Sun-Times collection, CHM

Speaker

Pemon Rami
Pemon Rami
FILMMAKER, EDUCATOR, ACTIVIST

Pemon Rami is a veteran international filmmaker, lifelong cultural advocate, Board Member of the Illinois Arts Council, adjunct professor at Loyola University Chicago, and director of education and public programs at the DuSable Museum of African American History from 2011 to 2016. A major contributor to the Black student and Black Arts movements, Rami cochaired the high school student workshop at the national Black Power conference held in 1968. During the 1968 citywide boycotts of Chicago Public Schools, Rami was one of the leaders of a walk-out of 35,000 students. He was recently inducted in the Chicago Black Arts Hall of Fame, and in 2019, he was selected for inclusion in the HistoryMakers Digital Archive, housed at the Library of Congress. Additionally, Rami was selected for inclusion in Columbia University’s Jacqueline Woodson oral history project: I See My Light Shining: An Oral History of Our Elders. Rami’s memoir, When Blackness Was Golden! Observations from the Front Line, was published in 2022.

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