Chicago Dinners

The Center for Civil Society hosts Chicago Dinners regularly throughout the year. Since 1995, the Chicago Dinners have been bringing together small groups of civic, business, and community leaders from a variety of racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds to discuss the issue of race and other difficult topics.

The Dinner offers residents of the country’s “most segregated city” a rare opportunity to meet and converse with people different from themselves. Dinners are hosted in restaurants, homes, places of worship and other community gathering places. A facilitated discussion is held throughout dinner to begin to do the work necessary to create effective solutions to our problems. 

The premise of the Chicago Dinners is that meaningful conversations and interactions are the foundation for the creation and implementation of effective policies for systemic change.  

january 27 Dinner

Adam Zucker, filmmaker, introduced his film "Greensboro: Closer to the Truth." The film documented the first ever Truth and Reconciliation Commission of its kind held in the United States 25 years after what is now known as “The Greensboro Massacre.” On this day, a caravan of white supremacists confronted and fired on demonstrators preparing for a “Death to the Klan” rally in an African American neighborhood in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The Commission came together in 2005 to help the community grapple with this tragic history that continues to have an impact today. The film provides an opportunity for viewers to witness the process one community went through to revisit an unresolved history and heal.

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