All is “Wells” with my soul: Analysis of conditioned agency via The Defender’s coverage on the construction and opening of the Ida B. Wells Home

Abstract: This critical textual analysis explores how people exercise spatial and communicative agency through media, such as the Chicago Defender, and in social and physical space, such as the Wells Homes. The research suggests that the Defender’s coverage of the Wells Homes’ construction is an exemplar of how media practices reinforced restricting structures of race, class and space, while simultaneously providing opportunities for residents and community members to collectively produce sites of social resistance and transformation.