Warning: This review contains spoilers.
But, it’s in episode three that the deep-seated issues of Chicago housing come into play when heroine Letitia “Leti” Lewis (played by Jurnee Smollett) buys a huge old house on the city’s north side. As an opening title card reminds us, “pioneering is dangerous,” and to stay in this home, Leti battles both physical and spiritual evil. But as scary as the supernatural storyline may be, nothing is quite as chilling as knowing what a group of Black folks have to face when moving to an all-white neighborhood.
As expected, things continue to escalate. Very soon, signs that say, “We are a white community, undesirables must go” are posted in lawns, and it seems one of her adversaries has adjusted the heater to make the house scorching. They’re trying to force Leti and her boarders out, and as noted by Atticus “Tic” Freeman (played by Jonathan Majors), excessive heat and noise are the same tactics he used in Korea while in the military.
During a 1966 demonstration in Marquette Park, a white neighborhood at the time, hundreds of white people threw rocks and bottles at King and other marchers. He was struck and later told reporters: “I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the south, but I can say that I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’m seeing in Chicago.”
