Directed by Cai Thomas, Change the Name follows Black girls on Chicago’s West Side as they organize to rename a school that still bears the legacy of an enslaver. Through Thomas’s attentive lens, we don’t just see a campaign—we witness strategy, tenderness, and clarity from young people who are shaping the city in their image.

This film speaks directly to the heart of Black Life Everywhere: Chicago—a series rooted in the belief that Black life is already the site of invention, resistance, and care. From the language we use to the institutions we inhabit, nothing is neutral. Thomas brings this truth into focus, illuminating how power is encoded in names, in architecture, in whose memories are made permanent.

In our Chicago edition, we ask: Who taught us what to call things, and why? How do young Black organizers contend with erasure while building something better in real time?

Change the Name doesn’t just document change—it shows how change sounds, looks, and feels when led by Black girls who are both historians and futurists. The film belongs in this archive because it honors Chicago as it is: unfinished, contested, alive with possibility.

Change the name, by Queen Collective director and producer Cai Thomas, produced by Donald Conley. (United States). Student activists and educators from Village Leadership Academy campaigned to change the name of a park from a slaveholder to abolitionists Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood.

cai thomas is a documentary filmmaker and cinematographer based in Chicago telling stories at the intersection of location, self-determination, and identity about Black youth and elders. She grew up in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood and is deeply interested in stories rooted in place. Her film Change The Name which follows young activists from Village Leadership Academy organizing in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on BET. Her previous film Queenie about a Black lesbian edler in Brooklyn’s Bed Stuy neighborhood premiered at NewFest in 2020 and is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Cai recently completed Beneath The Surface which documents data scientist and journalist Trina Reynolds-Tyler’s investigation into gender based violence found in complaints made against the Chicago Police Department.

Learn more about Black Life Everywhere’s work here.

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  • cai thomas is a documentary filmmaker and cinematographer based in Chicago telling stories at the intersection of location, self-determination, and identity about Black youth and elders. She grew up in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood and is deeply interested in stories rooted in place. Her film Change The Name which follows young activists from Village Leadership Academy organizing in Chicago's North Lawndale neighborhood premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on BET. Her previous film Queenie about a Black lesbian edler in Brooklyn's Bed Stuy neighborhood premiered at NewFest in 2020 and is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. Cai recently completed Beneath The Surface which documents data scientist and journalist Trina Reynolds-Tyler's investigation into gender based violence found in complaints made against the Chicago Police Department.