Beginning January 1, 2019, State law mandates black history courses at public colleges in Illinois.

Public colleges and universities throughout the state of Illinois must now offer a course studying black history.

May 3, 1968, black students occupied Northwestern University's bursar’s office, alleging that NU hadn’t confronted Evanston’s segregated housing. Among their demands was a greater presence of minorities at the university, where there were about 45 to 50 blacks among 6,500 undergraduates. 

In 1981, a state law was passed to make sure that all public schools in Illinois teach black history. And in 2016, Chicago Public Schools history teachers believed that CPS didn’t do enough to implement black history classes into its curriculum.

The fact that the existing state mandates weren’t always followed is one reason state Rep. La Shawn K. Ford co-sponsored the bill. “We’re going to have an audit on every school district in the state. In today’s times, where we have so much racial tension, we need to know each others’ culture,” Ford said. “You can’t have institutional learning that’s not complete.”

South Side native Joshua Adams, an assistant professor of media and communications at Salem State University, believes the legislation is a step in the right direction since most students never take a black history course until college. “The way American history is taught around the country often leaves most students unequipped to know about and think critically about where we came from as a country and where we are going,” Adams said.

Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Ph.D. an assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of “A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s,” believes oversight of the law is paramount.

“Given the way that black history has been ignored or distorted—particularly the history of slavery in some secondary textbooks and curriculum—I think requiring black history to be offered at the post-secondary level is important,” Todd-Breland said. “It will also be important to monitor the implementation of this to make sure these courses are not marginalized among other requirements.”

By Evan F. Moore, Chicago Sun Times
Edited by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Morgan Park Community is home to Chicago's pioneer Negro settlement, dating back to the 1880s.

The earliest days of Morgan Park included a small settlement of Negroes, some of whom were former slaves and others descended from Southern slave families who migrated north after the Civil War. 

French immigrants also settled in Morgan Park. They settled east of Vincennes Avenue, near the main line of the Rock Island railroad.

Map of Morgan Park, Illinois, as laid out by Thomas F. Nichols for the Blue Island Land and Building Company, 1870.

Morgan Park is 13 miles south of the Loop and is one of the city's 77 official community areas. It was laid out in the 1870s by Thomas F. Nichols, so Morgan Park's winding streets, small parks, and roundabouts evoke images of an English country town. In 1869, the Blue Island Land and Building Company purchased property from the heirs of Thomas Morgan, an early English settler, and subdivided the area from Western Avenue to Vincennes Avenue that falls within the present community area. Although the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad laid tracks through the area in 1852, regular commuter service to downtown was established in the suburban line opened in 1888.

They established their own churches, beginning with Beth Eden in 1891 which was the first of more than 19 churches organized by Negro families who lived in the segregated district east of Vincennes, near the main line of the Rock Island railroad. Public institutions such as the Walker Branch Library (founded in 1890) and the Morgan Park High School (built in 1916) were always integrated.

On the other side of the tracks near 117th Street, French Roman Catholics who worked in the local Purington brickyard established Sacred Heart Church (1904).

The battle over annexation to Chicago in 1911, which sharply divided the community, dragged on in court until 1914.

By 1920, 674 of Morgan Park's 7,780 residents were Negroes (11.5%). The official report published in the wake of the city's 1919 Race Riot (aka Red Summer) noted that, while whites and blacks in Morgan Park "maintain a friendly attitude," nevertheless, "there seems to be a common understanding that Negroes must not live west of Vincennes Road, which bisects the town from northeast to southwest

Second grade at Holy Name of Mary School. 1955

Reflecting the reality of urban segregation, black Catholics established Holy Name of Mary (1940) at the east end of the community. Racial integration in the larger Morgan Park area did not occur on a large scale until the late 1960s. By then, however, the west leg of Interstate 57 had effectively isolated the older black settlement east of Vincennes.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

How did streets named Tripp and Lowell Avenues get mixed in with Chicago's "Alphabet Town" K streets?

Alphabet Town begins just west of Pulaski, where the streets start with the letter "K," almost four miles west of Lake Shore Drive. The K streets are succeeded west of Cicero by the "L" streets, then after Central Avenue comes the "M" streets, and Narragansett leads off the "N" streets. On the north side, where Chicago extends farther west, there are even "O" and "P" streets.

To make matters more confusing, Chicago's Southeast Side has north-south streets that are named by a letter alone; "A" (Avenue A, Avenue B, etc.) and extend westward from the Indiana state line to "Avenue O."

In K-Town, on the far northside, the Avenues, traveling westbound, are Karlov, Kedvale, Keokuk, Keystone, Keeler, TRIPP, Kildare, LOWELL, Kostner, Kenneth, Kilbourn, Kenton, Knox, Kolmar, Kilpatrick, and Keating Avenues, depending on your north or south location. Notice that Tripp and Lowell avenues somehow snuck their way into K-Town.

Old Irving Park borders are Montrose to the North, Addison to the South, Pulaski Avenue to the East, and the Milwaukee Road Railway (the RR tracks running parallel to Kilbourn/Kolmar) to the West (which did not go to Cicero Avenue). These borders were determined by the original two farms that dominated the landscape when the area was first developed in 1869.

So why start alphabetically naming streets starting at Pulaski Road with the letter "K"? In 1909, Chicago instituted the new street renaming and renumbering system to avoid duplicate street names from all the surrounding towns that were annexed into Chicago, which was a nightmare for the U.S. postal service.

At the time, residential development was flourishing in a radius extending north, northwest, and southwest from the Loop. Many streets, such as Racine, Southport, etc., were already named. Development west of Pulaski (which was once named Crawford Avenue), was just starting to increase, with new streets needing to be named.

The Old Irving Park neighborhood is situated at the beginning (east side) of the alphabetical street-naming action, with Pulaski on the eastern edge. The area's north-south streets appear to follow the usual naming convention until the keen-eyed Chicagoan might notice several "K" streets are missing. How can streets go missing in a city? Yet it becomes clear when comparing Old Irving Park to adjacent "K-Town" neighborhoods it's missing several avenues, including Komensky, Kolin, and Karlov. 

There is at least one very evident explanation for the missing "K" streets of the Old Irving Park neighborhood by simply looking at a map of Chicago streets. When comparing Old Irving Park's north-south streets to, for example, the Archer Heights neighborhood of the city's southwest side, it's glaringly evident that not only does Old Irving Park contain fewer streets, but individual homes situated within that area have larger property lots than of areas with the full amount of "K" streets.

Chicago's allotted measurements of the majority of its individual "Standard Lots" date back to the 19th Century, set at 24 x 125. This is generally true for most of the City and some of its neighboring suburbs. However, Old Irving Park was developed initially as a separate sub-division of the city in the late 19th century. Thus, it was developed with lots that are nearly twice as large as the Standard Chicago Lot to attract families and larger house developments of the day. How does a 19th-century developer create larger home lots? Easy; take out some streets! 

This explains the conundrum of Chicago's "K" streets.

Now, about the mysterious Lowell and Tripp Avenues:

Lowell Avenue is where Kolin Avenue is from the southside "K-Town. Lowell Avenue was named for F.W. Lowell, who was the first teacher in the Andersonville School at Foster and Ashland Avenues around 1861.

Tripp Avenue was named for Dr. Robinson Tripp, called "Father Tripp," who bought a lot on Lake Street in the downtown area in 1853 and laid the first sidewalk in town.

Both Lowell and Tripp Avenues were already named before the 1909 street renaming and renumbering system went into effect and was kept as is.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of Houseboat Living on the Chicago River.

Over the course of Chicago's history, people have lived in their ships and boats for a variety of reasons. Ship captains and their crews have often wintered in their vessels on area waterways. Other ship and boat owners have lived on their vessels due to financial troubles or simply a desire to live away from most other Chicagoans. While people have lived in boats and ships in Chicago-area rivers and streams across the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, it was during the Great Depression of the 1930s that some Chicagoans retreated to houseboats, particularly on the north branch of the Chicago River, due to economic necessity, nicknamed "Boatville," and "Houseboat City."

Houseboats on the North Branch of the Chicago River at Belmont Avenue with Riverview in the background. 1927

George Wellington Streeter and his family are perhaps among the most notorious families to live on a ship at Chicago. In 1886, Streeter's small ship ran aground on a sandbar just off the shoreline on Near North Side and his family took up residence there. Over time, lake currents and garbage had created 186 acres of landfill that Streeter claimed as his own and named his property the "District of Lake Michigan." He moved from his shipwrecked boat to a small landed structure. Streeter and his family pursued their claims in court but were evicted from the property during World War I by Mayor Bill Thompson for selling liquor. The entire Streeter story.

This photograph shows Mrs. George Wellington Streeter on her houseboat in 1922, the year after her husband died. The boat was moored adjacent to the Ogden Slip, just north of the mouth of the Chicago River.

At the colony’s peak during the Great Depression, more than a hundred houseboats, many converted scows, lined the banks of the river between Montrose Avenue and Addison Street.

Chicago Tribune Map of Houseboats on the North Branch of the Chicago River in 1936.

It was cheap! Houseboat living was a way to avoid things like real estate taxes and high rents, not to mention that housing was scarce. One newspaper article said that residents paid an average of a dollar a month to moor their houseboats, which had many of the comforts of regular houses. 

Houseboats on the North Branch of Chicago River.

Some boats were wired for electricity and were hooked up to city plumbing; others used generators. Many heated their floating homes with oil stoves during the winter. There was even a houseboat bar for a time, which the law shut down.

In this photograph, taken along the north branch of the Chicago River at Western Avenue in 1927, houseboats seem a part of the residential neighborhood seen in the background.

The question of the houseboats’ legality was about as murky as the river water. When the squatters’ camp started growing during the ‘20s, the city’s Sanitary District tried to evict the occupants, citing water pollution and navigation concerns. When a judge issued an injunction preventing the houseboats from being ousted in 1930, the colony grew. The Sanitary District of Chicago had by then completed its channelization project along the north branch which connected to the North Shore Channel. 

Houseboats on the North Branch of Chicago River.

Boatville was mostly an adult community—many of the residents were retired boatmen, ex-sailors, and streetcar motormen. By the 1950s, most of the houseboats had vanished from the North Branch. Those that were left by the 1970s were confronted with increased pollution and permitting regulations. Even so, there were a couple of holdouts on the North Branch as recently as the 1990s.

Houseboats on the north branch of the Chicago River. 1941

Even today, according to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, houseboats are not illegal—but they are heavily regulated.

ADDITIONAL READING: The Henry C. Grebe & Co. Inc. shipyard was on the Chicago River at Belmont Avenue - builders of U.S. Navy Ships.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Women and Gender Roles in Civil War Illinois and the North.

The Civil War proved a great burden to many Illinois families by taking the husbands, fathers, and brothers who provided their support away from their fields and workbenches. But the conflict also provided many women with new opportunities for responsibility and leadership and led them to consider a new identity for themselves. For decades women had taken important posts in the nation's voluntary associations for charity and reform. Now, these organizations proliferated and grew to unprecedented size in response to national and community crises.

Many women and children took to the fields in order to maintain family farms. Women had long performed farm labor, from cooking, washing, and cleaning to taking part in the planting and harvesting of crops. In 1862 a Department of Agriculture report concluded that "in the civilization of the latter half of the nineteenth century, a farmer's wife, as a general rule, is a laboring drudge… on three farms out of four the wife works harder, endures more, than any other on the place…"

Rural women often lived amidst great loneliness. Without even their husbands' company, these women labored on isolated farms. Women's increased responsibilities in wartime led some social critics to object that hard work would demean the fairer sex, harden their bodies, and disrupt American gender roles. Women responded that the demands of war and family represented a higher calling than such notions.

Northern reformers worried that the absence and death of bread-winning men would lead dependent women into poverty and vice. The noted author and reformer Harriet Beecher Stowe asked "Will anyone sit pining away in inert grief when two streets off are the midnight dance houses where girls of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen are being lured away into the way of swift destruction? How many of these are daughters of soldiers who have given their hearts blood for us and our liberties?" Like other northern women, Stowe came to believe that activism, and not mere sympathy, was the solution.

Women without farm responsibilities found some new opportunities during the Civil War. The enlistment of store clerks and other white-collar workers provided a few openings for educated women in town. Women often took the lead in organizing voluntary associations in Illinois communities, and across the North, in order to provide for those left without support. Socialites organized balls and other events to raise funds for relief. But in most communities women worked in these new organizations, as well as with church groups and established charitable societies, together to provide for one another.

The war also provided women with new opportunities in the field of medicine. The Chicago Hospital for Women and Children opened in 1863 with Dr. Mary H. Thompson as director. Mary Bickerdyke, a Galesburg nurse, served in hospitals at Cairo and with western armies in the field. Mary Safford, a woman who could speak both German and French, proved especially helpful with immigrant brigades. "Mother" Sturgis and "Aunt Lizzie" Aikene helped to form the Peoria Soldier's Aid Society, which later became the Women's National League.

Mary Ann [Ball] Bickerdyke "Mother Bickerdyke"

"Aunt Lizzie" Aikene

Mary Livermore, whose service in medicine brought her into direct contact with Illinois recruits, stated that a considerable number of women became soldiers during the conflict. One, who called herself Albert D.J. Cashier, served in the 95th Illinois and participated in several battles, was found long after the war had ended to have been born Jennie Hodgers and emigrated from Ireland.

Illinois women also took the lead in organizing new groups to provide for soldiers still on the home front. Chicago churchwomen rented and renovated an old hotel for use by soldiers passing through Chicago. Shortly organizers took up the building of an even larger structure on Chicago's lakefront, and another Soldiers' Rest in Cairo. The Chicago Sanitary Commission provided doctors to inspect camps and hospitals in Illinois and provided them with medical supplies.

By 1863 the United States Sanitary Commission had grown into a national organization. On October 27, 1863, Chicago hosted the Northwestern Sanitary Fair, which raised money for the group. The United States Christian Commission took up the nationwide mission of providing every soldier with a Bible. Women found large responsibilities in these organizations, yet their emphasis upon humane living conditions and religious evangelism largely mirrored women's antebellum sphere.

War often challenged women's ideals of Republican Motherhood. In the antebellum era, many northern women had found a new identity by raising virtuous children able to sustain the young republic. One historian has argued that "The influence women had on children, especially sons, gave them ultimate responsibility for the future of the new nation."

Yet sons' and husbands' enlistment in Union regiments subjected women to wrenching anxieties. Sons and husbands also wrestled with the image of the broken family in an era of domesticity. "Just before the battle, mother, I am thinking most of you," intoned one popular northern war song.

For young men, the Civil War often represented a coming of age. Sidney Little of Illinois wrote to his mother that "my coming into this war has made a man of your son." For most able-bodied men, failure to enlist represented a lack of courage. One soldier demanded that drafted men who hired a substitute immediately "wear petticoats."

The battlefield tested many young men. Some found the poise necessary to thrive amidst chaos and death. Others began to doubt themselves after panicking under fire. Still, others came to a new understanding of masculinity and its conventions after holding martial ideals up to the reality of war.

Some soldiers escaped small-town morality to a world of brothels, camp followers, drink and even the opium dispensed in field hospitals. But others reasoned that they fought the war for this very sense of civilization. Military life instilled a sense of virtuous self-discipline familiar to the evangelical Protestant Whigs of the North. Trained soldiers always obeyed orders, and did not flee under fire. Many struggled to extend this discipline to their hours and days away from the battle.

Combat also asked men long a part of the northern culture of domesticity, and often the denizens of offices and stores, to face up to violence and death. Military discipline demanded that soldiers in combat turn away from wounded comrades and keep fighting. This directly countermanded an American sense of civilization increasingly built around the development of tender conscience and isolation from the realities of suffering.

Many northerners came to think of the Union as a family. One soldier concluded that "if our country was to endure as a way of life planned by our fathers, it rested with us children to finish the work they had begun." Many thought of southerners as disobedient children who needed to be taught a lesson. When the war concluded this metaphor took hold as well. Despite the conflict's ferocity, most northerners embraced the South as wayward brethren returning to the family.

By Drew E. VandeCreek
Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.