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.