Kate Baker Busey: A Social Justice Advocate in 20th Century Urbana

Kate Baker Busey was an artist, teacher, and social reformer in Champaign-Urbana in the early 20th century. Born in 1855 just before the Civil War and raised by socialist parents, Kate grew up in a time and place where progressive notions were rare and racial inequality was pervasive. Kate had a unique childhood among the former members of the socialist commune Ceresco in Cobden, Illinois—a town in the southern tip of the state. Kate’s community of social reformers had moved to Cobden from Wisconsin when Kate was a baby, after the experimental phalanx failed to sustain itself in the northern forest.… Read More