Joan Jett Blakk: Drag Queen for President

The month of June marks LGBTQ Pride. Follow along on our blog and social media platforms as we explore Chicago’s vibrant LGBTQ community and take a look at influential LGBTQ people from Illinois.  #PrideMonth


If a bad actor can be elected president, why not a good drag queen?”

— Joan Jett Blakk

Joan Jett Blakk is  the drag persona of Chicagoan performer Terence Smith.  Blakk started her career in 1974. She was also one of the founders of the Chicago chapter of Queer Nation, a political action group focused on enhancing the visibility of queer people and queer issues at the height of the AIDS crisis.… Read More

Lorraine Hansberry: Letters to “The Ladder”

The month of June marks LGBTQ Pride. Follow along on our blog and social media platforms as we explore Chicago’s vibrant LGBTQ community and take a look at influential LGBTQ people from Illinois.  #PrideMonth


Lorraine Hansberry was an African-American playwright and writer from Chicago. She was born in Chicago on May 19, 1930 to middle-class parents. Hansberry grew up in a racially restricted neighborhood in Southside Chicago, where her father fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for them to live. She is most well-known for being the first black female author to have her play, A Raisin in the Sun, performed on Broadway.… Read More

Chronicling the “Life of the People”: The Work of Clarence W. Alvord

For the month of May, we’re celebrating Illinois innovations in honor of the bicentennial. From cellphones to MRIs to black holes to carbon dating, Illinois has a long history of ingenuity. Follow along on our social media for weekly snapshots of #IllinoisInnovation.


In early 1905, an instructor teaching European history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was called on for a new task by University President Edmund James. The Renaissance historian was to make his way to Randolph and St. Clair Counties in search of a reported stash of unpublished colonial French documents. In those local archives, Clarence Walworth Alvord found not only those French sources – which themselves provided “significant windows into the earliest colonial history of the Midwest” – but a host of other documents on pre-statehood Illinois history called the Cahokia Manuscripts, Kaskaskia Manuscripts, and the Menard Papers.… Read More

Motorola: An Illinois Company

For the month of May, we’re celebrating Illinois innovations in honor of the bicentennial. From cellphones to MRIs to black holes to carbon dating, Illinois has a long history of ingenuity. Follow along on our social media for weekly snapshots of #IllinoisInnovation.


In 1928, brothers Paul V. and Joseph E. Galvin purchased Stewart Storage Battery Company, a bankrupt battery eliminator business in Chicago. Starting with just five employees, the fledgling Galvin Manufacturing Corporation was very much a small fish in Chicago’s pond. In time though, it would become one of the largest and most influential companies of its kind.

Though Galvin first tried its hand at producing battery eliminators like its predecessor, the market for that product was quickly vanishing as battery-operated radios became obsolete.… Read More