Posts

Posted on

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

Posted on

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 The Renaissance historian was to make his way to Randolph and St. Clair Counties in search of a reported stash of unpublished colonial French documents.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

Posted on

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

Posted on

A Brief Account of Chicago Literary History

Alley and streets of Chicago

April is National Poetry Month! To celebrate the bicentennial, we’ll be covering a multitude of Illinois literature, from poetry to prose, and plays. Stay tuned as we examine the great writers of Illinois!

Chicago literature has a distinctive, uniquely independent identity which authors draw from the city’s innate sense of power. Chicago was founded as a city of business and much of its early literature was closely tied to journalism, and the histories of Chicago and its inhabitants. Unfortunately, Chicago’s early records and publications were wiped out almost entirely by the Great Fire of 1871. Following the fire, writers began to reshape the identity of Chicago literature.… Read More