Tag: Illinois

  • Escaping slavery, one family’s story Free Press Newspapers Illinois 2016-12-14 Sandy Vasko, Executive Director Will County Historical Society Black history in Braidwood starts during the coal strikes of the 1870s. Before that time the only black people this area knew were passing through on the Underground Railroad. Or did they? As I have learned, not…

  • The life and times of Lucy Parsons, early American radical and labor organizer, told definitively here.

  • Would-Be Bridegroom Takes Oath He Is Negro The San Francisco Call Volume 104, Number 70 (1908-08-09) Page 31, Column 4 (Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection) Cannot Get License to Wed Mulatto Until He Proves His Race ST. LOUIS, Aug. 8.— “You can’t get a marriage license here,” said Leon G. Smith of East St. Louis…

  • My dad is Black and from the US. My mom is Scottish-Irish. I came out very light skinned. For most of my early childhood I was universally read as white. It wasn’t until I hit puberty and entered into a largely Puerto Rican middle school that I started being seen as Latino—a shock both because…

  • For You Were Strangers: A Hanley & Rivka Mystery Allium Press of Chicago 2015 320 pages 6″ x 9″ Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9890535-9-4 Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9967558-0-1 D. M. Pirrone [Diane Piron-Gelman] Chicago, Illinois On a spring morning in 1872, former Civil War officer Ben Champion is discovered dead in his Chicago bedroom—a bayonet protruding from…

  • Uncovering the story of a grandmother’s racial passing and its effect on following generations.

  • Black Enough/White Enough: The Obama Dilema Third World Press February 2009 199 pages Paperback ISBN: 978-0883783092 Rickey Hendon Foreword by: Hermene D. Hartman Barack is caught between two worlds and struggles for acceptance by either side-Black enough? White enough? It’s a fine line that he must walk, writes Illinois state Senator Rickey Hendon, in Black…

  • The Old Neighborhood, A Novel Curbside Splendor Publishing April 2014 502 pages Paperback ISBN: 978-1940430003 Bill Hillmann Bill Hillmann’s debut novel, The Old Neighborhood, is the story of teenager Joe Walsh, the youngest in a large, mixed-race family living in Chicago. After Joe witnesses his older brother commit a gangland murder, his friends and family…

  • Vanishing Eden: White Construction of Memory, Meaning, and Identity in a Racially Changing City Temple University Press November 2015 198 pages 6 x 9 Paper ISBN: 978-1-43991-119-8 Cloth ISBN: 978-1-43991-118-1 eBook ISBN: 978-1-43991-120-4 Michael T. Maly, Associate Professor of Sociology; Director of the Policy Research Collaborative Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois Heather M. Dalmage, Professor of…

  • Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President Bloomsbury Press 2010 288 pages 5 1/2″ x 8 1/4″ Hardback ISBN: 9781608190607 Edward McClelland Barack Obama’s inspirational politics and personal mythology have overshadowed his fascinating history. Young Mr. Obama gives us the missing chapter: the portrait of the politician as a young leader,…