May is Jewish American Heritage Month. In recognition, CHM curator of religion and community history Rebekah Coffman highlights materials from the Abakonowicz Research Center related to the National Council of Jewish Women. The National Council of Jewish Women is the result of a gathering of Jewish women that took place during the 1893 World’s Columbian More
This summer, Lily Mayfield assisted CHM technical services librarian Elizabeth McKinley in the Abakanowicz Research Center. Mayfield writes about her experience discovering the full names of women featured in the Museum’s carte de visite collection. How can one study the past without knowing the names of those who came before? That is the question posed More
In this blog post, CHM curatorial intern Brigid Kennedy recounts the life of labor organizer Lucy Parsons. The details of Lucy Parsons’s early life in Texas are murky, and she herself provided different accounts of her youth and heritage. Her race was the subject of public debate, but she claimed only Mexican and Muscogee Creek More
Known today as a Democratic Party stronghold, Chicago has ties to the Grand Old Party dating to Abraham Lincoln’s times. One twentieth-century GOP stalwart was Bertha Baur, who long made her home at 1511 Astor Street in the Gold Coast. National Republican Committeewoman for Illinois from 1928 to 1952, Mrs. Baur had a groundbreaking career More
For Women’s History Month, head into storage with CHM collection technician Jessica McPheters for a closer look at two artifacts that document twentieth-century political strife and women’s suffrage in Chicago. In the summer of 2016, the collections team began working on an inventory of the Decorative and Industrial Arts (DIA) collection at the Chicago History More