Collections volunteer Robert Blythe writes about Chicagoan Paul King Jr., a building contractor and social justice advocate, fifty years after the Coalition of United Community Action led a demonstration on July 22, 1969, demanding that building trade unions provide on-the-job trainee positions for minority groups. Many Chicagoans were taken aback in July 1969 when two hundred More
In this blog post, CHM collections intern Chris Johnson writes about his experience processing the collection of The Chicago Reporter under the supervision of senior archivist Julie Wroblewski. Last summer, I interned at the Chicago History Museum via the Black Metropolis Research Consortium’s Archie Motley Archival Internship Program. The Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) is a More
To cap off Black History Month, CHM cataloging and metadata librarian Gretchen Neidhardt writes about her search for the voices of African American servicemen in our archives. While in the process of digitizing the last of our paper card catalog for 6,000 small manuscript collections, I noticed that several items mentioned “Negro Troops.” (Our card More
Collections volunteer Robert Blythe details the history and contents of the African American Police League records in our Abakanowicz Research Center. “Black Police League Has Tough Job Ahead.” This headline could have been from yesterday’s newspaper, but in fact appeared in the Chicago Defender in September 1968. In May of that year, Chicago Police Department More