Archive for July 2020

A pioneer in her field, Dr. Rebecca Crumpler graduated from medical school in 1864 to become the first Black female doctor in the U.S. Today, only around two percent of active female physicians identify as Black or African American. Learn more over at NBC news.

OK, maybe it’s time to stop painting that Roberts Court mural you started when the Supreme Court graciously allowed LGBTQ citizens to continue to have the same employment rights as everyone else. With the “big” cases finally cleared from the calendar, the Court has been busy allowing the federal government to kill people again, and…

In 1894 and 1895, Frances Willard, the renowned president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and Ida B. Wells, the prominent journalist and anti-lynching activist, fought a war of words in the international press. In 1890, Willard had made racist statements in a newspaper interview while in Atlanta, Georgia for a WCTU convention. Four…

2020 is the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment, which secured women’s right to vote. Next Tuesday, “The Vote,” a major two-part PBS documentary about the long fight for women’s suffrage premieres on WTTW, which we thought gave us a great opportunity to talk about a related conflict between two famous local…

Following decades of scandals, delays, big-money misconduct settlements — and even murder — Chicago finds itself facing an all-too-familiar question: Does the city finally have the will to make big changes to the way it polices residents? Read more at WBEZ.org.

Black lives matter, but maybe not so much if you are among Illinois’ political leaders or Chicago’s business elite. Last week, a group of local political leaders representing Cook County’s south suburbs, some of the poorest in the nation, called on Gov. J.B. Pritzker to pressure Amazon to invest in a South Suburban Airport near…

Elected leaders from throughout northeastern Illinois joined Chicago Ald. David Moore, D-17th, at an event Saturday to show unified support for the proposed South Suburban Airport near Monee and Peotone. Mayors of Hazel Crest, Matteson, University Park and Kankakee stood with county, state and federal representatives to share the view that building a third airport…

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South. If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument. Read more at The New…