The RHS Facebook page is a rich archive of history-related posts by Carol Flynn, RHS Facebook admin and writer until mid-2025. Carol prolifically wrote a wide variety of meticulously researched local history articles for RHS. She continues to write for the Beverly Review and other media sources with articles particularly focused on local Ridge history.
Black History Month
Martin Luther King, Jr., stated: “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”
One point he was trying to make is that to understand the present, we need to study the past.
Today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is an appropriate day to announce that beginning in February, Black History Month, the Ridge Historical Society will explore the history of race relations and integration in the Ridge communities. This fits in well with the 2021 theme of “The Black Family: Representation, Identity and Diversity.”
Introduction: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Visit to the South Side of Chicago
Excerpted from a Time Magazine article by Olivia B. Waxman, updated January 16, 2020
Martin Luther King, Jr., is usually associated with civil rights activities in the southern states, but in 1966, he spent time in Chicago.
In January of 1966, he moved into an apartment on Chicago’s west side to call attention to the poor living conditions of people of color in many of the northern cities. The slogan for the Chicago campaign was simply “End Slums.”
On August 5, 1966, he planned to lead a march in Marquette Park – centered around 69th Street and South Kedzie Avenue – to a realtor’s office to call attention to discrimination in the housing market.
He was attacked by a swarm of about 700 white protesters hurling bricks, bottles, and rocks. One rock hit King and knocked him to one knee. His aides rushed to shield him, and he remained in a kneeling position for a few moments until his head cleared. That is the picture included here.
Afterward, King told reporters, “I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’m seeing in Chicago.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law on April 11, 1968, one week after Dr. King’s assassination. It was an important step in equalizing opportunities, but it was just a beginning step.
Follow RHS for the series in February.
Photo from the Chicago Tribune.
February – Black History Month
Last year we started a series on the people for whom schools in our Ridge communities are named. We paused that series to cover other things.
For Black History Month, we will profile the five people of color who have schools named in their honor. We covered three last year, but we will start with repeating those, then cover the other two.
Percy Julian has the distinction of having a high school named for him.
Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975) was a research scientist who received over 130 chemical patents during his lifetime. He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, the first African American chemist to receive this honor. He was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs and human hormones from plants. His work led to treatments for glaucoma and infertility. When researchers showed the effectiveness of cortisone in treating rheumatoid arthritis, Julian improved the process for producing cortisone, greatly reducing costs.
Dr. Julian spent his life trying to overcome racial discrimination in education and employment. In his later years, he stated, “I feel that my own good country robbed me of the chance for some of the great experiences that I would have liked to live through. Instead, I took a job where I could get one and tried to make the best of it. I have been, perhaps, a good chemist, but not the chemist that I dreamed of being.”
Percy Julian was born in rural Alabama; one grandparent was an emancipated slave. He attended segregated schools until a white teacher who had taught Julian’s parents pulled strings to get him admitted to DePauw University in Indiana.
The school accepted him but would not allow him to live in the dorm. He found a boarding house, but they would not feed him. He went for days without eating before he found a place that would serve him. He later found work firing the furnace, waiting tables, and doing other odd jobs in a fraternity house; in return, he was allowed to sleep in the attic and eat at the house.
He was years behind the white students academically and took remedial classes at night while attending college classes during the day and working as a ditch digger. Despite all of this, he graduated first in his class and was valedictorian.
The practice at DePauw was to help students find post-graduate opportunities, however, the school would not help Julian because of his race. He was discouraged from pursuing a Ph.D. or employment in industry, and advised to find a teaching job in a “Negro college in the south.”
He received a scholarship to earn his master’s degree at Harvard University. However, because white students objected to a Black instructor, he was refused a teaching assistantship that would lead to a Ph.D.
Julian was awarded a fellowship to the University of Vienna, Austria, and earned his Ph.D. in 1931. In Europe, he was welcomed into the social, intellectual, and academic life he was denied in the U.S. He made life-long friends in the European community and helped Jewish friends escape the Holocaust.
Returning to the U.S., finding employment was difficult. Julian took a position teaching at Howard University, the historically Black university in Washington, D.C.
He then accepted a research fellowship back at DePauw, and his career as a research scientist began. However, when the fellowship ended, he was denied a teaching professorship there and had to find new employment. He was told by DePauw University “the time wasn’t right” for a Black professor.
DuPont offered a job to Julian’s research partner at DePauw, who was white, but declined to hire Julian, apologizing that the company was “unaware he was a Negro.” He turned down another position because Blacks were not allowed in the town past sundown.
Julian accepted a job at Glidden company in Chicago where he was able to continue his research. He left there in 1953 and formed his own company, which he sold in 1961 for $2.3 million.
The Julians were the first African Americans to move into Oak Park. Attempts were made to burn their house down, and a bomb was thrown at the house. The police reported they could not identify any suspects for the crimes. White neighbors formed a group to support them but even so, threats continued for many years.
Chemistry was the break-through “technology” of the early and mid-1900s. Dr. Julian achieved great things – by any standards, he was much more than a “good” chemist. But for him, the issue was how much more he might have accomplished if given the same opportunities available to white chemists. After his death, he received recognition from the schools he attended, but as one DePauw scholar noted, the university finally had to embrace Julian because he became a success, Julian did not become a success because the university embraced him.
The Percy L. Julian High School opened at 10330 S. Elizabeth Street in 1975. In 1993, he was featured on the Black Heritage stamp, a series initiated by the U.S. Postal Service in 1978.
February – Black History Month –#2
The second person who has a school named for her in a Ridge community to be profiled for Black History Month is Reverend Johnnie Colemon.
Johnnie Colemon (1920 – 2014) was a religious leader who inspired tens of thousands of people. She was a trailblazer who opened paths for other African American women to enter the ministry. And even though she had numerous honors and distinctions, she always insisted people just call her Johnnie.
Johnnie was born in Alabama and raised in Mississippi. In 1943, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Wylie College, a historically Black college located in Texas. She moved to Chicago and became a Chicago public school teacher.
In 1952, a health crisis took her to the Unity Church, which was founded in 1889 as a spiritual healing ministry. Today it is part of the “New Thought” movement.
Johnnie visited Unity headquarters near Kansas City, Missouri, and immediately felt at home with the teachings. She was accepted into the Unity School of Christianity, but even though the church taught that each person was a unique expression of God, sacred and worthy, Black students were not allowed to live in the school’s cottages or eat in the school restaurant, and had to sit in a segregated, roped off section in church.
Johnnie voiced her objections to these arrangements, and many of the whites considered her “arrogant.” But an unused cottage was made ready for her, although it was set apart from those of the white residents. She was the first Black person to live on campus.
She became an ordained Unity minister in 1956, the first African American woman to do so. Returning to Chicago, Reverend Colemon started her own church, at first meeting in a YMCA, but in a few years raising the money for her own building.
In 1968, Rev. Colemon was elected the first Black president of the Association of Unity Churches, causing some churches to quit. She then withdrew her church from the Unity organization, in part due to the systemic racism, and also because her philosophies were developing in other directions.
At that time, she renamed her church Christ Universal Temple (CUT). She also formed her own denomination, the Universal Foundation for Better Living, that now has thirty member churches internationally.
Rev. Colemon’s influence spread. Her sermons with positive, practical, understandable messages were well-received and her congregation kept growing. By 1985, CUT had grown into a megachurch and needed a building to accommodate its size.
Financial loans were almost impossible to come by for an African American woman, but Rev. Colemon persisted, and succeeded in obtaining funding through loans and donations. She had a new facility built at 119th Street and Ashland Avenue. This facility included a 3,500-seat auditorium, chapel, bookstore, banquet facility, and prayer center. She started an institute to train ministers and teachers. Her following grew to 20,000 members.
CUT has been the site for memorable events, including a 2005 Father’s Day address by then U. S. Senator Barack Obama. Rev. Colemon lived on the same block as the Obamas in Hyde Park/Kenwood. She ordained actress/singer/author Della Reese a minister in the 1980s; they became close friends.
In addition to her ministry, Rev. Colemon also held civic positions. She was a director of the Chicago Port Authority and a commissioner on the Chicago Transit Authority Oversight Committee. Her awards, including honorary doctorates, are too numerous to list here.
In 1999, she built a private elementary school as part of the CUT complex, which was named the Johnnie Colemon Academy. Because of the necessary tuition, the school met with limited success, and beginning in 2001, the Chicago Board of Education (CBOE) took over the building for a public school.
The Johnnie Colemon name was kept for the school, even though today’s CBOE rules, in keeping with the separation of church and state, prohibit naming a public school for a religious leader.
Picture: Rev. Johnnie Colemon outside her new Christ Unity Temple when it opened in 1985. Ebony magazine.
February – Black History Month –#3
Our third person of distinction with a school on the Ridge named for him to be profiled for Black History Month is Judge Wendell Green.
Wendell Elbert Green (1887-1959) was a lawyer and judge who had a distinguished career in Cook County, Illinois. He was considered a brilliant defense attorney, with a “forceful expression.” As a judge, he was known for his “clarity of judgment” and professional decorum.
Born in Kansas, Green was the son of an Episcopalian minister and a social worker. He yearned to become a lawyer, but others convinced him that the opportunities for Black men were limited in this field. He earned a degree in pharmacy from the University of Kansas in 1908. He worked as a pharmacist for a few years, but he still dreamt of practicing law.
In 1913, Green married Loraine Richardson, who would also become well-known in Chicago as the first Black woman to serve on the Chicago Board of Education. He took a civil service job as a postal clerk in order to transfer to Chicago in 1916 so Lorraine and he could attend the University of Chicago. Green worked his full-time postal job, went to school at night, and took a second job serving meals on campus to pay their tuition. He was told by the dean of the school he would never be able to complete the law program.
He graduated in 1920.
Establishing a private practice, he built his reputation as a defense attorney who rarely lost a case. The Chicago Defender newspaper carried many stories about Green’s appearances in court. One pivotal event happened in 1924.
Green was defending a Black man against the charge of intoxication. One white police officer said the man had been intoxicated at an event; nine Black witnesses said this was not the case. Green asked for the charges to be dropped but the judge replied that in his opinion the nine witnesses were lying.
The judge said, “It has been my experience in this court that colored people lie on the slightest provocation. They will lie when there is no need to lie. That is why I believe one white witness against your nine.”
Green was speechless for a moment, then he addressed the court, “his voice charged with anger, re-sounding through the courtroom.” He berated the judge for not being fair and impartial; by law, color should not be the test for credibility. He said that veracity and perjury belonged to no particular race, that the lying and perjured testimony of white witnesses had done great wrong, and that the judge had no right to decide the case based on the color of the witnesses.
Green then withdrew from the case and, taking up his hat and coat, left the courtroom.
The courtroom sat in an “electrified” silence. Then the judge, with “a flushed countenance,” dismissed the defendant. Attendees of both races rushed into the corridor to congratulate Green.
Green served as a public defender, then as a Civil Service Commissioner appointed by Mayor Edward Kelly. In 1942, he was elected as a judge to the Municipal Court of Chicago.
Governor Adlai Stevenson appointed Green to fill a vacancy on the Cook County Circuit Court in 1951, and he won re-election to this position the following year. Green was the first Black person to reach this judicial level. During his time on the Municipal and Circuit Courts, Green tried cases ranging from a landlord accused of overcharging a tenant $1.25 on his rent, to a sensational case of a police officer charged with the murder of two young men following an off-duty altercation in a bar.
From 1956 to 1958, Green was assigned by his fellow Circuit Court justices to head Juvenile Court. He was the first Black judge to oversee associate judges hearing cases for runaways, truancies, and delinquencies. He helped set up a facility focused on psychological services and training for the juveniles who came before the bench. His effort to help young people is considered by many to be Green’s greatest legacy left to the city and the people.
Because Blacks were not allowed to join white legal associations, they started their own groups. Green was active in the Cook County Bar Association (CCBA), the oldest association for Black lawyers and judges in the country. In 1925, he was one of the thirteen founders of the National Bar Association (originally the Negro Bar Association). When the Chicago Bar Association finally accepted Black members beginning in the 1940s, Green joined. The Chicago Bar Association always gave the highest ratings to Green for his performance as a judge.
Green served as president of the board of Provident Hospital, the first Black-owned and operated hospital in the country, established in Chicago in 1891 to provide medical services and training to Blacks denied access at other institutions. Green was also a board member of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
In 1973, the Chicago Board of Education voted unanimously to name the new school at 1150 W. 96th Street in Wendell E. Green’s honor.
February – Black History Month –#4
Our fourth person of distinction with a school on the Ridge named for him to be profiled for Black History Month is Marcus Garvey.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr. (1887-1940) was a political activist, journalist, and businessman born on the Caribbean island of Jamaica. He lived for over a decade in the United States. Although during his lifetime his viewpoints were considered controversial, with time his encouragement of pride and self-worth for people of African descent influenced Black leaders and movements. Some have called him the “Father of African Nationalism.”
Garvey’s entire history is too involved to cover in a Facebook post. There are many sources of information about him online that readers are encouraged to investigate.
From an early age on, Garvey’s experiences with social and economic hierarchies based on color led him to become an advocate for improving the status of people of African origin. His belief was that the initiative had to come from within the African community itself.
Garvey believed strongly in the equality and separation of the races, and in racial purity. Although he established a loyal following, his separatist views were at direct odds with most Black leaders of the day, including W. E. B. DuBois and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who were working for integration into American society.
After his death in London in 1940, his status as an advocate grew. In 1964, his remains were returned to Jamaica and buried with a ceremony worthy of a national hero.
African American and world leaders have acknowledged they were influenced by Garvey. Martin Luther King, Jr., visited his tomb in 1965 and said: "Marcus Garvey was the first man of color to lead and develop a mass movement. He was the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny, and make the Negro feel he was somebody."
In 1971, a new Chicago public school at 10309 S. Morgan Street in Washington Heights was being built and the residents of the community the school would serve, primarily African Americans, had been asked to submit potential names. They submitted several, including Marcus Garvey. All of the names were rejected. This happened twice, and then they decided to rally for Garvey’s name.
The School Board maintained that Garvey was not appropriate because he was a separatist and had been in jail, and this would not be a good example for children. The community leaders’ response was that they had the right to pick their own heroes. Garvey was the first real global activist for Black pride, solidarity, and power, and therefore a worthy model. Naming a school for a person did not mean agreement with all his beliefs.
The School Board finally voted narrowly in favor of the name. In 1974, it was announced that the new would be named for Marcus Garvey.
February – Black History Month –#5
Our fifth person of distinction with a school on the Ridge named for him to be profiled for Black History Month is Medgar Evers.
Medgar Wiley Evers (1925-1963) was a civil rights activist in Mississippi who worked to end segregation and expand opportunities for Blacks, including the enforcement of voting rights.
Evers was a World War II veteran who served in the segregated U.S. Army, rising to the rank of sergeant. His unit participated in the D-Day invasion of Europe.
As a field worker for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), his first assignment was to investigate the murder of Chicagoan Emmet Till, the 14-year old African American boy kidnapped and killed for flirting with a white woman in 1955 in Mississippi. Evers helped locate and protect witnesses.
Evers was assassinated outside his home by a white supremacist. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
It took thirty-one years for justice for his murder. All-white juries refused twice to convict his murderer in the 1960s. In 1991, a racially mixed jury found the un-repentant murderer guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.
The Medgar Evers School at 9811 S. Lowe Street opened in 1969.
The Ridge Historical Society
Black History Month Program: “Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Chicago and Northeastern Illinois”
Presenters: Larry McClellan, PH.D., and Tom Shepherd
Details: Friday, February 17, 2023, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., at RHS, 10621 S. Seeley Avenue, Chicago. Program followed by refreshments. Cost: $10 for RHS members and $15 for non-members.
This program will explore the movement of fugitive slaves known as “freedom seekers” and the network of support that developed as the Underground Railroad. In the decades before the the Civil War, several thousand freedom seekers travelled through northeastern Illinois. Their stories, and the range of encounters with white and Black abolitionists who provided them with assistance, will be shared in this program.
Professor Larry McClellan has written extensively on the Underground Railroad in Illinois and northwest Indiana. He was the principal author of applications that added sites in Crete, Lockport and on the Little Calumet River to the National Park Service registry of significant Underground Railroad sites in America. He is the President of the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project.
He is the author of three books: Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois, which will be released this summer; The Underground Railroad South of Chicago; and To the River: The Remarkable Journey of Caroline Quarlls, a Freedom Seeker on the Underground Railroad.
Tom Shepherd is the Secretary and Project Director for the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project. He is a well-known and respected preservation, environmental, and social activist in the south Chicagoland region, hailing from the Pullman community. He was President of the Southeast Environmental Task Force for fifteen years and currently works for the Hegewisch Business Association as special assistant to the Executive Director.
RHS will also premier its new permanent exhibit on the Underground Railroad on the Ridge at this event. There were several locations in Beverly associated with UGRR activity in the days leading up to the U.S. Civil War.
This will be a sold-out event, as the occupancy at RHS is very limited. Reservations will be honored for this event as first come, first served. Please purchase a ticket (guaranteed) or RSVP (no “maybes”) as soon as possible. Ticket sales and RSVPs will end on Feb. 14 at 6 p.m. or as soon as the event is sold out. Walk-ins will likely not be accommodated for this event.
For tickets: https://bit.ly/rhs-UGRR
Black History MonthThe Underground Railroad (UGRR) and the Ridge – Part 1
The “Underground Railroad” is the name given to the escape and flight strategies and systems that slaves used to resist bondage and gain freedom in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War.
Although the name “Underground Railroad” sounds like a subway system, it was actually a complex network of routes, hiding places, safe houses, and warning techniques that slaves used in their escape to freedom to the northern states, Canada, the western territories, and south to Mexico and the Caribbean islands that were slavery-free.
There was no official leader or organization for the UGRR, and very rarely anything in writing that could be confiscated. Escape routes, places of refuge, and warnings were all passed along by word of mouth.
Most of the traveling was done at night over land and waterways. As more actual trains and tracks came into being, escaped slaves did occasionally travel secretly by train also. For example, out east, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, founded in 1827, was used by slaves escaping to freedom in Pennsylvania.
Terminology from the railroads was used in the UGRR, not only for the name of the movement itself, but the abolitionists (those who opposed slavery and wanted to see it abolished) who helped the escaped slaves were called “conductors,” the escaped slaves were called “passengers,” and the safe houses were called “stations” or “depots.” The owners of the safe houses were “station masters” and other people who gave money and supplies were “stockholders.”
The escaped slaves were labeled as fugitives and runaways, but today, the preferred term is “freedom seekers,” considered in retrospect as a more accurate description.
Many freedom seekers made their own way to safety, but many were aided along their way by both white and Black abolitionists. It is estimated that tens of thousands of freedom seekers used the UGRR.
The abolitionists who helped freedom seekers did so at great peril to themselves. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, passed by the U.S. Congress, permitted for the seizure and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state and fled into another. Federal marshals who refused to enforce the law and individuals who helped slaves to escape were heavily penalized, with a fine of $1,000, about $40,000 in today’s value. This could cause property owners to lose their land.
UGRR stations were located in basements, barns, churches, and caves. Groups of freedom seekers established independent locations called “maroon communities” in wetlands and marshes that aided freedom seekers. “Free people of color” would disguise themselves as slaves to access plantations and guide the slaves in seeking freedom. There are documented case studies of Native Americans helping freedom seekers.
In 1998, the U.S. Congress passed the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law. This authorizes the U. S. National Park Service to identify, preserve, and educate about UGRR sites as part of a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program.
Among many historic names associated with the UGRR is Harriet Tubman (1822-1913). A freedom seeker herself, she made numerous trips back to the south through the UGRR network to rescue enslaved family members and friends. During the U.S. Civil War, she was an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. After the war, she became an ardent women’s suffragist.
Northern Illinois, the Chicago and Calumet areas, and the Blue Island Ridge all saw UGRR action in the decades leading up to the U.S. Civil War.
Professor Larry McClellan, a leading expert and author on the UGRR in Northern Illinois, and Tom Shepherd, a preservation and environmental activist, will present “Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Chicago and Northeastern Illinois” at RHS this Friday. McClellan and Shepherd are, respectively, the President and the Secretary/Project Director for the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project. The program is sold out.
In the next few posts, RHS will present information on UGRR sites in the south Chicago area, including informal sites connected to the Blue Island Ridge.
Black History MonthThe Underground Railroad (UGRR) and the Ridge – Part 2
The Ridge Historical Society hosted Dr. Larry McClellan and Tom Shepherd from the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project for a presentation on Friday evening, February 17th.
McClellan is the leading expert on the Underground Railroad (UGRR) in northeastern Illinois and has written three books related to the topic: To the River, the Remarkable Journey of Caroline Quarlls (available now), The Underground Railroad South of Chicago (reprint will be available in a few weeks), and Barefoot to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois (coming this summer).
Shepherd is well-known preservation, environmental, and social activist in the south Chicagoland region, hailing from the Pullman community. He was with the Southeast Environmental Task Force for fifteen years, where he served as President.
The UGRR started in response to enslaved people escaping the inhumane and immoral system allowed to exist in the southern states. As these people made their way to places of freedom like Canada, they started to receive assistance along their ways from others sympathetic to their cause. The informal network of safe houses and other means of assistance became known as the Underground Railroad. Information was passed along by word of mouth.
The preferred terminology for escaped slaves is “freedom seekers.” This takes the emphasis off of their standing as fugitives, escapees, runaways, and breakers of the law. Instead, emphasis is placed on their humanity and their intrinsic right to live in freedom, and their bravery to risk everything, their very lives, to achieve that goal.
A major route for freedom seekers traveling to Canada was through the Chicago area. Usually traveling at night along ancient trails first carved by animals, then used by Native Americans and later traders, it is estimated that as many as 4,500 freedom seekers came through the area. Many made the journey on their own, but many were helped by white and Black abolitionists, people who believed slavery should be abolished.
Although Illinois was a free state, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, passed by the U.S. Congress, mandated the capture and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state and fled into another. Individuals who helped slaves to escape were heavily penalized, with a fine of $1,000, about $35,000 in today’s value, and possible jail time. The actual number of abolitionists willing to break the law and help escaped slaves was small.
The next posts will cover the Chicago-area community of abolitionists who helped the freedom seekers and UGRR sites in the area, including those connected to the south side of Chicago and the Ridge.
Picture: Larry McClellan (left) and Tom Shepherd at RHS in front of an exhibit on the Ridge site known to have harbored freedom seekers. Photo by D. Nemeth.
Black History MonthThe Underground Railroad (UGRR) and the Ridge – Part 3
In the decades leading up to the U.S. Civil War, abolitionists in the Chicago area helped thousands of escaped slaves, today referred to as “freedom seekers,” along their journey via the “Underground Railroad” to safety and freedom in Canada.
There were notable Black abolitionists in Chicago, including Lewis Isbell (1819-1905), who was born a slave but set free, and came to Chicago in 1838, where he worked as a barber. He knew Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. By his own account, Isbell helped over 1,000 freedom seekers at great danger to himself, sharing stories like the time in 1857 when he was shot at four times by a slave owner from Missouri. He is buried on the Ridge in Mount Olivet Cemetery on 111th Street.
Another abolitionist couple was John Jones (1816-1879) and Mary Jane Richardson Jones (1819-1909), who harbored and fed freedom seekers at their home at 9th Street and S. Plymouth Court. Jones was the first Black man to be elected to office in Cook County as a commissioner. Mary was a pioneer in the suffrage movement.
Other abolitionists included Allan Pinkerton (1819 – 1884), founder of the famous detective agency. He was born in Scotland and came to Chicago at the age of 23. He was a cooper, and had a barrel-making shop near Chicago, which was a safe house along the Underground Railroad.
South of the city, the Wilcox farm, located at today’s 99th Street and Beverly Avenue, was located along the Vincennes Road, and although it was not an “official” stop on the UGRR, there are anecdotal stories of freedom seekers being allowed to sleep in the barn and being fed there as they made their way to Chicago and then to Canada. RHS has a new exhibit on the location.
Farther to the southeast was the Jan and Aagie Ton Farm along the Little Calumet River, a known stop on the Underground Railroad and the focus of the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project.