Knox Uncovers 'Hidden History' of Black Community

Knox College is inviting the people of Galesburg to help tell and preserve a largely neglected part of the city's heritage — the history of the African-American community.

Knox has received a $10,700 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for an 18-month initiative, "Struggle and Progress: Documenting African American History in Galesburg, Illinois."

Knox has already uncovered an important resource — a handful of surviving issues of The Illinois Star, a black-owned and edited newspaper published for the African American community in Galesburg in the early and mid-20th century.

"The Illinois Star is one of the significant documents that Knox has discovered in our Archives, relating to the African American experience in Galesburg," said the project director, Laurie Sauer, Information Technologies Librarian at Knox's Seymour Library. "Now we're looking for help from the community to find and digitally preserve additional privately-held historical sources."

The grant will provide for a series of "digitization days" when people can bring documents to be scanned and cataloged by Seymour Library staff. 

"Documents can include just about anything printed — family photographs, news clippings, and records from African-American businesses and churches," Sauer said. "It could be something as simple as a matchbook cover from a black-owned business."

"Our goal is to document the local black community's daily life and participation in major events, from the Civil War through 20th century civil rights activities."

The new digital items will become part of the Library's existing publicly available on-line collection "Struggle and Progress: African Americans in Knox County."

The dates and locations for digitization days are still being finalized. More information is available from Sauer at lsauer@knox.edu or by calling 309-341-7788.

The grant also provides for an exhibition of materials gathered from the community, and public lectures and panel discussions bringing together scholars and community members.

The grant to Knox is one of just 38 awarded this year by the National Endowment for the Humanities' Common Heritage program, "The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square."

"We'd really like to find more issues of The Illinois Star," Sauer said. "The Knox Archives has six issues that span from the mid 1930s to the early 1940s. We don't know when it began, and we don't know its full publishing history. We only know that it was edited and published here by Eugene Fletcher, and that it was directed at the African American community."

The six issues of The Illinois Star came to Knox with the papers of J. Howell Atwood, who taught sociology at Knox from 1930 to 1962 and conducted studies of social groups in Galesburg, including the black community.

"The most striking thing about The Illinois Star is that it reveals the existence of a parallel community, with its own grocery stores, its own social gatherings, even its own elected representatives," said Carley Robison, Curator of Manuscripts and Archives in Seymour Library's Special Collections and Archives.

Robison was the first to discover that Knox apparently holds the only surviving copies of the newspaper, which span from 1935 to 1941.

One issue of The Illinois Star from 1940 announces the election and inauguration of Don Williams as "Mayor of Bronzeville." The purpose of the unofficial position, the paper explained in a letter to Galesburg's mayor and city council, was "to offer to Negroes the opportunity to present to duly elcted authorities (through the Mayor of Bronzeville) their civic greviences with the hope that... some consideration might be obtained... aimed directly at discrimination..."

"We think of The Illinois Star as an example of 'hidden history'," Sauer said. "Libraries collected the white-owned papers, which detail the history, primarily, of the white community. But the black-owned newspapers were not saved — and this is true for many other cities all over the country, and it's true for other minority-group news sources."

"The six issues that we have, and other documents in the Atwood collection, give hints of a vibrant black business community in Galesburg in the first part of the 20th century."

Along with Sauer and Robison, others involved in the project include Mary McAndrew, senior archives assistant; Jeffrey Douglas, librarian of the College; Fred L. Hord, professor of Africana Studies at Knox College; and Stephanie Grimes, learning specialist in Knox's Center for Teaching and Learning, and a member of Galesburg's Support Group for African American Affairs. 

Several Knox College students also will be employed to help with the project.