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In this issue of Illinois Heritage we take a canoe trip with “Ernie” Hemingway and his chums down the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers, meet a celebrated children’s author and artist from Macomb, investigate Chicago’s “Babbling Burglar” and his gang of bent cops, plant trees in Kewanee with some enterprising high school students, and explore the evolution of the Illinois prairie into an agricultural incubator for farming innovations around the world.

This issue of Illinois Heritage is delighted to share Prairie State history by some of our favorite contributors—John Hallwas, James Cornelius, Kristan McKinsey, Mark Sorensen, Beth Young and Bill Kemp—as well as a few new ones, including Dean Karau, whose original piece on Richard Carroll is a fascinating portrait of an African American man’s journey up from slavery to post-Civil War Illinois.

We also meet Christina M. Shutt, the new executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM), explore several central Illinois cemeteries, and contemplate the possibilities of the nation’s 250th birthday, which John Dichtl, CEO and President of the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), shares with us in his “Guestwork” piece. Also included in this issue is the Illinois Humanities (IH) Executive Summary, “On Wisdom and Vision: humanities organizations in Illinois during COVID-19,” which reflects on this past pandemic year and how more than 177 Illinois humanities-focused organizations weathered the storm.

Enjoy Illinois. Read Illinois history. Share your Heritage. Better yet, buy a membership for a friend. Some gifts never stop giving.

The Fall/Winter 2020 issue of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society is printed. The Journal, the scholarly publication of the ISHS, is published quarterly and is a benefit of membership in the Illinois State Historical Society. Each issue includes articles, essays, book reviews, and documents about history, literature, art technology, law, and other subjects related to Illinois and the Midwest. Visit our Membership page for membership options and information. Click on the “Read More” button for a list of articles and reviews included in this issue.

To our readers:

The nominations are in and buzz is building. If you have not already done so, mark your calendars for Friday, April 24 and the “Best of Illinois History Awards Gala,” the night the Illinois State Historical Society celebrates the people, organizations, authors, museums, and historical societies that made history in the Prairie State in 2019. If you haven’t already received your invitation in the mail, call us. We’ll have one in the mail before you can name the state fossil.

This issue of Illinois Heritage contains articles on several fascinating people, places, and events in our state’s past that will stir your imagination, bring you closer to the essence of Illinois and, perhaps, stoke your own creative fires.

Thank you for reading Illinois Heritage. Your membership and gifts keep this organization vital and relevant. We cannot serve Illinois history without you.

Our Fall 2019 issue brings together culture and commerce, in three distinctive contexts. In “Florenz Ziegfield and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Chicago,” Susan E. Hirsch explores the rise of high culture–classical music, opera, theater, the fine arts–and its corresponding ethic of cosmopolitanism through the work of the German immigrant, Florenz Ziegfield. The talented classical pianist was one of Chicago’s busiest cultural entrepreneurs during the Gilded Age. 

The commercial opportunities presented by the variety of forms of popular entertainment in Chicago attracted figures less noble than the Ziegfields. In “When Chicago Went to the Dogs: Al Capone and Greyhound Racing in the Windy City, 1927-1933,” Steven A. Riess traces the fascinating history of Chicagoland dog racing and its deep connections to the city’s crime syndicates. 

Our final article traces the trajectory of racial attitudes and policies in an affluent Chicago suburb. In “Race, Town, and Gown: A White Christian College and a White Suburb Address Race,” Brian J. Miller and David B. Malone summarize the evolution of Wheaton College and the larger community of Wheaton, Illinois on matters of race. Before the Civil War both college and town were well-known for abolitionism and relatively enlightened racial views.