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Volume 110, No. 2 of the Journal opens with three studies that about events that dramatically shaped the state’s nearly two hundred year history. In "Pocahontas, Uleleh, and Hononegah: The Archetype of the American Indian Princess," Dan Blumlo explores the trope of the Indian Princess–who intervenes at a crucial moment to save a white man from certain death at the hands of savage Indians–evolved and became central to nineteenth and twentieth century conceptions of American nationalism.

In "Jim Crow Comes to Central Illinois: Racial Segregation in the Twentieth Century Bloomington-Normal," Mark Wyman and John W. Muirhead review the persistence of racial segregation in Illinois and the struggles of blacks and sympathetic whites to combat it.

In our final article, "The Decline of Decatur," longtime Illinois historian Roger Biles presents a timely account of what we today call globalization, and why its history matters so much to residents of countless Rustbelt cities like Decatur.