African Americans in Springfield is a new book by Mary Frances and Beverly Helm-Renfro of Springfield that brings to life African Americans who lived and worked in Springfield. Prominent African Americans who visited Springfield are also featured. Richly illustrated with nearly 150 black and white photos, the deeply researched book celebrates people who shaped the […]
Books
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These honored dead
May 30 is Memorial Day. For many decades it was better known as Decoration Day, a day to honor fallen Civil War soldiers – South and North – by “decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” That’s how the Grand Army of the Republic – a […]
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Baseball is back
After a winter of discontent during which Major League Baseball owners locked out the players and essentially shut down the off-season activity that baseball fans know as the “hot stove” league, major league baseball has returned with a hard-charging one month spring training and a season that opens April 7. Here in Springfield the off-season was […]
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Power and politics
My first in-person encounter with House Speaker Michael Madigan occurred in 1998, when I was a Copley News Service reporting intern covering a news conference of his at the Capitol. I don’t recall the topic, but I do remember how he spoke so calmly and softly, you had to lean toward the podium to make […]
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Thousand-Year Statehouse
David L. Finnigan, originally from Lincoln, now of Springfield, was a graduate student in architecture at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale in 2018 and was reading a book about English palaces. He says, “My first thought was that it is too bad we don’t have something like that here. Then, it dawned on me – we do. […]
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Dealing with dangerous ideas
The later 1960s are widely recognized as a period of intense upheaval in the United States. However, the unrest developed over time, as the two controversies discussed in Matthew C. Ehrlich’s Dangerous Ideas on Campus: Sex, Conspiracy, and Academic Freedom in the Age of JFK show (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021, $24.95). The two […]
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The Black Man’s President
The Black Man’s President Abraham Lincoln’s legacy on race, reconsidered, stands up to critics BOOK REVIEW | James Krohe Jr. We used to put on pedestals countrymen deserving of honor for civic generosity or courage on behalf of good causes. Of late, we have taken down more statues than we have put up as the […]
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Race in the world of sports
Tackling the issue of race in the world of sports is a difficult venture. On one side stand many political leaders and commentators, strong proponents of the “shut up and dribble” philosophy, who believe that athletes should simply silently perform in their respective sports. On the other side are those athletes at all levels who […]
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Insane treatment of women
Readers of Kate Moore’s new book will not be silenced. Anyone who delves into The Woman They Could Not Silence likely will come away aghast at the treatment of women, especially the book’s subject, Elizabeth Packard, at the state insane asylum in Jacksonville in the mid-1800s. In an October Zoom discussion sponsored by the Illinois […]
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Upheaval in Alton
The 1830s were a volatile decade in the United States. Andrew Jackson, president until 1837, encouraged more rights for working class white males at the expense of the elite. Many Easterners moved to the Midwest. Various innovations led to a booming economy, which then busted in the Panic of 1837. Antislavery sentiment began to grow […]
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The devil comes to Illinois
Jake Brosky, the crack detective for the St. Louis World, is back in Taylor Pensoneau’s third novel, Devil on the Prairie. Set primarily in Illinois, this is the third novel in Pensoneau’s trilogy. The fictional story is infused with historical events and actual places from small towns in Illinois to the streets of Paris, hotels […]
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How did these women get this way?
James Traveler is the pen name of U. William Huck. He was born in Bremerhaven, Germany, in 1949, and immigrated to the United States in 1955. He attended public schools in New York and college at Syracuse and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He received his doctorate in zoology […]
