We think these perspectives are interesting for those who read our website and we think they are particularly useful to high school teachers working with our lesson plans and their own “social studies” curriculum. Please use the pull-down menu or click on the blue highlighted topic below.
JOANN CONDELLONE (Union Miners Cemetery Board of Trustees and Mother Jones Museum, Mt. Olive): speaking about Miners Day, Mother Jones and the Union Miners Cemetery
LACY MCDONALD (Hayner Library, Alton): speaking about concept of collecting history/history being collected in place
HELAINE SILVEMAN (Co-Director, Mythic Mississippi Project): speaking about cultural identities in Illinois and local town development
MONUMENTS AND CONTROVERSY: a consideration of the public monuments that are now considered problematical for their overt or insinuated aspect of bias against minority groups
INTERNATIONAL COALITION OF SITES OF CONSCIENCE: a discussion of several places encompassed by the project that are worthy of being put forward for inscription
QUINCY: Historically, Quincy is one of the most important cities in Illinois. Indeed, recently its marketing office has correctly branded Quincy as “city of refuge” based on its Mormon and Underground Railroad and abolitionist histories. Quincy was the site of the sixth Lincoln-Douglas debate. Please see our powerpoint: CLICK HERE.
MORMONTOWN: This is an archaeological project waiting to happen, as well as the pursuit of several other ephemeral Mormon settlements in west central Illinois for which there is family memory.
WEST FRANKFORT: Already in 1941 the Federal Works Agency described West Frankfort as one of “seven stranded coal towns” and yet the town was still booming years later, even overcoming the tragic Orient No. 2 mine disaster of 1951, indeed until the demise of the coal industry, largely due to EPA regulations.
GERMAN HERITAGE TOWNS: Illinois has a significant German descendant population. We originally had thought of a creating a German heritage trail through several of these places in central-southern Illinois. The towns are often quite lovely and on a sound economic footing and some with their own tourism sector. We eliminated them from the project because of our primary concern with community development. But here we present three that are particularly interesting, different from each other, and well worth visiting: Belleville, Maeystown, Mascoutah. We also include a historical point of inflection: the lynching of Robert Paul Praeger in Collinsville in the context of strong anti-German sentiment around World War I.
CUBA, IL: The coal history of this town – particularly its strip mining – is very significant. We also call attention to Cuba’s Amish population.
THE AFRICAN AMERICAN MIDWEST: We call attention to this interesting project:
