Fall 2016 Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad exhibit. January 28 - March 16, 2017. Photo: Decision to Leave INSIDE • Through Darkness to Light • Families: Outlaw, Gandy Spencer, Green • New Dawes Publications • Assessories Exhibit Hello Evanston History Center Members Letter Well, it was an amazing Year of Dawes. We had wonderful special programming, terrific from the speakers, excellent exhibits, a Dawes themed house walk, held an amazing gala, learned a lot Executive and had A LOT of fun! Many thanks to all of you who made it an amazing year. In addition to all Director that, we are especially excited about our 2 new publications, published in honor of Year of Dawes. Charles Gates Dawes: A Life is the first comprehensive biography of an American in whose fascinating story contemporary readers can follow the struggles and triumphs of early twentieth-century America. Dawes is most known today as Vice President of the United States under Calvin Coolidge, but he also distinguished himself and his adopted hometown of Evanston, Illinois, on the world stage with the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize. Annette B. Dunlap recounts the story of this original American who enlightened and enlivened his world. This book was published by Northwestern University Press and made possible through a generous grant from Tawani Foundation. Charles Gates Dawes: A Life can be purchased at Time the Dawes House bookstore, Paperback: $24.95, Hardbound: $40.00. Lines A Journal of the Great War: The Critical Edition by Charles Gates Dawes First published in 1921, A Journal of the Great War provides a fascinating glimpse into the Editor: Grace Lehner Design: Robinson Design challenges faced by the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during the United States’ 18-month Time Lines is published twice a year involvement in World War I. Dawes’ journal, written while he was stationed in France from August as a benefit of membership in the 1917 to July 1919, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the power struggles and political maneuvering Evanston History Center and as a service to the citizens of Evanston. that took place among American and European political and military leaders as they sought to fight Evanston History Center the war as an allied force. Part document of life in wartime France, part war diary, and part 225 Greenwood Street meditation on the means of exercising power, Dawes’ journal is a unique contribution to the literature Evanston, Illinois 60201 847.475.3410 of World War I. The new edition, edited by Jenny Thompson, includes two new essays, photographs, www.evanstonhistorycenter.org and more. It is now available in our bookstore and on Lulu.com. The price is $25 plus shipping. Tours of the Charles Year of Dawes may be over but that doesn’t mean we are going to slow down, the Fall Gates Dawes House Thursday – Sunday 1-4 pm is jam packed with a terrific lineup of Under the Buffalo lectures. You can read about our Admission Fee $10, Members Free. lectures and make reservations on our website evanstonhistorycenter.org/all-events. Tours at 1, 2, and 3 pm Tours are free the first Thursday of Be sure to save the date for our annual Holiday Open House on Sunday, December 4th. each month. I hope you enjoy this edition of Time Lines. As always thank you so very much for your Frank B. Foster Research Room continued support, we couldn’t do what we do without you. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Best, Thursdays and Saturdays 1-4 pm Admission Fee $5, Members Eden Juron Pearlman and Students Free. Executive Director Closed major holidays Board of Trustees 2015 – 2016 OFFICERS TRUSTEES STAFF Eston Gross Dale Bradley Eden Juron Pearlman President Paul Burton Executive Director Hon. Judith Koehler David Downen Jenny Thompson Vice President, Governance Mike Ford Director of Education Fred Gleave Clifton (Cliff) Barber Jill Kirk David Grumman Director of Development Vice President, Communication and Hon. Julie Hamos Development Lori Osborne Roland (Jack) Hinz Director of Archives and Outreach Robert (Bob) Johnson Richard Hubbard Erin F.H. Hughes Vice President, Personnel and John Mancini Administration Website and Social Media Manager Our Mission Lynn Miller Sally Lynch Wynn Shawver Janet C. Messmer Vice President, Programs and Costume Curator The mission of the Evanston Collections EMERITUS Kris Hartzell Director of Facilities, Visitor Services History Center is to collect, Bill Brown J. Robert Bar and Collections Vice President, Facilities Doug Honnold preserve and interpret the rich Grace Lehner history of the City of Evanston Janet Neiman Reed Matt Struve Museum Specialist Secretary and all its people through Steve Brunger exhibits, educational programs Building Manager and research facilities. Susan Dunne and Matthew Marchione Thomas W. Griffin Sunday Docents T H R E The Evanston History Center is proud E to be the first to host a new national traveling exhibit, Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad . Photographer EHC is happy to partner with the Jeanine Michna-Bales Evanston Art Center in exhibiting these has spent more than a photographs and offering opportunities to decade meticulously examine the art of photography as a way researching “fugitive” to explore our history. We will be bringing slaves and the ways news of programs and classes created to they escaped to enrich the exhibit’s experience. freedom. While the We are also proud to join with unnumbered routes of Shorefront Legacy Center in exploring the the Underground history of the black community in Evanston Railroad encompassed and the surrounding communities by countless square presenting Shorefront’s exhibit, Legacies. miles, the path Legacies is a growing collection of subject Michna-Bales specific graphic panels on contemporary documented covers and historic people and organizations Through roughly 2,000 miles and is based off of throughout Evanston and the North Shore actual sites, cities, and places that and will help to illuminate the story of our Darkness to freedom-seeker passed through during community in the search for freedom. Light their journey. In addition, look for programming from Whether they were slaves trying to the Evanston History Center, possibly Photographs Along escape or free blacks and whites trying to including a book event shared with the the Underground help, both sides took huge risks for the Evanston Public Library, as we join as a Railroad cause of freedom. From Louisiana to the community to learn more about the Canadian border these photographs help Underground Railroad. January 28 – us understand what the long road to The movement of the desperate March 16, 2017 freedom may have looked like as seen journeys to freedom that came to be through the eyes of one who made this known as the Underground Railroad has Kris Hartzell, Director of Facilities, Visitor Services and Collections, epic journey. been called the first civil rights movement Evanston History Center This exhibit encourages visitors to learn in America. It united people from different more, ask questions, and open a dialogue races, genders, social levels, religions, Image: One of the Legacies panel on the subject, and in the end, provide a and regions in the common cause of the from Shorefront’s traveling exhibit. better understanding of our origins. struggle for freedom from slavery. Please While we will never know if Evanston join us during Black History Month, and was a stop on the railroad, we do know beyond, to reexamine the history of the many founders and early families were Underground Railroad and Evanston’s active in the cause of freedom, and that role in the quest for freedom. Evanston blacks were among the founding citizenry. R U O F Families: Outlaw, Gandy, Spencer, Green Constance Murray Taylor “Chief Genealogy Information Officer” for the Outlaw/Gandy/Spencer/Green Family Raised almost from birth in Evanston, my deep southern heritage was virtually unknown to me for over 50 years. As far as I knew, “Home. .Where Our Story Began” was the solitary brown bungalow on Garnett Place proudly owned by family members for nearly 90 years. Researching and decluttering our Garnett property in 2004 quite unexpectedly revealed that my maternal grandparents, John and Osceola Spencer, had followed her parents, Johnson and Virginia (Gandy) Outlaw, and siblings from Mississippi to Evanston’s idyllic shorefront community seeking a better quality of life. Rambling through papers, photos and obituaries, searching archival library records including Ancestry.com, F F I I V V E traveling south to “walk where they walked” • Family residences and property E coupled with online networking soon ownership in Evanston created an insatiable quest for genealogy • How employment, housing and knowledge! educational disparity obstacles were Despite being the descendants of overcome former slaves born in the 1850’s, Osceola • Osceola’s role as a civil rights, and twelve siblings lived a life of relative pullman porter and political activist, prosperity in the south. Early 1900 educator, PTA President and courthouse records reveal that her parents Emerson Street YMCA supporter owned multiple properties, a delivery • How the Spencers managed to service business, and even a piano. The support six children in college at the girls graduated from the private Mary same time! Holmes Seminary; her brothers and During Osceola’s 1970 conversations, husband attended college, too. When the Northwestern grad student and lead Spencers moved north in 1918, they left interviewer Wayne Watson accurately professional careers selling insurance and predicted how listening to her voice again teaching school behind. some 50 years later would create After twelve years of research travels, treasured moments for her grandkids. As we were recently amazed to discover that forecasted, having access to these many answers we sought were unknowingly recordings has proven priceless! With preserved practically in our own backyard appreciation we thank all involved in the at the Evanston History Center! Now production and preservation of the Osceola Outlaw accessible and safely archived, the Evanston History Center audio collection.