From Jean Baptiste Point DuSable to Oprah Winfrey, black entrepreneurship has helped define Chicago. Robert E. Weems Jr. and Jason P. Chambers curate a collection of essays that place the city as the center of the black business world in the United States. Ranging from titans like Anthony Overton and Jesse Binga to McDonald’s operators to black organized crime, the scholars shed light on the long-overlooked history of African American work and entrepreneurship since the Great Migration. To...

In Moving Up, Moving Out**, Will Cooley discusses the damage racism and discrimination have exacted on black Chicagoans in the twentieth century, while accentuating the resilience of upwardly-mobile African Americans.** Cooley examines how class differences created fissures in the black community and produced quandaries for black Chicagoans interested in racial welfare. While black Chicagoans engaged in collective struggles, they also used individ...

"Traces the footsteps of poisoner Arthur Waite from his marriage to Clara Peck . . . in 1915 to his death by electrocution at Sing Sing Prison in 1917" (MLive.com).With his boyish good looks, Arthur Warren Waite charmed into marriage the daughter of wealthy Grand Rapids business tycoon John E. Peck in 1916. He then wasted no time executing what he believed to be a flawless scheme to hijack his wife's inheritance. The plot went awry when a mysterious telegram set of...

Eloise, which started out as a poorhouse, later became known as Wayne County General Hospital. Today, all that remains are five buildings and a smokestack. From only 35 residents on 280 acres in 1839, the complex grew dramatically after the Civil War until the total land involved was 902 acres and the total number of patients was about 10,000. Only one of them, the Kay Beard Building, is currently used.In Eloise: Poorhouse, Farm, Asylum, and Hospital, 1839-1984, this institution and medica...

Engineers, inventors, and dreamers in the state of Michigan had been searching for the secret of heavier-than-air flight well before the Wright brothers� successful flights in 1903. In 1911, the first aircraft manufacturer opened for business in Michigan. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Detroit area was known as the �Aviation Capital of America.� The All-American Aircraft Show, held annually in Detroit from 1928 to 1933, was the major showcase for introducing new airplanes to the aviation ...

Ogden Dunes, incorporated in 1925, is the largest and most residential of the three Porter County lake-front communities established in the 1920s. Although it began as a highly restricted resort community with the largest man-made ski jump in North America, it became a middle-class residential community after 1945. Because of its proximity to Gary and Chicago, Ogden Dunes was also a battleground between the forces that wished to conserve the dunes and those that pushed for industrializing ...

" A historically accurate picture of the characters involved in the complicated frontier-era poisoning investigation" (MLive.com).The spring of 1903 proved disastrous for the Murphy family. On April 22, the infant Ruth Murphy died in her crib. Within an hour, her mother, Gertrude, experienced a violent spasm before she, too, died. Ten days later, John Murphy followed his wife and child to the grave after suffering from a crippling convulsion. While...

Downtown Madison, the largest contiguous National Historic Landmark in the United States, provides the perfect haunts for poltergeists and playful spirits.Beautifully preserved mid-nineteenth-century buildings grace the streets of Madison, Indiana, providing a concrete connection to the past. But a more ethereal, ghostly link flits about these streets when night descends. Restive spirits linger here, like the extra that may join you mid-slumber at...

"Gathers the oral traditions of the loggers who settled Michigan's Upper Peninsula . . . Stott preserves the tall tales for generations to come." — Grandpa Shorter's, "Seven Michigan Authors to Put in Your Beach Bag This Summer"The loggers who settled Michigan's Upper Peninsula whiled away winter evenings with tales of extreme weather, strange geography, legendary beasts and improbable feats. One mythic figure strode confidently from one story to the next,...

Winner, ISHS Annual Award for a Scholarly Publication, 2017Many people are unaware that from 1945 to 1975, downstate lawmakers dominated the Illinois political arena. In The Dealmakers of Downstate Illinois, Robert E. Hartley details the lives and contributions of three influential southern Illinois politicians, Paul Powell, Clyde Choate, and John Stelle. He describes how these “dealmakers” were able to work with Democrats and Republicans throughout the state to b...

In 1831, the settlement of Princeton, Illinois, began as families from New England, and later the Mid-Atlantic states, traveled West seeking good land. These early settlers built the Hampshire Colony Congregational Church. Rev. Owen Lovejoy, one of its earliest pastors, became a well-known abolitionist and used his Princeton home to harbor runaway slaves. Before the Civil War, Princeton citizens convinced Burlington Railroad to lay rails within a mile of their town. The community expanded ...

The Mormon presence in nineteenth-century Missouri was uneasy at best and at times flared into violence fed by misunderstanding and suspicion. By the end of 1838, blood was shed, and Governor Lilburn Boggs ordered that Mormons were to be “exterminated or driven from the state.”The Missouri persecutions greatly shaped Mormon faith and culture; this book reexamines Mormon-Missourian history within the sociocultural context of its time. The contributors to this volume unearth the chal...