In September 1910, young women walked off the job at clothing maker Hart Schaffner & Marx to protest wage cuts and unfair working conditions. Their action sparked a months-long strike in the Near West Side of the city that grew to more than 40,000 garment workers, half of them women, including many recent immigrants from southern and More
On February 14, 1937, blues musician Samuel “Magic Sam” Maghett was born in Grenada, Mississippi. He was part of a younger generation of Chicago electric blues artists that defined the smooth West Side sound. A guitarist and vocalist, Magic Sam’s gutsy style was often rawer than what South Side bands played. Unlike most of his More
On February 12, 1855, Fannie Barrier was born in Brockport, New York. She was the first African American to graduate from Brockport State Normal School (now SUNY-College at Brockport) in 1870. She held several teaching positions, first in Missouri and later in Washington, DC, where she met her future husband, S. (Samuel) Laing Williams, a law student. More
When traveling by train was common practice, stopping at a Fred Harvey-owned establishment was almost a guarantee. In 1876, a young English immigrant named Fred Harvey opened a small restaurant at a train depot in Topeka, Kansas. It was the start of what became an empire of hotels, shops, and eating establishments extending from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast. By the 1880s, Harvey was operating seventeen restaurants along the Atchison, More
On January 22, 2021, baseball Hall of Famer Henry “Hank” Aaron died at the age of eighty-six. Aaron began his professional career with the Negro Leagues’ Indianapolis Clowns in 1952 as an eighteen-year-old. His Major League Baseball debut came with the Milwaukee Braves in 1954. He played nearly his entire career with that franchise. In Milwaukee’s 1957 World More