A history moment

Today we drove a short eighteen miles to Brooklyn, Illinois. It’s a small village in Saint Clair County. Coincidentally there is another Brooklyn in Schuyler County closer to Peoria. Here’s a tidbit about Brooklyn from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: “Brooklyn was established in the 1820s across the Mississippi River from St. Louis and the slave state of Missouri. It was started as a settlement of African Americans escaping slavery, and later became the first black town in America to be incorporated.” 

There is a campaign currently to save the community, to ensure its history is not erased. It is on the list of the most endangered historic places in Illinois. It is not surprising that another place on the list is in Cairo Illinois: “Cairo’s history of housing insecurity dates to the aftermath of the Civil War when newly freed Black southerners flocked to the southernmost town in Illinois, a former stop on the Underground Railroad and an important staging area for the Union army. Cairo’s Black residents formed a vibrant community, but they also faced years of segregation, housing discrimination and poor living conditions.” (From landmarks.org/) In Cairo, they’re trying to save public housing.

Both of these communities have been victims of uneven opportunity and redlining over the years in vicious ways that can only be thought of in boardrooms and dark offices of hate.