Thursday, May 28, 2009

"The Chicago Defender" Artifacts Donated to Chicago Public Library

Link to May 27 New York Times article, "Historical Trove, Freed From Storage, Gets a Home".

Excerpts: On a sweltering day two summers ago, a University of Chicago scholar, Jacqueline Goldsby, began to dig through a maze of cardboard boxes crammed to the ceiling in a loft on Ogden Avenue. As she peeked inside the boxes, bulging with hidden remnants from The Chicago Defender, the famed black newspaper, she gasped.

The collection has some 4,000 photographs, including unpublished shots of the boxer Jack Johnson and the bandleader Duke Ellington, as well as letters from every United States president from Truman to Bill Clinton. One historic front page features the Chicago homecoming of the World War II hero Dorie Miller, a black cook at Pearl Harbor who picked up a machine gun after the Japanese attack and brought down enemy fighter planes.

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