“Family Archaeologist” explores a century of family letters, diaries, and artifacts, and how they illuminate history and our shared humanity. To get an overview of the blog, click: “Welcome to Family Archaeologist”
LATEST BLOG POSTS
An Era of Riots – 50 years ago
Two of the nation’s deadliest riots exploded 50 years ago–in July 1967, within two weeks of each other. July 11th 1967, The Newark Riots blew up on an early Sunday morning, after a cab driver was brutally beaten by Newark police. After four days of rioting, looting, and destruction, 26 were dead and hundreds injured. On July 23rd, 1967, Detroit erupted in a riot triggered by a police raid of an unlicensed after-hours bar, where 82 African Americans were celebrating the return of two local GIs from the Vietnam War.
Civil Rights leader murdered June 54 Years ago
"Thirty-seven-year-old Medgar Evers, Mississippi’s NAACP field secretary, was shot in the back with a high-powered rifle as he walked from his car to his home on June 12, 1963. He died an hour later. Again, mass black protests, followed by mass arrests were broadcast on TV around the world. I later learned that neighbors had heard Evers’s children screaming, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”[1] I thought of my daddy. What would I do without my daddy?
“…threatened with Negro Encroachment.”
“…district threatened with Negro encroachment” is a direct quote from the portion shown here of a 1940 map of Chicago area neighborhoods, illustrating the color grade given to various areas by the New Deal’s creation, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC).
Discovery in attic: long-hidden letters & diaries
Standing under naked beams in the attic’s dim light, we discovered a large box labelled in my mother’s neat printing: “Lil and Fred’s Letters and Diaries.” I ripped off the packing tape and folded back four cardboard flaps. A misty spray of dust and the odor of old paper wafted up....
When anger transforms to mental illness
Louise Koroschetz, Mom's mother: Grandma K, probably Easter 1951 Grandma K was delusional, depressed, and vicious just months before my parents were to be married. Was it mere coincidence? Or did the thought of losing her only child to marriage tip her already irascible, easy-to-anger personality into the world of psychosis? It was the summer of 1942. My mother and [...]
“Would you panic if a Negro moved next door?” Sat. Evening Post
In July 1962, a few months after I graduated from grade school and one year before the first black family moved onto our block, The Saturday Evening Post, a venerable magazine of the time, ran an article entitled, "Confessions of a Blockbuster." I highly recommend it to understand how insidious racist lending policies, exploited by real estate predators, undermined the housing dreams of both black and white families.
Race and change in 1960’s West Side Chicago
Well, the mystery of who bought the Young-Parker house has been solved. As more or less expected, the colored moved in today 6-22-63 From the diary of Lillian Gartz June 22, 1963 This diary entry Mom wrote opens my upcoming book, Redlined, Race and Change in 1960’s Chicago (publish date April 3, 2018). The event it recounts occurred at the height [...]
Birthing a book with She Writes Press
The good news is that my book will be published next April-2018. Hooray!! The bad news is - getting a book ready to be published is a grind! I'm lucky to have a wonderful publisher in She Writes Press. @BrookeWarner and her team are great at advising us Spring Authors on all the myriad of details that are required to [...]
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