All are welcome to join the Museum and Bloomington Public Library on Wednesday, November 4 at 7:00 p.m. for the final History Reads Book Club for 2026, in person at Bloomington Public Library or online via Zoom. Please note this session was moved due to the election.
The final book to be discussed for 2026 will be Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois by Larry McClellan. Decades before the Civil War, Illinois’s status as a free state beckoned enslaved people, particularly those in Kentucky and Missouri, to cross porous river borders and travel toward new lives. While traditional histories of the Underground Railroad in Illinois start in 1839, and focus largely on the romanticized tales of white men, McClellan reframes the story, not only introducing readers to earlier freedom seekers, but also illustrating that those who bravely aided them were Black and white, men and women. McClellan features dozens of individuals who made dangerous journeys to reach freedom as well as residents in Chicago and across northeastern Illinois who made a deliberate choice to break the law to help.
Onward to Chicago charts the evolution of the northeastern Illinois freedom network and shows how, despite its small Black community, Chicago emerged as a point of refuge. The 1848 completion of the I & M Canal and later the Chicago to Detroit train system created more opportunities for Black men, women, and children to escape slavery. From eluding authorities to confronting kidnapping bands working out of St. Louis and southern Illinois, these stories of valor are inherently personal. Through deep research into local sources, McClellan presents the engrossing, entwined journeys of freedom seekers and the activists in Chicagoland who supported them.
History Reads meets quarterly in February, May, August, and November. Meetings are at 7pm and are typically* offered both in the Conference Room at the library and online via Zoom. People can join a book club at any time and do not have to attend previous book club meetings to participate.
Registration is ONLY REQUIRED for online participants and can be completed by clicking here, in person at the Adult Help Desk on the library's second floor, or by calling 309.590.6168.
Contact the Adult Help Desk at 309.590.6168 or reference@bloomingtonlibrary.org to check out or reserve a print copy of the book. Digital copies of this book (eBook or eAudiobook) may be available through the Libby or Hoopla apps.