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Articles about Racism

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‘Black Devils’ earned fame in WW I

 By Bill Kemp. Published on April 30, 2017.
During World War I, several dozen Bloomington-Normal residents fought in an African-American regiment that earned a reputation for brav...
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‘Welby and Pearl,’ minstrel act with local roots

 By Bill Kemp. Published on October 28, 2018.
For the better part of four decades, friends Jacob Welby Bucher and Charles Carroll Fell of Bloomington performed as the popular vaudev...
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Bloomington schools integrated decade after Civil War

 By Bill Kemp. Published on February 10, 2019.
Although racially segregated schools are associated with the “Jim Crow” Deep South and the Civil Rights Movement, northern communities ...
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Central Illinois final resting place for once-enslaved persons

 By Bill Kemp. Published on March 17, 2019.
The stain of slavery pervades the American experience, dating well before the nation’s founding to the present. Yet the all-encompassin...
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West side Subway Club earned notoriety in late ’50s

 By Bill Kemp. Published on May 5, 2019.
Try as he might, Bloomington Mayor Robert McGraw could not close the Subway Club, an afterhours “set-up” joint on the city’s west side ...
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Washington Home couple worked ‘through the heart’

 By Bill Kemp. Published on September 22, 2019.
“Cooks and counselors, painters and referees, they are also mom and pop to up to twenty children,” it was said of Louise and Napoleon C...