Pitfalls and Promise: Memorializing McLean County's Past

In this talk, Museum Librarian Bill Kemp shares a lavishly illustrated program that includes historic and contemporary images. This program–at turns light-hearted and serious–will delve deep into this fraught issue with case studies of sites both well-known and forgotten. Kemp tells us all about the Kickapoo statue in LeRoy with connections to 19th century spiritualism; the repeatedly misguided attempts to memorialize Abraham Lincoln’s “Lost Speech;” and why there’s a marker in downtown Bloomington celebrating the site of the nation’s first brick street when that’s clearly not true! Be prepared for many more equally fascinating stories in this one-hour talk.