SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A small archive in Evanston, Illinois, has been documenting the history of Black life in the suburbs north of Chicago for almost 30 years. Now President Trump has brought his fight against racial justice efforts to the archive's doorstep. NPR's Adrian Florido reports.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: To visit the Shorefront Legacy Center, you go down the steps to the basement of an old red brick church, Evanston's Lula B. Sherman Church. Laurice Bell runs the archive.
LAURICE BELL: It is filled from the floor to almost the ceiling with the history of Black people on the suburban north shore.
FLORIDO: The room is lined with shelves full of boxes, of papers, photos, news clippings, records of more than a century of Black life in Evanston and Chicago's other northern suburbs - a lot of it the story of racial discrimination.
BELL: We have the local NAACP minutes. We have letters that spoke to the local movie theater that wouldn't allow Black people to go watch a movie with white people.
FLORIDO: A few years ago, Shorefront's records were used to document Evanston's history of racial discrimination. The report led the city council to apologize to Black residents for that history and to offer more than an apology. Evanston became the first U.S. city to pay cash reparations - $25,000 for many of its Black residents. This summer, the Trump administration in its fight against racial justice programs sued to kill those payments. Laurice Bell says it feels like the federal government is denying the history overflowing from these shelves.
BELL: We live in a time where people want to convince people that so much of what has happened in our lives has not happened. It's heartbreaking. And it makes me want to wake up and do more work.
FLORIDO: Bell darts around the archive like she's running out of time to preserve her community's history - in all of its breadth - which is important to Shorefront. The archive's recording oral histories with Black elders, and it collects common items that speak to everyday life - yearbooks and obituary clippings and women's church hats.
(SOUNDBITE OF CARDBOARD RUSTLING)
FLORIDO: Bell opens an old hatbox that belonged to a beloved teacher named Blanche Smith.
BELL: This is a mink hat that Blanche wore to church. And it speaks to who she was. She was an educator. And, I mean, this is something she had in the 1960s.
FLORIDO: Volunteers help the archive's small staff catalog everything. Bell says it's about preserving Black people's life stories so no one can deny their history, and also about connecting young people to the past.
BELL: Let me show you these letters.
FLORIDO: She grabs a stack of browning sheets of paper.
BELL: We're going to go - let's start with this.
FLORIDO: Old love letters from a soldier just brought in by his family.
It's U.S. Army letterhead.
BELL: (Reading) August 24, 1946. My sweet darling, read your most emphatic letter today. Was really glad. Nothing in this - in the world...
FLORIDO: (Reading) Pleases me.
BELL: (Reading) ...More than to get a letter from you. I'm fine...
FLORIDO: His cursive is a little hard to read.
BELL: (Reading) Darling, you stay on my mind daily, and I'm sure you already know how much I love and adore you.
FLORIDO: Items like this are worth saving, she says, because documenting the history of the Black struggle is important, but so is preserving the texture of everyday Black life - a college diploma, a prized church hat, a love letter.
Adrian Florido, NPR News, Evanston, Illinois.
(SOUNDBITE OF QUINCY JONES' "ALONG CAME BETTY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
