Lincoln museum exhibit offers perspectives on life in Illinois from residents past and present

SPRINGFIELD — What’s it like to live in Illinois?

A Black doctor recalls navigating a predominantly white neighborhood when she and her family moved to a new home in Springfield’s Washington Park area. A man reflects on growing up in apartments above a funeral home in downstate Anna. A woman talks of serving as an English translator for her Mexican parents as a 7-year-old growing up in Chicago.

Those recollections of everyday life are interspersed with the stories of more well-known Illinoisans in “Here I Have Lived: Home in Illinois,” an exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum that offers a mix of perspectives from residents past and present about how Illinois shaped their understanding of the world around them.

Christina Shutt, executive director for the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, said she, along with the museum’s historians, wanted to show how the state is more than a “flyover place,” but rather a location where people from all walks of life have settled and cultivated their own meaning for the term “home.”

“There’s so many people, like Abraham Lincoln himself, who weren’t born here but discovered Illinois and were ultimately able to create a family here, create a life for themselves,” said Shutt, who is from Kansas City, Missouri.

Among the well-known Illinoisans of the past whose lives in the state are recounted are comic legend Richard Pryor, who as a child was raised in a brothel in Peoria, and singer Tina Turner, who got her start in clubs in East St. Louis and across the Mississippi River in St. Louis.

Ronald Reagan, the only U.S. president born in Illinois, had a childhood marked by “continual displacement” as his father sought work and the family moved from Tampico to Chicago to Galesburg to Monmouth and back to Tampico, before settling in Dixon.

The exhibit also displays artifacts such as Reagan’s letter sweater and yearbook from his student days at Eureka College and a dress Turner wore during an appearance on “The Tonight Show.” A pot found during an archaeological dig is part of a display for the “Cahokia Commoner,” a nod to Indigenous tribes who hundreds of years ago built a robust trading network that included communities like Cahokia, in the present-day Collinsville area.

The exhibit tells the story of Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, who grew up in a wealthy, slaveholding family in Lexington, Kentucky, before living with her husband in Springfield.

“She and Abraham’s Springfield home became an expression of Mary’s ambition and domestic priorities — literally growing the longer she lived in it, including the addition of an entire second floor,” an excerpt of her story reads.

The story of another former first lady, Michelle Obama, began on Chicago’s South Side before she went on to Princeton University and Harvard Law School.

“Michelle Robinson Obama called the White House her home from 2009-2017 but grew up in an apartment of less than 800 square feet on Chicago’s South Shore,” her story reads. “Yet the smallness of the Robinson home in part reflected a choice made by Michelle’s parents, Fraser and Marian. Instead of investing their modest income in a house, they chose to invest in their children.”

Also showcased is the tumultuous home life of another South Sider, the Black writer Lorraine Hansberry. Her vignette talks about how angry white neighbors threw a brick through the window of her South Side home. A lawsuit over racially restrictive housing policies eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Hansberrys prevailed.

“This struggle traumatized Lorraine and she later poured that trauma into the script of ‘A Raisin in the Sun’,” Hansberry’s vignette reads. “Set entirely in a South Side apartment, it tells the story of a Chicago South Side family navigating the inherent racism of 20th-Century American life and the effect it has on the Black community.”

Lesser-known Illinoisans are also featured in the exhibit through recorded testimonials.

In her testimonial, Dr. Nicole Florence discusses life as a child living in a predominantly white part of Springfield, though she says she was largely unaware “that we were one of probably the few, if only kind of, Black families in that area at the time.”

Florence, who eventually grew close to her neighbors, remembers her mother sending her to a neighbor’s home to borrow a knife for cutting up a watermelon.

“I go over there, knock on the door. ‘Hi, I’m your new neighbor, Nicki. And I was wondering if we could borrow a knife to cut our watermelon?’ And I remember getting it and going home and telling my mom what I said and just her looking at me like, ‘is that what you said?’ ” Florence said with a chuckle. “I was like, ‘Yeah, because it’s true.’ ”

It was only later that she realized how her request fit into racial stereotypes.

“Maybe it’s only on the TV, or maybe they have friends, or maybe they have this vision that all we do is eat watermelon and fried chicken, you know those types of things. So I do remember that look on her face. And at that time, I really didn’t get it,” she said.

In an interview with the Tribune, Florence said her involvement in the exhibit stemmed from her late grandmother’s participation in an oral history project for the Lincoln Presidential Library on the fight against racism in Springfield’s schools.

In her reflections for the current exhibit, Florence said she wanted to stress the importance of understanding the backgrounds of different people.

“I feel like a lot of it has to do with us not listening to each other, and really not taking the time to understand another person’s story and another person’s truth and perspective,” Florence said.

In another testimonial, Gabriela Ramirez talks about how she was the translator for her Mexican parents, who struggled with English when she was growing up on Chicago’s Southwest Side.

“They didn’t dedicate their life, when they got there, to learning the language. It’s ‘We’ve got to hustle. We’ve got to make money.’ They had a family that was growing,” Ramirez said in an interview with the Tribune. “So, ultimately, they never really grasped the language.”

Ramirez said her parents still live in the home where she grew up, and she still helps them with English.

“I feel like I’m an advocate for them,” Ramirez said. “And to this day, that’s how it is. It’s like, ‘Oh, we have this paper in the mail. You know, it looks important. Can you read it for me?’”

Shutt hopes the public’s takeaway from the exhibit is not only different perspectives but also how every person showcased tried to figure out how to make their home in Illinois a place for belonging.

“We are made up of so many rich and interesting and colorful and beautiful (people), and just incredible stories of people and of places,” she said. “I hope that people want to explore more.”

The exhibit runs through Jan. 21 in the museum’s Illinois Gallery and is free with regular museum admission.

jgorner@chicagotribune.com