An NAACP pin given to a nurse during a 1966 Chicago riot, articles about Vice President Walter Mondale’s 1979 visit to Loami and photographs of a Lithuanian family were some of the items 40 to 50 people brought to the University of Illinois Springfield’s History Harvest on Saturday at Innovate Springfield.
The History Harvest was the UIS history department’s second. The first was held in 2016.
This year’s was a bicentennial event; organizers asked people to bring items connecting them or their family to Illinois history.
It drew more people and items than the first, according to UIS assistant professor of history Devin Hunter.
“It seems the quality of the items are a little more interesting this time,” Hunter said. “Last time, we had a theme about political campaigns, so we got a lot of campaign buttons and stickers which were interesting, but we didn’t get the breadth of materials that we’re getting now: family photo albums, things from the Lithuanian-American and African-American communities, people who have deep roots in the Springfield area. We’re getting a lot more of that this time around.”
As with the first History Harvest, UIS students asked owners about the items they brought and then scanned them to be archived online.
The history department will develop the online archive of items collected Saturday and continue work on the 2016 archive.
Hunter said.
UIS will hold a third History Harvest in 2020, he said, but its theme hasn’t been finalized.
This story appeared in The State Journal-Register on October 13, 2018.
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