Mapping Black Social and Civic Life in Evanston

To interact with the map, click on the map or click here.

Shorefront’s collections emphasize the myriad ways in which Black Evanstonians have crafted community institutions from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. From churches and civic organizations to social service providers to social clubs, these institutions have played an integral part in the everyday life of Evanston’s African American community.

This map is intended as a companion to the finding aid for Shorefront’s Social and Civic Clubs collection. It shows the locations of selected institutions included in this collection (and some with their own separate collections) and provides some brief historical context for the locations in question. It is not, of course, an exhaustive map of social and civic life in Evanston; rather, it illustrates a set of locations that play particularly historically prominent roles in Shorefront’s archives.

What does the process of mapping these institutions tell us about Black social and civic life in Evanston?

Changing Institutions, Enduring Locations. Several locations on the map have served as home to multiple institutions over the years. A large group of mid-century social clubs called the Mount Moriah Masonic Lodge at 1229 Emerson Street home, for example (or at least held their events there). The Emerson Street YMCA likewise served as a meeting space for social organizations that did not have a building of their own, as well as a rooming location for Black Northwestern students who were prevented from living on campus. The Foster School building at 2010 Dewey Avenue, meanwhile, has hosted many nonprofit organizations since that school’s closure, including Family Focus and Shorefront itself. As organizational fortunes have ebbed and flowed, these locations have retained an ongoing prominent role in Black civic life in Evanston.

The Complicated Legacy of Integration. Many of the locations on this map served as homes to institutions created by Black Evanstonians in response to systemic segregation. Foster School, for instance, served a population confined by redlining to the city’s Fifth Ward, and the Emerson Street YMCA, Mount Moriah Masonic Lodge, and Twentieth Century Golf Club were each chapters of national institutions segregated along racial lines. The desegregation of the 1960s, in the areas of housing and education and also by many private membership organizations, resulted in seismic changes for these institutions. While desegregation opened up new opportunities for Black Evanstonians, it also resulted in the loss of many institutions central to the community, such as Foster School and the Emerson Y, despite sustained protest from community members.

Legacies Long and Short. The oldest institutions on this map—Ebenezer A.M.E. Church and Second Baptist Church—each date back to 1882 and are still in operation today. Many others, from the Evanston NAACP to the Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre to the F.A.A.M. Youth Basketball League, have likewise served as community pillars for many decades. Other organizations served the community for a shorter time. The International Black Arts Museum, for instance, was started in the early 1970s and moved to Los Angeles, CA before the decade was through; Citizens for 65, a single-issue grassroots political organization formed during a contentious school board election, ceased operations after it. While these organizations played a shorter chronological role in the community, they are still worthy of remembrance and important in understanding the cultural landscape of Evanston.

What’s Unmapped? Many of the organizations in Shorefront’s Social and Civic Clubs collection are not on this map—a majority, in fact. Some left behind a considerable record but did not have a permanent location, instead meeting in members’ homes or other public spaces, or did not publicize their location on the materials that made it to Shorefront’s archives. While mapping is a valuable way to analyze the social and cultural fabric of a place, it is not the only one—and we should be mindful of what it obscures as well as what it reveals. If you know information about the location of a social or civic organization not included here, please reach out and let us know!

This exhibit was curated by John Branch, Shorefront Intern. John is a PhD candidate at Northwestern University where he studies 20th century American history. Contact jbranch [at] u.northwestern.edu with questions or additions!