This Week in Illinois History: Bears shu...

Brave. Courageous. Bold. All words used to describe legendary Western lawman Wyatt Earp. But novels, films and TV shows often overlook his reckless youth in Illinois, where he earned a reputation as a thief, swindler and pimp. 

A popular Chicago Mayor and champion to the city's overlooked immigrant communities is struck down by an assassin’s bullet, a bullet that was meant for someone else. 

Carl Sandburg, author, journalist, folk singer, and poet of the people, appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois. 

Bienvenue dans l'Illinois. Le lieu de naissance des gratte-ciel. Un État dans lequel vous pourrez croiser Barack Obama, Michael Jordan, Batman, la Route 66 et aussi une vache qui s’appelle Daisy. Voix et réalisation : Guillaume Hennette. Invitée : Laurence Nardon. Contact : pierr ... Show More

Though best remembered today for his brief tenure as the ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison’s most significant contribution to American history was his service as a general in the War of 1812. In William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Countr ... Show More

En 1850, el escocés Allan Pinkerton fundó en Chicago una agencia de detectives que se haría célebre por atrapar a salteadores de trenes, criminales políticos... y huelguistas. 

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what, in C19th America's Gilded Age, was one of the most significant protest movements since the Civil War with repercussions well into C20th. Farmers in the South and Midwest felt ignored by the urban and industrial elites who were thriving as the ... Show More

English-born artist Thomas Cole emigrated to the United States in 1818. Six years later he set up the Hudson River School, which became America's first art movement. Betsy Jacks, director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, tells Don how these artists captured the country' ... Show More

During the spring of 1921, eleven bodies were found in in rural Georgia. These men were victims of horrific murders, and also of a more widespread crime - peonage. Whilst enslavement had legally ended with the surrender at Appomattox and the 13th Amendment, black people across th ... Show More

Dr Martin Luther King Jr was one of the figureheads of the civil rights movement in America. On 28th August 1963, he made one of the greatest English language speeches of all time, I Have A Dream. A quarter of million people, who had gathered in the National Mall after the Great ... Show More

What was Harlem before its Renaissance, and how did it come to be? In Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem (Columbia University Press, 2021), historian Kevin McGruder, Associate Professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, explores the life of the remarkable Philip ... Show More

Greenwood was a flourishing and prosperous black neighbourhood of Tulsa, often referred to as Black Wall Street. But in May 1921, a white mob descended on the district, destroying homes, businesses and lives. In this Witness History, Josephine Casserly talks to historian John W. ... Show More