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After World War II, members of marginalized communities continued their longstanding struggle for equal rights under the law and for greater economic security and opportunity. Their activism raised questions of responsibilities. Are there limits on what the government and local communities owe to their members? In the struggle for civil and economic rights, who should take the lead, politicians or citizens? What happens when activists disagree among themselves about goals and tactics?
What responsibilities do universities have toward their students and toward the local neighborhoods in which they’re situated? What responsibilities do students have toward each other? When students protest a university policy or advocate for a political cause, where do their right to activism end and the rights of others begin? Explore these questions and more at the University Archives for the University of Illinois Chicago, which serves more than 30,000 students from diverse backgrounds and age groups.
Mayor Richard M. Daley (served 1989-2011) was charged with balancing many conflicting priorities while respecting the rights and meeting the needs of all Chicagoans. Was he successful?
In 1972, Congress referred the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the states for ratification. The ERA would have forbidden the state or federal government to discriminate on the basis of sex. Advocates for the ERA argued the amendment would secure women’s rights to full inclusion in American society. Some opponents, however, argued that the ERA would compel women to abrogate their gender-specific responsibilities and would hurt women by eliminating society’s responsibilities to them.
In the early1900s, nature lovers and conservationists in Illinois advocated for forest preserves. They achieved that goal in 1913 with the creation of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. From the beginning, the advocates, forest preserve officials, politicians, and citizens have debated over where to draw the line between preserving forested lands and satisfying the demand for recreational facilities and other non-preservation uses of the land.
The second amendment to the United States Constitution says that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Some have interpreted that provision to guarantee a right to won guns for self-defense. Others, however, have advocated restricting the right to own guns in order to lessen violent crime. Where does the right end and the government's responsibility to ensure public safety begin?
During the Vietnam War (1964-1973), thousands of men resisted the draft, claiming they had the right to refuse military service, either because they opposed that specific war or because they opposed war in general. Supporters of the draft, however, claimed that serving in the military was the responsibility of able-bodied men and that the federal government had the just authority to compel people to serve.
Who is responsible for ensuring the humane treatment of animals, the citizens or the state? One organization, the Illinois Humane Society, originally founded in 1869 as the Illinois Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, believed the state should help it in its efforts to enforce humane treatment of animals slaughtered at Chicago's Union Stockyards. It won legal recognition from the Illinois legislature as a state policing agency.
The government assumes the responsibility to protect its citizens through its police force and prosecutors. But do the police and prosecutors need to be policed to ensure they do not infringe on the rights of the accused? Citizens have reported incidents of police brutality and prosecutors pushing through wrongful convictions. Three organizations that protested alleged police or prosecutorial abuses were Citzens Alert, the Chicago Urban League, and the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Do communities have "rights"? What are the responsibilities, if any, that people owe to their communities? Chicago has a long history of community-based organizations that advocated for what their members saw as their communities' best interests.
Does society have a responsibility to help immigrants integrate into their new community? How ought immigrants balance their responsibility, if any, to adapt to the culture of their homeland with their right to retain their traditional cultures?
Whose responsibility is it to ensure a clean and healthy environment? Is it possible to have both economic development and a healthy city? Through the years in Chicago, government and citizens organizations have sought to educate, regulate, and lobby for the right to a pollution-free city.
Beginning in 1954, several U.S. Supreme Court decisions declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Chicago's public school system thus had a responsibility to ensure the desegregation of its own schools. One proposed solution was to bus students to schools outside their hoe neighborhood. But what about the rights of parents to keep their children in schools close to home and family?
The first amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees citizens the right "to petition the government for redress of grievances." How have citizens exercised that right? What responsibility do public officials have to entertain the grievances advanced by their constituents? When does helping a constituent become undue favoritism?
In the 1970s, as the women's movement grew in strength, debates over childbirth raged. Did mothers have a right to have their babies at home? Or did the government have a responsibility to require women to give birth in hospitals? Who was qualified to deliver babies? Lillian Nina Taglibue Runnerstrom was a pioneer in the field of midwifery. She challenged state law and the medical establishment to allow nurse-midwives to deliver babies in Illinois.
Whether health care is a right remains a debated topic. Organizations and individuals continue to advocate for better health care and interpret increasingly complex health care policies and plans for their communities. These collections demonstrate how these organizations handled their responsibility to address inequality in health services, control ballooning health costs, and to give health care providers and communities better access to impact and shape health policy.
An archival collection is any collection of documents, photographs, or other materials that have been donated or maintained for safekeeping. Donors can be persons or organizations. The materials in an archival collection are usually available for public access, and they are usually one-of-a-kind and cannot be found anywhere else. Archival collections are also called archival records or manuscript collections.
Archives house archival collections. You can often find them in libraries and museums, and they are usually called "special collections" or "archives." Some archival collections are housed in places other than libraries or museums. For example, some organizations keep their own archives on their premises. And some people keep their own collection of documents or other materials they own in their house or apartment.
Archives also house what are known as rare books. Most of these are books that are out of publication and might be difficult to find elsewhere. Some of them are very old and fragile and need special care. Others might not be rare yet, but reflect the topical strength of the library. At UIC Special Collections, we have thousands of rare books on Chicago History and other topics. Many of them were donated by generous collectors who wanted to make their vast personal libraries available to the public. To see a list of some of these rare book collections, click here.
Historians use archives to find and study primary sources. A primary source is a firsthand account from history, and examples of primary sources can include a letter someone wrote, a diary, a photograph, or a newspaper article written by a reporter who witnessed an event or interviewed those who did.
Think of archives as one way to travel back in time and find out what other people in years gone by were thinking and doing.
Historians use these sources in several ways. The most obvious is to find out more about the person or organization who donated the materials. But sometimes they use archival collections more creatively. For example, they might use a collection to learn about a famous politician the donor may have known, about the neighborhood he or she lived in, or about a famous event he or she witnessed.
But archives are not just for historians. They serve all sorts of purposes. Genealogists use them to trace their ancestry. Journalists use them to supplement their reporting. Students use them to write research papers. Homeowners use them to trace their house's history. In short, people use them to explore whatever may be of interest.
Archives at public universities, public libraries and museums, and even some private libraries, are generally open to anyone who wishes to use them. Even some archives not open to the general public make their collections available on a case-by-case basis. It never hurts to ask.
And remember: UIC Special Collections is open to the general public. So make an appointment and give us a visit!