Black Life in West Central Illinois / Western Springs, Illinois / Japanese Americans in Chicago / Palatine, Illinois / Chicago's Southeast Side Revisited

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2003 by Valk, Anne M

The contrast between the Palatine publication and Sellers's book, too, points out a tension pervasive in the Arcadia series, a conflict between emphasizing a community's uniqueness versus its commonality to other places. According to Arcadia's specifications, each book contains an identical number of pages and images. In addition, all the publications look the same, with a sepia-toned image on the cover and black and white photographs inside. The parallel structure of the books stresses similarity, implying that each community's past fits neatly into the same format and can be told effectively in the same manner. The message of similarity conveyed by the books' format contrasts with the goal of the series' and the individual publications to document, and thereby highlight or even celebrate the specific history of a town, region, or cultural group.

Finally, the content of the books inevitably reflects the kinds of visual evidence that can be found, researched, and duplicated. The images serve as powerful historical artifacts, capturing the reader's attention by offering views of people, places, and events that are either comfortingly familiar or arrestingly unexpected. Necessarily, these images must have been considered important enough to keep and preserve, winding up in archives and libraries or maintained in private collections.

Moving back a step, the publications encourage reflection about what images people created in the first place. Most of the books illustrate streetscapes, homes, workplaces, churches, and schools; prominent people (and some "unidentified" individuals); and community get-togethers, including celebrations, and sporting and civic events. Despite the wealth of visual evidence, other significant aspects of community history are typically omitted. Only Murata's and Green's books incorporate photographic images of domestic scenes, such as family holiday celebrations and domestic interiors; otherwise the books generally overlook life at home and the daily activities within schools, churches, and workplaces. In contrast, the books document extraordinary events, such as parades, graduations, or, more infrequently, fires and natural disasters.

Moreover, few of the books depict the poverty, conflict, or community tension that inevitably occurred in each community. Sellers's book stands out as an exception: a final chapter on "Problems and Protests" includes images of pickets by environmental and labor activists, a CIO strike, a monument commemorating victims killed in a labor dispute, and a newspaper covering a violent protest by those opposing racial integration. These images support Sellers's argument that racial change and the clash between economic development and environmental integrity brought problems to the southeast side of Chicago typical of American life in the twentieth century. The impact of racism on African-American residents of West Central Illinois pervades Armfield's book, yet this theme is difficult to depict pictorially. Armfield rises to the challenge, creatively showing the marginalized position of African-American residents of West Central Illinois through group photographs (such as school pictures) that contain few black individuals (although even here a more analytical approach might consider the seeming pattern of positioning African Americans on the periphery of the group photographs on pages 73-77). His inclusion of images of white residents unabashedly made up in black face and of legal documents that demonstrate black inequality provides additional evidence. The other publications largely avoid such topics, however, in a manner that suggests a harmonious and prosperous past and hints at the limitations of this pictorial format as a means of relaying community history.