From: The Register Mail (Galesburg, IL)
A faith-filled party of committed Christians came together on the western Illinois prairie to establish a preacher’s college and Christian community 175 years ago. Yesterday, 75 people of the Knox College and Galesburg communities joined in worship to celebrate the labor and commitment of those pioneers.
Students, faculty and community members came together at Knox’s Kresge Hall to offer a Christian service in recognition of the historical founding of the college and the city of Galesburg. Sunday, ministers from those two churches and members of a community choir celebrated their entwined history.
A choir made up from of 20 of Galeburg’s most talented vocalists and led by Pier Debes, Knox Class of 2010 and music director at First Presbyterian, was accompanied by pianist Doug Gibb… Read more…
From: Peoria Journal Star (Peoria, IL)
“There were no bridges back then [when Abraham Lincoln worked as a lawyer in Illinois] at all,” says landscape photographer Robert Shaw, whose book, “Abraham Lincoln Traveled This Way,” was released just before Feb. 12, the 203rd anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.
Subtitled “The America Lincoln Knew,” the book is a photographic reverie of the country’s landscape and architecture as Lincoln would have experienced it, including swimming a horse through the Mackinaw River on his way to Tremont, one of Lincoln’s stops on his rounds as a young attorney in central Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit.
There are the courthouses where Lincoln argued, the inns and houses where he stayed, all well-known aspects of Lincoln lore. But attempting to capture images of 1840s and 1850s Illinois evokes what is gone as well as what remains. Shaw photographed Old Main on Galesburg’s Knox College campus in the fall, as Lincoln would have seen it when he debated Stephen Douglas. It is the only remaining structure of the seven Lincoln-Douglas debate sites… Read more…
From: Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL)
Knox College turned 175 years old Wednesday and planned to celebrate with, among other things, a showing of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”…The movie showing had a special meaning. The science-fiction classic was written by Knox alum Jack Finney. He graduated from Knox in 1934.
The school planned pub nights for graduates in cities such as Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, New York and London. It also planned to serve up a birthday cake in the university union… Activities continue through the month at Knox. Read more…
Knox’s 175th is also covered in other media, including the Galesburg Register-Mail, Quincy Herald-Whig, and the political blog Democratic Underground.
From: Elgin Courier News (Elgin, IL)
Ushma Shah invoked universal design in her debut before the School District U46 Board of Education at Monday’s regular school board meeting. That’s the architectural idea that designing a building to be accessible for people with disabilities — “with the widest and most inclusive vision” — really makes it better for everyone who uses it, Shah said. It’s also the idea behind Shah’s controversial position, created this summer, as the Elgin school district’s chief of equity and social justice…
She earned her bachelor’s degree in educational studies and anthropology from Knox College in Galesburg; her master’s degree in education, curriculum and instruction from the University of Illinois at Chicago; and her doctorate from Harvard University.
She hadn’t planned to go into education, Shah said. But Knox’s program was focused on how “schools create the vision for the society we want,” she said. “I became really intrigued by the idea that our schools are the places to build the society we want to create. That’s how the program was constructed — around equity and social justice in teaching,” she said… Read more…
From: Jacksonville Journal Courier (Jacksonville, IL)
A Jacksonville friend once helped save Abraham Lincoln’s life and, according to one historian, also played a role in his courtship with Mary Todd. John J. Hardin, a cousin of Mary Todd and a political associate of Lincoln, played a crucial role in resolving an attempted duel between Lincoln and a Democratic politician, James Shields, in 1842.
And soon after that encounter, Hardin and his wife, Sarah, helped settle differences between the young lawyer and politician and his former girlfriend [Todd], a Springfield socialite, according to Knox College history professor Douglas Wilson… Despite what most histories have recorded, Wilson’s recent, extensive research points to the Hardins as the people most responsible for getting Lincoln and Todd back together… Read more…
From: The Register Mail (Galesburg, IL)
Nearly 70 years ago in February 1943 more than 300 young men descended on Galesburg for an extensive five-month pilot training program. Knox College was one of the facilities chosen nationwide to furnish academic and military courses to thousands of men entering battle during World War II…
The main purpose of the emergency program was to prepare men for cadet flight training. During the five-month training students were to receive more than 700 hours of instruction. Included was instruction in mathematics, physics, history, geography, English and civil air regulations…
The major challenge to Knox College and the Galesburg community was to provide adequate housing at Seymour Hall on the Knox College campus and the local YMCA… In order to feed the student pilots Seymour Hall kitchen facilities at Knox were enlarged 20 feet… Read more…
