Glencoe Historical Society
at the
Eklund History Center & Garden

Looking back on their and their children’s upbringing, Glencoe was a “safe place,” clean, pleasant and a wonderful place for children, agreed a panel of black residents who reminisced about being African American and living in Glencoe through the decades. However, black girls had difficulty finding suitable partners in high school and it required parents to educate teachers on sensitive issues when classes were discussing Huckleberry Finn or talking about civil rights issues.

These were among the comments from a panel of black Glencoe residents who Tuesday (Feb. 19) spoke on a panel Celebrating Black History Month sponsored by the Glencoe Historical Society in conjunction with its month-long exhibit at the Glencoe Public Library. The panel was moderated by Dino Robinson, editor of the Evanston-based Shorefront magazine, aimed at archiving black history on the North Shore.

Trisha Gregory, who grew up in Glencoe and has lived here all her life with only an eight-year absence, said she remembered being the only black girl in her classes but that didn’t stop her from going to all the activities of her friends, including a lunch and swim party at Green Acres Country Club in Northbrook. Leonard Thigpen, who moved his family here in the 1970s from Chicago, agreed that for children, growing up was close to being in a “bubble,” for they played in the streets and enjoyed the schools while he and his wife enjoyed the peace and quiet.

Lun Ye “Lonnie” Crim Barefield also thought Glencoe was a good place to bring up children, but she also recalled how she and other parents founded a Concerned Black Parents group in the 1970s to help the high schools sensitively understand how to relate current issues to their students. Barefield also noted that while African American children mixed in easily with white friends in grade school, when they got to high school the situation changed.

Boys easily fit in with athletics and just “hanging around” but girls found that they had to look to communities with larger black populations such as Evanston or social clubs founded for teens, including Jacks and Jills, and Top Leaders, in order to find dates. Many in the 50-person audience who had the same experiences for their daughters, agreed.

Bob Sideman, a white Glencoe resident who has done an informal history of the black community, began the program by explaining how the second largest African American community on the North Shore began. He noted that a lawyer, Morton Culver, had purchased a large swath of land, most of the south end of Glencoe in the area that today’s encompasses the president-streets. Through realtor Ira Brown, of Evanston, Culver sold most of the land on the west to what became Skokie Country Club and on the east (today’s president streets between the train tracks and Bluff St.) in 25-foot (very small) lots specifically to blacks who moved up from Chicago.

The exhibition Celebrating Black History Month will be on display in the Glencoe Public Library’s Hammond Room through the month of February. It will then move to St. Paul A.M.E Church before returning to the Glencoe Historical Society.

For questions or comments, call the Glencoe Historical Society at 847.835.0040 and leave a message.