Museum Blog

For the past ninety-one years, one of Chicago’s back-to-school traditions has been the Bud Billiken Day Parade, which passes through the historic South Side neighborhood of Bronzeville and concludes with a picnic in Washington Park. In 1923, Chicago Defender founder Robert S. Abbott and his managing editor, Lucius Harper, formed the Bud Billiken Club. Abbott More

The wafting aroma of chicken teriyaki, the rhythmic pulsing of taiko drumming, and the occasional murmur of Japanese on a languid summer day. For sixty-five years, the Ginza Holiday Festival has brought a bit of Japan to Chicago. The tradition continues this year with a virtual version. In 1955, the Midwest Buddhist Temple in the More

Today, we commemorate the birthday of Dr. Nathan Wright Jr. A prolific writer of eighteen books, Wright was an internationally renowned scholar whose research focused on the rise of the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s. As an activist, he was seen as a moderating and conciliatory voice that advocated for Black Power More

Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of the Sacrifice, is the second Eid holiday celebrated annually by Muslims worldwide, with the date falling in the twelfth and final month of the Islamic lunar calendar, Dhul Hijjah. Since the holiday is based on lunar sightings, this year it will start on or about July 31. The holiday More

Lollapalooza has become a much beloved summer tradition, but it wasn’t always in the city of Chicago. In fact, it was in many cities.  Its history can more or less be divided into two parts: when it was a traveling music festival with performances on two to three stages (1991–97, 2003) and when it was More