Chicago Pics And A Bit On Percy Julian

 This is basically going to be photos of the last couple days in Oak Park and surroundings.  

I always thought the Continental divide was in the Rockies and up on through Canada and Alaska, but the folks in Oak Park think it's there.

I think John Dewey got it just about right.

We walked about 2.5 miles yesterday to meet J's brother and sister-in-law for lunch, so we saw a lot of things we'd have missed in a car.  Like these church doors.

A dog park in Oak Park.  Our friends ran into friends they hadn't seen in a long time and it seemed like a happy coincidence.  Numbers were exchanged.

I seem to be the only one excited about the new Halloween decoration on our friends' balcony.  

This only makes sense if you know that Frank Lloyd Wright lived in Oak Park and there are lots of his buildings (mainly houses) in town.  I think some of my Anchorage friends are trying to make this point as the Assembly is taking on redoing the zoning codes.  Right-sizing isn't necessarily NIMBY.

Today, October 1, we went to Evanston - just north of Chicago - for a birthday party and walked along Lake Michigan by Northwestern University.   It was a warm day!

Downtown Chicago is in the distance.

We drove along the lake to downtown. 

Best I could do from the car.  

As we wandered on home we passed through a part of town known as Ukrainian Village.  I believe the rest of this sign said "Institute of Modern Art."

Finally, our friend took us by a large house and yard in Oak Park.  It was bought by Percy Julian.  

Julian was a chemist with degrees from Harvard, and Vienna. From Science History:

 

"A steroid chemist and an entrepreneur, Percy Julian ingeniously figured out how to synthesize important medicinal compounds from abundant plant sources, making them more affordable to mass produce.

In the 1930s chemists recognized the structural similarity of a large group of natural substances—the steroids. These include the sex hormones and the cortical hormones of the adrenal glands. The medicinal potential of these compounds was clear, but extracting sufficient quantities of them from animal tissue and fluids was prohibitively expensive. As with other scarce or difficult-to-isolate natural products, chemists were called upon to mimic nature by creating these steroids in the lab and later by modifying them to make them safer and more effective as drugs. . .

"Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama, the son of a railway mail clerk and the grandson of enslaved people. In an era when African Americans faced prejudice in virtually all aspects of life, not least in the scientific world, he succeeded against the odds. Inadequately prepared by his high school, he was accepted at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, as a sub-freshman, meaning that he had to take high-school courses concurrently with his freshman courses.

Majoring in chemistry, he graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1920. After graduation he taught chemistry at Fisk University for two years before winning an Austin Fellowship to Harvard University, where he completed a master’s degree in organic chemistry. After Harvard he returned to teaching at West Virginia State College and Howard University.

Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the house.  But there are lots of pictures of Julian and of the house in Oak Park.  

The point of this being, that the family may lose the house because his daughter is having trouble paying the taxes.   From Chemical and Engineering News:

"The family home of Percy Lavon Julian sits on a corner lot in the Oak Park suburb of Chicago. Julian was already a renowned organic chemist when he bought the two-story stone house in 1950. His daughter, Faith Julian, remembers a time when the home was not just the center of their family life, but also a place where her father thrived as a scientist and entrepreneur until his death in 1975. Despite multiple racist attacks to push them out of the neighborhood, Percy Julian would not leave his home, she says. “My dad never wanted to move. He loved this house,” she says.

Now Faith is fighting to stay in the Oak Park home, where she still lives. Taxes, home repairs, and medical expenses have left Faith struggling to maintain ownership."

You can read more of the details at the link.

Frank Lloyd Wright is, rightfully, an icon in Oak Park, Illinois.  His house and the many buildings he designed and were built in Oak Park attract a lot of tourists.  

Like many important, but unsung Black American scientists, Julian's house and legacy are not as celebrated in Oak Park or other places  One would think that the city leaders of Oak Park could work with the Chemical community and Black organizations to work out a way to preserve the house and let his daughter live there as long as she wishes.  Certainly there are pharmaceutical corporations that have earned tens of millions of dollars if not much more, from his discoveries.  

This is precisely the sort of thing that people like Ron DeSantis are trying to make sure the students of Florida never know about. 

Here's an August 2023 Editorial at OakPark.com that offers some hope things will be positively resolved.