For now, they’re photos mounted on sheets of plywood in a corner of the main entrance to Governors State University in University Park.
In a few months, the space is scheduled to open as the Illinois Black Hall of Fame, and Ceola Barnes sees it as possibly inspiring students at the university.
“I see it as a teaching tool and making people aware of our history that they might not know about,” Barnes, founder of the Hall of Fame, said at a ceremonial groundbreaking Friday.
The photos include Timuel Black, a civil rights activist, teacher and historian who was the hall’s first inductee. Black died Oct. 13 at age 102.
Alongside Black are photos of pioneering aviator Bessie Coleman; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Spencer Leak Sr., president of Leak & Sons Funeral Home; and Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor.
They were the 2021 inductees, with the ceremony last year taking place virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s inductees are expected to be announced in about a week.
The space is expected to be transformed into a more formal display in time for GSU’s Juneteenth event this summer.
The initial inductees into the Hall “led lives that changed the status quo,” GSU President Cheryl Green said Friday. “They blazed new trails and inspired generations to dream.”
Zenobia Johnson-Black, who was married to Timuel Black for 40 years, said her husband was thrilled to be the Hall’s first inductee.
Her husband taught at the high school and college level on topics including civics, African American history and anthropology, she said.
A lifelong friend of Black’s, Monica Faith Stewartsaid she first heard Black after she graduated from Vassar College.
“He encouraged us to get involved in politics,” she said.
Black worked on behalf of Washington during his campaign for mayor, a position to which he was elected in 1983 and reelected four years later. Black was also a mentor to Barack Obama.
Stewart served in the Illinois House from 1980 through 1983, representing the 29th District on Chicago’s South Side, and also worked as a field coordinator on Washington’s initial campaign.
Black, she said, “was able to make his life make a difference in the lives of others.”
Johnson-Black said her husband had a favorite word of advice.
“He would always say ‘Be prepared, so when the door opens you can walk through, but when you get through hold the door open for someone else,'” she said.
Coleman was the first African American woman and first woman of Native American descent to earn a pilot’s license, although she had to go to France in order to accomplish that. Born in Texas, Coleman and other family members moved to the Chicago area.
She died April 30, 1926, when she fell from an airplane piloted by her mechanic.
Her great niece, Gigi Coleman, who was at Friday’s event, said her great aunt “wanted to make a difference in the field of aviation in the 1920s” and had hoped, before her death, to open a flight school.
“She was a pioneer ahead of her time,” Coleman said. “She had the tenacity to overcome all sorts of obstacles.”
Barnes, who earned her master’s degree in 1975 from Governors State, said the Black Hall of Fame is an outgrowth of the African-American Ladies’ Legacy Foundation, which was founded in 2011 and promotes the accomplishments of female African American role models and works to provide mentorship to young Black girls.
Barnes worked for 34 years in the Chicago Public Schools system, including as a teacher, assistant principal and principal before retiring in 2004. She is the foundation’s president and sister of U.S. Rep Danny K. Davis, D-Chicago, honorary chairman of the hall.
With the foundation, “we focus primarily on women, but with the Illinois Black Hall of Fame our mission is to honor the past, celebrate the present and inspire the future,” Barnes said.
“We want to use this as a way to inspire the youth and motivate them,” she said.