Looking Back While Moving Forward: The North Suburban Library District Local History Collection

To ring in the new year, the IDHH is pleased to feature the North Suburban Library District Local History Collection, one of our oldest collections, from the North Suburban Library District (NSLD). Opened in 1944 by the North Suburban Woman’s Club, the North Suburban Library District serves Machesney Park, Roscoe, and Loves Park with branches in Loves Park and Roscoe. Fifty years after opening, the North Suburban Library District Local History Collection began taking shape when the Friends of North Suburban Library group formed a local history committee. From an 1869 assessor’s book for the town of Harlem to photographs taken in 2001 of the NSLD Loves Park branch building, this collection illuminates the humble beginnings of the communities that surround Rockford, Illinois as well as important developments in this area over the past 150 years. 

Local landmarks such as the River Lane Outdoor Theater and Kiddieland amusement park in Loves Park are included in the collection and provide a sense of recreation and entertainment in the metropolitan area. A particularly distinctive addition to the collection are images from the telephone operators’ strikes in 1945-1948, a series of strikes over the span of three years in which “telephone girls” picketed against the Illinois Bell Telephone Company, including a walkout of more than 16,000 telephone workers across Illinois and Indiana in November 1945. These demonstrations ultimately won the workers better wages and advancement opportunities, and the images of these demonstrations offer a glimpse at traditionally unseen workers and speaks to the power of workers’ unions at the time. 

With such vibrant items in the collection, we hope you enjoy revisiting the North Suburban Library District Local History Collection as much as we do! Here are a few of our favorite items from the collection:

Kiddieland roller coaster. 1952. North Suburban Library District. North Suburban Library District Local History Collection. Courtesy of the North Suburban Library District.
Rockford Interurban Trolley Car, North Second Street. n.d. North Suburban Library District. North Suburban Library District Local History Collection. Courtesy of the North Suburban Library District.
River Lane Outdoor Theater. 1949. Photograph by Bobbie Lusk. North Suburban Library District. North Suburban Library District Local History Collection. Courtesy of the North Suburban Library District.
The Illinois, Rock River steamer excursion boat. circa 1912-1913. North Suburban Library District. North Suburban Library District Local History Collection. Courtesy of the North Suburban Library District.
Roscoe’s first rural mail wagon. circa 1909. North Suburban Library District. North Suburban Library District Local History Collection. Courtesy of the North Suburban Library District.
Roscoe, Illinois, veterinarian, Dr. Baldwin. circa 1899. North Suburban Library District. North Suburban Library District Local History Collection. Courtesy of the North Suburban Library District.
Telephone operators on strike, Loves Park, Ill. circa 1945-1948. North Suburban Library District. North Suburban Library District Local History Collection. Courtesy of the North Suburban Library District.

Want to see more? 

Browse the full North Suburban Library District Local History Collection on the IDHH. 

For additional information about the North Suburban Library District and its history, visit the Local History section of the NSLD website.

To view digitized historical issues of the area’s local newspaper, The Post Journal/Monday Morning Mail, visit the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection.

Honoring Labor: Remembering the Pullman Strike and Boycott

2019 marks the 125th anniversary of the Pullman Strike and Boycott, a momentous event in the history of organized labor in Illinois and the U.S., taking place throughout the late Spring and Summer of 1894. In commemoration of the Pullman Strike, the IDHH  examines its place in the history of labor and workers’ rights movements in Illinois and U.S. Collections provided by the Pullman State Historical Site provide particular insight into the event and its cultural and historical milieu. The scholarship of and input from Pullman State Historical Site Services Specialist, Martin Tuohy, was indispensable in developing this post.
The Pullman Strike and Boycott began as a walkout of the Pullman Palace Car Company by shop workers in May 1894. By July, it included 150,000 railroad workers over 20 railroads across 27 states. Pullman workers and allies across the country protested both the particulars of the Pullman workers’ grievances, such as layoffs and deep wage cuts while the Pullman company town maintained its rent rates, as well as the power of capital over workers that the grievances represented. The strike and boycott was part of wider developments in Workers’ Rights organization and came in the wake of several other significant demonstrations in the late 19th century along with the often oppressive responses to grassroots organization by companies and industry leaders. Company founder, George Pullman, played a significant role in exacerbating tensions between workers for obstinately emphasizing the company’s right to rent profits over most workers’ grievances.


Beyond Pullman and throughout the late 19th Century U.S., increased mechanization during the Second Industrial Revolution played a role in depressing wages and an ever increasing division of labor often alienated workers from their work and the products they produced. Moreover, while westward expansion in the late 1860s and early 1870s brought with it an increase in industry and investments, especially those related to railroads, the 1870s and 1880s were marked by significant economic declines. When times were difficult, workers were often hardest hit, facing frequent layoffs and wage cuts between the early 1870s and mid 1890s. In response, workers increasingly organized and acted by facilitating collective bargaining, and striking and boycotting when necessary. Strikes by miners and other factory workers throughout the 1880s and 90s, including the Haymarket Affair, set important precedents for the Pullman Strike. Oppressive responses by capital against unions, activists, and union leaders often left workers feeling, at best, under-represented and, at worst, at the whims of their employer.
The Pullman Strike and Boycott had some key differences from earlier actions, however; instead of organizing via craft unions, the Pullman Workers had the support of the fledgling but formidable American Railway Union (ARU), which included members across a range of professions and company leadership roles. Workers from the Midwest to Washington State struck and boycotted trains with cars built by the Pullman Company. It became the largest and one of the longest work stoppages up to that time in U.S. history and effectively shut down railway travel from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest. The strike was ultimately broken by a combination of the limited resources of workers after going months without pay, injunctions by federal courts, military force, and the imprisonment of union leaders and activists, including ARU president, Eugene V. Debs. Its leaders indicted or imprisoned and hundreds of its members blacklisted from future employment, the ARU collapsed.

The Pullman Strike precipitated the role of the state as an arbitrator between workers and railroad companies with the passing of the Erdman Act in 1898. This was the first in a series of Congressional acts aimed at regulating and reforming railway labor which laid the foundation for national labor laws enacted in the 1930s. The strike and its aftermath also raised important questions about the proper role of law enforcement, the military, and the state in cases of mass demonstrations within and beyond the realm of workers’ rights and industrial interests. At the local level, the Illinois Supreme Court forced the Pullman Company was forced to sell its residential property and many workers were able to purchase their long-rented abodes. The original town of Pullman is now a National Monument and Illinois State Historic District.
For further reading, refer to Martin Tuohy’s articles on the “Pullman Strike and Boycott” and “George Pullman” in Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History (2007). All of the IDHH items related to the Pullman Strike can be found here. Explore material related to George Pullman, including correspondence and portraits.

International Workers’ Day: Honoring Labor

May 1 marks International Workers’ Day and the first week of May a significant time period in the history of labor and labor organization. May 4 is the 133rd anniversary of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago, an event in city and state history that resounded around the world and it, along with the events leading up to the Affair, are widely cited as the inspiration for International Workers’ Day. The IDHH highlights items from the Chicago History Museum relevant to the Haymarket Affair, workers’ rights, and labor organization across the state of Illinois.
The Chicago History Museum’s Prints and Photographs Collection includes prints and photographs that picture Haymarket Square, the location of a workers’ rally held as part of efforts to instate the eight-hour work day as a national standard and in response to the killing of several protestors on the previous day by police. The rally was initially peaceful but ended in the explosion of a homemade bomb, seen rendered in the print below by the artist, Paul J. Morand, that killed seven police officers. Police veterans of the Haymarket Affair were honored by their department and by local and municipal leaders, as evinced by the banner in an 1895 parade. Organizers, including those killed by police in the aftermath of the bomb and those wrongly accused in the fury of investigations and trials following the bombing were commemorated mainly by labor organizations.


Check out more items that relate to the Haymarket Affair, and workers’ rights and labor in Illinois. There are also many collections with items pertaining to labor, such as the Pullman State Historic Site’s Southeast Chicago Historical Society collection. To learn more about the Haymarket Affair, check out this article from the Encyclopedia of Chicago. For a timeline of events, search strategies, and a sampling of newspaper articles contemporaneous to the Haymarket Affair, see the Library of Congress webpage on the event.