Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable, the Founder of Chicago

Kelly Therese Pollock  0:00  
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollock. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic, and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app, so you never miss an episode. And please, tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen too.

If you have visited Chicago sometime in the past two years, you may have noticed that Lakeshore Drive, the 16 mile expressway that runs along Lake Michigan, has been renamed Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lakeshore Drive. This week, we're discussing the life and legacy of Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, the Black man that the city belatedly recognized as the founder of Chicago. As I'll discuss with today's guest, we don't have good records for DuSable's early life. Scholars have posited various origin stories for him. The most likely biography for DuSable Is that he was born in what is now Haiti sometime around 1745, to a Black mother, who may have been enslaved, and a French father. Around 1770, DuSable likely headed from Saint-Domingue to New Orleans, which was also French territory at the time, and then worked his way up the Mississippi River toward the Great Lakes. Along the way, DuSable appears to have developed relationships with Native American groups in the Great Lakes region, for whom he may have helped to negotiate peace. At some point in the 1770s, DuSable married a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa, who was later called Catherine, in a tribal ceremony. They were remarried in a Catholic ceremony in Cahokia, Illinois on October 27, 1788. We do have written record for that piece of DuSable's biography. DuSable and Kitihawa had two children together, a son named Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, Jr. and a daughter named Susanne. In 1779, a British officer named Arent Schuyler DePeyster took note of DuSable, writing that DuSable, who was then a known trapper and trader was a, "handsome Negro, well educated and settled in Eschecagou, but much in the French interest." The area that DePeyster referred to, Eschecagou was a swampy site on the north shore of what is now the Chicago River, very near to Lake Michigan. Eschecagou was named by a Native American group in the area, with the term meaning something like "land of the wild onions." We don't know how long before 1779 DuSable and his family had settled on the land. What is now the midwestern United States was, in 1779, contested land during the American Revolution. In August of 1779, DuSable was arrested by a British Lieutenant Thomas Bennett, on suspicion of being a sympathizer to the American cause. After a few months, the British released him and British Lieutenant Governor Patrick Sinclair named DuSable the manager of a trading outpost on the St. Clair River, in what's now eastern Michigan. The trading post was called the Pinery, and DuSable spent the next three years there living with his family. Sometime after that, likely in 1784, DuSable and his family returned to Eschecagou, where he continued to work as a trader, and where he built what is often referred to as a log cabin, but which at 40 feet by 22 feet, was quite large for the time and place. In addition to the house, the DuSable  property included a smokehouse, a stable, a workshop, a bake house, and several other buildings. Travelers in the region noted DuSable's presence there, stopping to trade with him. DuSable of course was not the first person to ever visit Eschecagou, and a few others had camped out nearby. But he was the first person known to set up a permanent settlement there. His daughter, Susanne, was married there to Jean Baptiste Pelletier in 1790. Their only known child, Eulalia, was born there in 1796.

In May of 1800, DuSable and his family left Chicago. We don't know the impetus for the move, but DuSable sold his property to a French Canadian fur trapper named Jean La Lime for 6000 pounds. Four years later, La Lime sold the property to another fur trader named John Kinzie, who later murdered La Lime in what's known as Chicago's first murder. DuSable moved to St. Charles, near St. Louis, in what is now Missouri, but which was then Spanish Louisiana, where he had a commission to operate a ferry across the Missouri River. On August 28, 1818, Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable died in St. Charles. He was buried in an unmarked grave that may have been moved several times as the cemetery moved. His final resting place is now unknown.

For a long time DuSable's role in settling Chicago was forgotten. Kinzie's daughter-in-law, Juliette Kinzie, wrote an early history of the area called "Wau-Bun: The 'Early Day' in the North West," which framed Kinzie as the founder of Chicago. In 1913, the city of Chicago raised a plaque honoring DuSable, but most Chicagoans had still not heard of him. The Black population in Chicago grew during and after World War I, and during the planning for the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, the Chicago Defender began calling for recognition of DuSable. Black Chicago club women formed the National Du Sable Memorial Society, and the World's Fair included a replica of his home and a pamphlet about his life. In 1935, a new high school opened on the south side of Chicago, in the historically Black Bronzeville neighborhood. A year later, it was named DuSable High School. As you may recall from previous episodes, both Mayor Harold Washington and publisher John H. Johnson attended DuSable High School, as did musician Nat King Cole, and entertainer Redd Foxx, among many other African Americans who would rise to fame. In 1961, artist and teacher, Margaret Taylor-Burroughs and several other people established a museum to celebrate Black culture. In 1968, it was renamed the DuSable Museum of African American History. Since the 1970s, the museum has been located in Washington Park, on the city's south side, near the Hyde Park neighborhood. By 2016, the museum had an affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution. In March of 2006, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance amending the Municipal Code of Chicago to add DuSable as the city's official founder. In 2009, the city installed a public bust of DuSable, near the spot where his homestead had been, at the northeastern terminus of the bridge that crosses the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue, a bridge that's been called DuSable Bridge since October, 2010, and in June of 2021, the Chicago City Council, after contentious meetings and a bit of compromise, voted to rename the outer portion of the iconic Lakeshore Drive after the city's founder.

Joining me now to help us learn more about Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, is Dr. Courtney P. Joseph, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Lake Forest College, who is writing a book titled, "DuSable's Diaspora: Haiti, Blackness,  and Belonging in Chicago."

Hi, Dr. Joseph, thanks so much for joining me today. 

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  11:08  
Thanks for having me, Kelly. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  11:10  
Yes. So as a Chicagoan who regularly drives up Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable Lakeshore Drive, I'm very interested in learning more about DuSable, so I'm so glad that you want to speak with me about him.

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  11:23  
 Awesome. Yeah, it's always fun to get to talk about who, my students will always laugh when I say this, but one of my historical boyfriend's, although, you know, I respect him as a married man. So. But yes, I love me some DuSable. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  11:38  
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about how, you grew up in Chicago, I believe. So how did you first come to know about him and in his legacy? 

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  11:49  
Yeah, so born and raised in the Chicagoland area, first south side of the city. My parents migrated from Haiti to Chicago in the late 1960s, and had their family there. I'm the baby of the family. So grew up first in on the south side, which is, you know, the classic Black belt, historically of Chicago. And then, you know, kind of did what the Jeffersons did, which was move on up to the south suburbs. So my parents have been living in the south suburbs for several decades now. And then, so I, you know, lived in the area, the majority of my life, and I would say that I probably first heard about DuSable in school at some point, although I don't have concrete memory of that, like, in a real way, I just remember kind of hearing the name at some point. But it wasn't until I started to pursue my doctorate and was working on looking at the history of Haitian folks in Chicago and connections between Haiti and Port au Prince, in particular, the capital, in Chicago over time, that the story of DuSable became much more like clear to me and much more important to me in terms of like learning really more about him.

So I want to ask a little bit about what we know and don't know and what we can sort of extrapolate about his life. So there's a whole lot of mini biographies, biographies out there, seem to be based on a range of different sources. So can you talk us through a little bit of what what we can know how we know it? And what where people have tried to fill in some of the gaps?

That's a great question, and I think that's probably the biggest question that I get from folks in general about this historical figure. It's actually probably one of the bigger points that I'm wrestling with in terms of writing. My first book is looking at, again, a history of Haitian people in Chicago, and I start that story with DuSable, and that is probably the most contentious issue that I've started to see amongst scholars in giving me feedback about the work. And other folks that I've done research, you know, their their work on DuSable, there's seemingly more questions than there are answers. And so my work is really thinking about why are there more questions than answers? And what does that mean for doing the history of folks like DuSable and other folks of African descent and backgrounds in the US and globally? It's no surprise, I think, probably to your listeners and to you, Kelly, that looking at the history of underrepresented groups, and in particular Black folks, is difficult because the classic historical sources what historians called the archive, little "a" and capital "A" right, are largely based on written sources that have been held and recorded and treasured and archived over time. And so if you do a history of somebody like George Washington, for example, you have all the sources in the world, potentially like you have sources on sources on sources. But if you say you want to do research on somebody, like Jean Baptiste DuSable, Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, then you're really reaching, you're not going to be able to find the same quality, or quantity of written sources about him and in particular, written by him. At this point, historians have not found anything left behind that he has written, which is curious to me, because from what we do know, both the recombination of sources of written sources by folks who did business with him in the Chicagoland area in the late 18th century, and the few kind of like the bill of sale of his home in Chicago is a major archival source that we know like, this was a real person who had a real life and a real home and all of that. But stuff like a diary or even like letters from him, things that we typically have, we just don't. And again, that's curious to me, for numerous reasons. But one in particular is the way that he his memory then gets erased, and largely due to the fact that the first people who write what is recognized as the first histories of Chicago, are the Kinzie family, who then declared themselves the founders of Chicago, right. They kind of in, Juliette Kinzie's first, "Wau-Bun" is what it's called, I think it's "The Story of the Old North West," or something like that comes out in 1856, first major history written about Chicago, she's writing it in DuSable's former home, which is now seen as the Kinzie Mansion in Chicago, and says, like, "Oh, there was this guy DuSable, he was here for a little bit, but like the people who really made Chicago, Chicago was my father-in-law, John Kinzie." So to me, that sort of source says to us, well, what are the stakes in making such a claim? And what do you have to potentially I don't know when I can't prove this, right. But there's a lot of historical things that you can start to, again, like you said earlier kind of glom on, what are the stakes of potentially getting rid of any documentation he may have left behind, in order to make sure that the certain narrative of Chicago is remembered and easily recognizable, again, based on things that we can say we quote, unquote, know, because it's written down and it's been preserved. So a lot of my work, falls in line with a wonderful Chicago historian, named Marc Rosier, Marc, Rosier, ROSIER. He wrote a book in 2015, a big tome that probably the first big historical source, looking at the life of DuSable, and in it, he makes a lot of claims that I then, you know, kind of go with and one of them being like, a lot of the things that we know about DuSable are pieced together from oral histories that have lasted over time, as well as those few documentary sources from like I said, folks, he did business with, folks he did diplomacy with, et cetera, et cetera. So it's, it's a frustrating thing. But it's also an exciting thing, because it allows for the historians to like myself to fill in stuff that we know about the area, the time period, to make educated guesses about what this person's life may have really been like, because we don't have the luxury to like, go and look at, you know, the story from his birth, but the story from his death all written down.

Kelly Therese Pollock  18:54  
So this is in the pieces that we do know, is an incredibly international story. So you know, you think of it as like the midwest does not feel like an international place to most people, probably, but DuSable, as far as we know, is coming from Haiti, probably up through New Orleans. And it comes to this region that is passing hands, you know, it's a contested area. And of course, there are native groups already living here who call this place home. So can you talk a little bit about the internationality of it, and what what all is going on, that he is trying to navigate and seemingly is very good at navigating.

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  19:31  
Yeah, I think it's Henry Louis Gates, who's another one of my favorite historians here, Louis Gates, Jr, who says that DuSable has a bit of like proto Great Migration, that like if we think about the movement in the 20th century of Black folks, both from the Caribbean but especially from the southern United States, making places in the north like Chicago, their home, we see that happening in the late 18th century, mid to late 18th century with DuSable. So from what we know, and again, I rely a lot on Marc Rosier's work here to answer that big question for historians. Where's DuSable from? You have historian saying he is from possibly more historians agree that he is from what would be known at that point, the colony of Saint-Domingue, under the French. But the original indigenous name of that place is Haiti. It's Ay-ti. So he's, he's, of that space, and then he makes his way like many do, who were part of what would have been, you know, like the French colony of North America, extending from that heart of the colony, which is the colony of Saint-Domingue, all the way through the midwest into Canada. So if we, we have to like rethink the world and how we think it now like the United States is not quite the United States yet. As you said, things are changing hands a lot at this period, the United States is trying to push west in order to kind of do this sea from shining sea thing. But the French and the Spanish and others have had successful enough colonies there that by the time DuSable makes his way up into what we know is the midwest now, it's still largely a French cultural and diplomatic area. And as you already said, indigenous folks who have been here, were here, will forever be here, will always be there as well. And that is the part I think that's most important to understand about DuSable, is that his reliance and relationship with indigenous folks in the area is what allows him to be as successful as he is. And so an international story that also includes thinking about the ways that indigenous nations were just as important to the story of early America that we don't again, typically talk about. So he makes his way from Saint-Domingue. We believe he is born of an African mother, not sure if she is free or enslaved, and a French descendant father. That seems to be the thing that opens up the door for him to leave the colony, at some point, that privilege of having a father who could have done what Thomas Jefferson did, which was like, totally ignore his children or potentially enslave them, he, it seems, has gets the privilege of like, of what of a lot of the Frenchman at the time of mixed color were called "gens de couleur." So he is able to leave, go and start a life somewhere else. And he makes his way up to at that point, what you know, indigenous people were calling Eschecagou, or the place that smelled of onions and was really cold, was very, very cold. But he intermarries and so he marries a Potawatomi woman whose name we know, as Kitihawa. At this point, I have to shout out my friend and scholar, indigenous scholar Starla Thompson, here who was doing a lot of important recovery work on who Kitihawa was, because as much as we don't know about DuSable, we definitely don't know a lot about her. But she is kind of also central to this story, right? Because they intermarry, and then it's their relationship and their partnership that builds the first homestead and successful long term business in Chicago, which is, you know, then gets seen as really the what gives him the honor quote, unquote, founder of Chicago, they're still doing a lot of trade with the various folks who are in the area. So we have folks of indigenous descent, of French descent, of American descent, of Spanish descent, all trading there, making it a very successful business, but they also have their first kids there and the first baptism is held there. And they kind of hold the tide of again, how that the land and everything is shifting. At that point, it seems to be that they are a kind of a permanent part of the early kind of changing landscape that eventually, by 1800, they can kind of no longer it seems, stand the the shifts that are coming.

Kelly Therese Pollock  24:17  
So you mentioned earlier the bill of sale from his home and you know, I think people who are sort of vaguely familiar with his story may have heard of like a cabin on the what's now the Chicago River. It's a little bit more than a cabin. Can you talk a little bit about what it is that they actually established there? You know why this is more than just a like a house that was built there and didn't mean anything? 

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  24:43  
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty major. It's really cool to read and to get like also a sense of not only how like big, they were doing it, but how like both of their cultures are very much seen in the way that the home is run and the way that it's built. And so we have poplar trees outside that are brought and planted there to kind of represent French heritage for him. They have French inspired doors. It is a large homestead that includes things like a big house and livestock and he's remembered by folks who do come and do business with him as a handsome Negro with an affinity for drink, and like a good like host, amongst other things. So there seems to be like a pretty large operation that is largely built around the fur trade business. And that's another thing that brings him to the midwest is that there's a big understanding of French fur traders in this area, being able to make a way for themselves, establish themselves, do well. And so he's seems to get become part of that trade. But then that opens up all sorts of other things for him and his wife. He's traveling a lot, and you know, amongst, you know, the midwest, he has time that he spends in Detroit. He has land in Peoria that we later found out about. So as he's kind of traversing the midwest, we often may imagine, Kitihawa was the one kind of keeping the day to day of not just a business running that has these multiple facets to it, but also then, like, you know, the kids and the family, which is also just as important.

Kelly Therese Pollock  26:24  
So you mentioned this land around the Peoria area. It seems like and I'm trying to piece together the different pieces of the story here, but he owns something like 400, 800 acres in various places. And you know, if you're just sort of on the face of it, thinking about what was life like at the turn of the 18th century for a Black man in what would become the United States, that seems kind of surprising. Can you can you talk a little bit about that and how he's able to own this land, and how it perhaps shifts a little bit about how we think about race and race relations and stuff during this time period? 

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  27:06  
Absolutely. Also, another great question and a question again, that I think a lot of scholars are also asking: how he makes it through the racial landscape of the era, when most folks would imagine and is correct that most African Americans or most people of African descent are enslaved, at this point. How and ever, race is always in flux, and racial understandings are always shifting, which is a benefit and also terrifying at the same time. And so if we imagine a world in the mid 1700s, where places, like, the French and Spanish colonies have a little bit more of a gray area, in terms of racial politics, that is not as strict as the Black/white color line that the United States will largely come to define themselves around. There are ways and in particular, like I called DuSable as a man of mixed race, right? And so in Saint-Domingue, the mixed race class are the actually the ones who helped to tip the scales in the Haitian Revolution, because they are in this middle ground, where they're saying, "I'm not enslaved, and, you know, not totally racialized as Black, but I know that I am not white. But there are some things that I have access to due to the fact that I have some relationship to whiteness. What does that mean for me in the society? How do I navigate that?" And I think that's largely the gray space that DuSable is navigating even when he comes to the French midwest because there are other folks of color who intermarry. He does things that other Frenchmen do, white Frenchmen intermarry with Indigenous women, try to establish themselves in a way that is largely based on socio economics and, you know, like family legacy versus just color. And so I think that there's even a historian who suggested that maybe DuSable was a runaway slave from Kentucky. That makes absolutely no sense. Because that they would have found him like, you know, what I mean, like the United States, as it grows, is becoming more and more again, wedded to white versus Black, and that there is not much of a gray area in between. And so for somebody like DuSable to live and do what he needs to do, I think it's important for us to remember that blackness is not as stark in terms of what it means for you, society wise in the 1700s as it does by like the mid 1700s as it looks in the late 1700s, and then the 1800s, and then again in the 1900s. Like, that's reinforced in law that's not quite there in the same way in the midwest as it is before it becomes officially a part of the United States, which happens again, after the Haitian Revolution ends, and the Louisiana Purchase happens in 1803, and into 1804, when when Napoleon says, "Well, if we lose Saint-Domingue, we don't have really any stake in having any land in North America." And they sell that like a third of the mass of the what do we know as the United States to, to the actual United States government. And so with all of that in flux, I think that he is navigating a changing world, and again, is very smart in understanding the parts of him and again, that intermarriage with an indigenous woman as a way to situate himself and kind of ride the wave. And then by the time it is clear that those things are not as in flux, or won't be as in flux anymore, he sells the home and he moves to Missouri. And that's where he spent the last like several decades of his life. And so it's, it's, again, very intriguing to think about a world that is not as racially stark as it is today. But this is why thinking about race as a relatively new concept, and a new commodity is something that I think is both empowering for folks, because it means that we can we can change again.

Kelly Therese Pollock  31:37  
Yeah , yeah. And just to underscore that a little bit Jean Baptiste and Kitihawa have a daughter who then marries a white European man. So she clearly has had tremendous access.

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  31:50  
Yes, yes, yes. So like it, it shows again, that it's much more in flux and fluid and localized than what we then come to understand about how, especially after the American Revolution, the entrenchment of chattel slavery as racialized slavery becomes indicative of what helps to build the United States as a new country in a way that's not, it wasn't always that way. I'll just, I'll leave it that way. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  31:52  
Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about the legacy of DuSable and what it means, what it has meant over time, to to Haitian Americans and to Black Americans that the founder of Chicago was, in fact, Haitian, a Black man?

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  32:41  
That's, I think, another great question. And actually, where, as I'm finishing again, my first book, they think that I was realizing I was kind of writing two books in one. And so now I think one is going to be an article. And I think the article for me is going to be about the ways that Black folks who moved to Chicago have utilized the story of DuSable to situate themselves in the city. DuSable has become a major symbol, whether like mythology or not like the the facts don't necessarily matter, in the same way to Black folks who are making Chicago their home in starting largely in the early 20th century, who, again, over oral traditions, keep the story alive, and about 100 years after he is gone, start to tell the story much more widely. And then the biggest historical marker for me, where we see Black Chicagoans say, "No, DuSable belongs to us, and we're going to honor him," is the 1933 World's Fair. So the World's Fair in '33 is the 100 year anniversary of Chicago being incorporated as a city. It's a very major moment in the history of the city. I mean, there's all sorts of things that say like Chicago is making a name for itself, not only nationally, but internationally as a world class city. And for Black folks who have made their way to Chicago, either from the south or had been in Chicago, not as many numbers huge numbers over the course of the 1800s, they look at this 1933 World Fair, and say, "Well, are we gonna talk about that guy DuSable?" and there's this huge kind of push and pull with the city and the officials like, I don't know like, and there's even tension among Chicagoans. What's the best way to honor him? Should we honor him? And it is women like Annie Oliver and other Black women, educators, librarians who say, "No, we're going to do it this way." And two weeks before the fair get the okay to make a a an exhibit dedicated to DuSable. So they are the ones who build a log cabin to try to represent what DuSable's homestead would like maybe have looked like right and they only had two weeks to do it. So they put together something. And they make a pamphlet, which is recognized as one of the first pamphlets that like historical sources that is attempting to reconcile and tell DuSable's story, and it becomes one of the biggest attractions at the fair. And from there, the momentum continues. So they start a National DuSable Memorial Society from there. They are the ones who lead to the renaming of DuSable High School. You start to see a bunch of DuSable reading clubs, that build momentum all the way to then, Margaret Burroughs renaming her museum The DuSable Museum of African American History. So it becomes a snowball over the 20th century of like, again, Black descended folks who make their way to Chicago and say, "Oh, my God, what do you mean, this is a space that's not for Black people? The first guy who was here and made the city here it, you know, made it cool here's a Black person." So they they really champion the story of DuSable. And again, it's less about the like, historian's what we know and what we don't know facts, because Black folks are very used to not having all the details. And still, that doesn't mean they can't celebrate and tell the story as they know it. The same thing that happens for Haitian folks as they come to Chicago. Haitian folks after DuSable start to make Chicago their home, in large number in the '50s in the '60s, 1950s and '60s, although, if I take it back to another fair, the 1893 World's Fair that celebrates the 100 years since Columbus, again, tying us back where does Columbus first land? On the island of Hispaniola, Haiti and Dominican Republic today, right. So Chicago has this this celebration. And what is the one of the only buildings actually I think it's the only building dedicated to Black folks, the Haitian Pavilion Building. It is the big stalwart building, it's now there's a little plaque dedicated to where it was in Grant Park. Frederick Douglass speaks there, Ida B. Wells is there. This is another major attraction in the 1893 World's Fair, that again, points to the ways that like Haiti and Chicago have these like really cool connections. So then, you know, over the course of 20th century, you see more kind of a trickle of Haitian folks coming to Chicago again, but in the '50s, '60s, definitely '70s, '80s, as more and more come and make Chicago home, they then in school and are in Black communities, hear the story of DuSable and say, "Hey, wait a minute. He belongs to us, too." And so then they start to also mobilize to make sure that he is being properly honored and celebrated by the city. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  37:54  
So we've, in a way, in this last question, been talking about the history of public history, and I know that public history is something that's really important to you, and you've been speaking about it some recently. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the importance of public history? Obviously, as somebody who does a history podcast, I find this very important. But just kind of reflect on that. 

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  38:18  
Public History is my jam. Public History, to me is very, very, very important. We are at a very critical moment, as a country in terms of education. And as a person who is a professor and is in academia, we're constantly being berated with the narrative that the humanities are on the outs and the humanities are in trouble. And students don't want to major in the humanities anymore. Who cares about history, or English or any of those things? And I understand that as a millennial with student loans. I very much understand why parents and even my parents were kind of looking at me, you know, in the early 2000s, like, "You said, you want to do what? That's so cute. She's going to be poor, but you know, she's doing something." So I understand the inclination of wanting to go into a field that is, you know, data driven, healthcare, finance, like I understand that and as you know, again, a parent who would be sending a child to college, I understand like, you "What do you want to come home and talk about you want to major in History and African American studies, like who are you?" At the same time when we think about the ways that history informs so much of what we do and the skills that historians use, in so many industries, we see that it matters. When folks share history publicly, and bridge the gap between what is typically seen as the ivory tower and everybody else, I find it to be much more powerful. And it is the way that I start to get to see sparks in my students in what the future could hold from them. Because I'm, you know, I'm going to start my seventh year as a faculty member, which is crazy to say, but in that time, I've had so many like, you know, students knock on my door, or send me an email, like "I gotta of talk to you." And then they, you know, we call them like, "closed door open door?" They're like "closed door, because, you know, it's, it's private," and then they close the door. And they're like, "I think I want to major in history." And I'm like, "Okay, it's okay, I understand, like, you don't have to talk about parents, what am I going to do." And public history has been such an incredible way to start to get them to think about the vast amount of careers and things that are available to them, and how powerful it can be to share histories with folks, whether it's through a podcast or through a website, or through a talk or through an exhibit, or through a data project, like I see their, I mean, it all sorts of light bulbs kind of fire off from them. And that's, I think, the real power of public history. For me, too, as I said, I'm the child of immigrants. And so and my research is largely sourced from the stories of folks who are not in the academy. And so for me to write things that are unaccessible to my community seems unethical, and problematic. And also, to me as a large reason why folks say the humanities are in trouble. We're only talking to ourselves. And that's not doing as much as we would hope. And so when I see something like the 1619 Project, or I see something like the New York Times piece, they did a piece at the top of this year or last year, I think it was the end of last year on what's called the ransom. And it was about the ways that the French in the United States have basically siphoned off the money that Haiti would have used to establish itself as an independent nation, and basically have crippled it. And that is the reason that we see all of these, you know, atrocities continued to happen there. That means something, and that gets folks talking. And that gets folks interested. And I know that there's always say, was inevitably read pushback from historians when a popular history project comes out? And they're like, "Well, we know this." And I'm like, "Yes, we, this little circle of us over here, did know that. But now more people know it, and in order for things to change, and in order for history to be, you know, active and to get folks mobilized around it, it is going to take larger conversations outside the academy." So I'm very proud and happy to be within the academy, but to then share what I learned and what I teach my students with larger audiences. I get students telling me like, "My mom listened to you on this," or, you know, "I heard about, you know, I was gonna come to school here, and I saw that you did this thing, and I listened. And I was like, 'Oh, wow, cool, that's gonna be my professor.'" Like, those are also ways to then entice folks in the larger community who maybe are not in the college classroom, but still get to get that information.

Kelly Therese Pollock  43:28  
So speaking of getting kids into the college classroom and interested, you also teach classes about hip hop, right? 

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  43:33  
I do.

Kelly Therese Pollock  43:34  
Can you tell me a little bit about that? 

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  43:36  
I do. Another passion that became an academic part of my life, which which was interesting. Much like the history of Black TV class that I taught, I'm a big TV person. And I always joke with my parents, like, "Remember that TV that you told me not to watch? Now I get to teach on it." Same with hip hop. I, again, didn't ever study hip hop, as a scholar. It was just something that was a major part of my life growing up. And in particular, in high school in college was very formative for me as a Black immigrant kid, trying to figure out how to fit in into Black American culture, since that's also very much who I was at the time. And hip hop was a vehicle for that. And so when I was on my job interview, six years ago, I was sitting with a table of students at lunch, and you know, you say things on interviews, like I could do this. And I could do that, because you're like, give me the job child. And so a group of students were talking, I was like, "What classes would you be interested in?" And they said, "Oh, you know, there's a class right now on hip hop, but we really would like to see like a history course." And I was like, "Oh, I could totally do that." And they were like, what? And then I got the job. And one of the first things they told me was we're going to do that hip hop class and I was like, "Oh snap." So over the last six years, I have now turned again, a passion into an academic love, and vice versa. And that's really cool to do. My history of hip hop class has become an incredibly popular class on campus, which is lovely. And I've expanded it to teach, now I teach an upper level course on women and gender and  hip hop as well. I get to teach that this upcoming fall, which is a lot of fun. And gets us to think about the ways that hip hop is informed by and informs how people consider their gender identity, and the role of women more largely in hip hop. But teaching hip hop is a sneaky way to teach about Black history and immigrant history in the United States, so in the late 20th century. So I think students sign up for anything, where they're just going to listen to Drake and like vibe out. But then I'm like," the war on drugs." And they're like, "Aaaa!" So those sorts of things, it allows them to kind of see that hip hop has been a voice, much like jazz, much like slave narratives. There's a history of the ways that Black people use culture to express their histories and their stories when when mainstream media or the archive maybe does not pay attention to them in the same way. 

Kelly Therese Pollock  46:25  
Yeah, I love it. So how can people follow you online and find out about your any of your upcoming work? 

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  46:35  
They can follow me on Twitter and Instagram. I am @CourtneyPJoseph on both of those. I also have a website, CourtneyPJoseph.com. And those I think, are the best ways to keep up with me and the many things that I'm doing at this point.

Kelly Therese Pollock  46:54  
Excellent. I'll put links in the show notes. Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we talked about?

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  46:59  
I will always use this opportunity to plug folks into the fight for the DuSable Park. It has been over the course of my entire lifetime, I'll be 37 this year, when Harold Washington our first Black mayor, dedicated land near the Chicago River. Right prime real estate in Chicago, you may have walked past it if you've ever walked the Chicago River Walk or ever been on Navy Pier and looked and there's this just like random kind of ugly piece of land there. That was because almost four decades ago, Harold Washington dedicated that land to be built for a park for DuSable, to recognize the first Black father of the city. Unfortunately, Harold Washington passed away, you know, shortly after this occurred, and we have been pushing and advocating groups like the DuSable Heritage Association, the Friends of the Park, Black Heroes Matter. There are lots of, you know, grassroots organizing around actually seeing that park built. We have had some inroads in the last few years. There was there's a longer story here that I could talk about, but I won't, on how that land has been used and disabused in that time. So it has I think, been, the EPA finished a cleanup on the land to make it accessible again, for folks to actually build upon. But we're hoping to see that park built, and as exciting as it is to have the DuSable Lakeshore Drive, I want folks also to know that there are plans and a lot of work to build a park where folks can learn about who DuSable and Kitihawa were and you know, have have school and field trips and really to then honor the people who made Chicago the space that it is for us. So if you're interested, please talk to your aldermen, your politicians make sure our lovely new mayor knows that this is also something we would love to see happen finally in honor of both DuSable but also Harold Washington.

Kelly Therese Pollock  49:10  
Excellent. I'll put links in the show notes for that as well. Dr. Joseph, thank you so much. I loved learning more about DuSable and I just really appreciate you coming on and talking to me. 

Dr. Courtney P. Joseph  49:20  
Thank you so much, Kelly. It's been an honor and thanks so much for doing public history. That's the stuff we need out here.

Teddy  49:54  
Thanks for listening to Unsung History. Please subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app. You can find the sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript @UnsungHistorypodcast.com. To the best of our knowledge, all audio and images used by Unsung History are in the public domain, or are used with permission. You can find us on twitter or instagram @Unsung__History, or on Facebook @UnsungHistorypodcast. To contact us with questions corrections, praise, or episode suggestions, please email Kelly@UnsungHistorypodcast.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and tell everyone you know. Bye!

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