3 influential Civil Rights leaders you didn't know were from Illinois

Illinois’ geographic and political position has made it a hotspot for difficult conversations about race for hundreds of years. Here are three people from Illinois who worked for justice during the mid-20th century.

1. Fred Hampton

Hampton was the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers Party. In 1969, when Hampton was 21, he was killed by Cook County state police officers in the middle of the night during a weapons raid. The Black Panthers Party, which had a more militant image than some other prominent Civil Rights Era-groups, was founded in California and a chapter opened in Chicago in 1968. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, the group’s more than 300 early members “identified with the Panthers’ militant denunciations ofracism, capitalism, and police brutality.”

On the night of Hampton’s death, a shootout between the police and the Panthers at a Chicago apartment ended with Hampton and another Illinois Panther, Mark Clark, dead, says the Chicago Tribune. Disputes about who shot first and how much followed, but a later federal investigation found that police had fired nearly 100 shots and the Panthers were responsible for only one.

2. Diane Judith Nash

Nash was involved in the efforts to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville, Tenn. during his time in college. She is a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, helped organize passengers for the southern Freedom Rides and strategized for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She and her husband, James Bevel, were recognized by Martin Luther King, Jr. for their efforts in lobbying for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965, says BlackPast.org. Nash was born in Chicago in 1938, where she graduated from Hyde Park High School.

3. Ald. Leon Despres

Despres was a 5th ward alderman in Chicago from 1955 to 1975, who, the Chicago Tribunereported in his 2009 obituary, often butted heads with Mayor Richard J. Daley. Ald. Joe Moore of the 49th Ward told the Tribune he was often the “only voice of independence in the Chicago City Council.” He spent his time in politics opposing racial segregation in the city, a fight which the Tribune called “lonely” and said the effects of which could be seen in elections of both Mayor Harold Washington and President Barack Obama.

One of those fights saw him opposing legal mechanisms designed to keep black people out of white neighborhoods, including his own. He called machine politics “Chicago’s tapeworm.”

Desprese grew up in Hyde Park in 1908 and attended the University of Chicago.

Check out seven more Illinois Civil Rights leaders at Reboot Illinois to learn which Illinoisans helped found the Congress on Racial Equality and which U.S. senator from Illinois was instrumental in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.