Grantee Partner Spotlight: Peoria Historical Society

A Q&A with Elizabeth Klise

Executive Director of the Peoria Historical Society

How did you arrive at the work you’re doing at the historical society?

Tell us about the project you all are undertaking. Our understanding is that where today there is a medical school and more, there was once a vibrant African American community. Is that right?

We asked ourselves, “Is there any way we could possibly use these photos to reconstruct this vanished neighborhood and somehow capture the stories associated with it?” We enlisted another friend as project co-chair— Angela Allen Henry, the editor of Traveler Weekly, a 50-year-old African-American local newspaper. We three put together a committee and have been working ever since to see how we can recreate this lost neighborhood.

As a side note, the photographer Ernest Grassel worked weekdays at Caterpillar Tractor here in town. On weekends, he was a gentleman photographer taking pictures of houses. He ended up donating 83 three-ring binders of these photos to the library! Not only was this man working full-time during the week and taking hundreds of photos on the weekends, but he had a third passion: in his spare time, he drew line drawings of Peoria houses and buildings. We have binders and binders of these amazing works of art. He didn’t want to waste paper, so he crammed the houses in—sometimes six or eight to a page. Many of these buildings no longer exist, so this archive is something we are anxious to share with people. 

This is what I love about Peoria's history. Just the fact that he left behind this work, this history—in photographs and drawings. This is extraordinary to me.

So you’ve discovered this remarkable story. Now, at this point, what do you see this project becoming, in a tangible sense, once finished?

What an ambitious initiative. What sorts of partnerships help to make work like this happen?

It’s a fantastic committee. When I go to our Peoria Historical Society board meetings, I always give this committee a shout-out. Angie, publisher of Traveler Weekly, is a trustee, but many of the committee members are new to the Peoria Historical Society, so we’re expanding our reach. 

We now have committee members from the Peoria County Genealogical Society, Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, Central Illinois Landmarks Foundation, Peoria Public Library, and Peoria Opportunities Foundation, which is focused on affordable housing. It’s such a great group. Very energized and smart and they check every box. Everyone has their specialty and area of expertise.

How do you imagine this work impacting people?

That’s a hard question. One of my jobs is to make sure that stories like this are told and celebrated and shared. I believe Peoria is a significant place with important stories to tell. Humanity is really just what it means to be human, and being human is often about loss. But the converse of loss is discovery—or rediscovery—so the discovery and rediscovery of this particular place and period of lost history feel very relevant to me. Thanks to Illinois Humanities, this project is also taking our organization in a new direction. 

A lot of times, historical societies like ours tend to tell stories about things that are in the distant past—Vaudeville, flags, distilling—and we can forget that our history is also what’s right behind us. 

We don’t have to go back a hundred years. So, to me, it is about rediscovering an important piece of history that we haven’t always done a great job at safeguarding. As a side note, not too long ago, Peoria was voted the worst place to be Black in this country, so I feel we have a special responsibility to better tell the stories of all of our citizens.

Would you like to add anything? 

As I was driving to work this morning, I was thinking about this interview and thinking about Illinois and the humanities. I was an English major in college and this is the metaphor that came to mind. History is about people, places, and things. Those are nouns. 

To me, the job of an organization like the Peoria Historical Society is to animate those people, places, and things by telling the stories behind them. From a grammatical point of view, it’s up to us to add the verbs.

Suggested Readings by Elizabeth Klise

I like books that mix history with other genres like fiction and poetry. Two of my favorites are the novel Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders and the memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal. If you decide to read Amber Eyes, try to find the black cover, hardback, illustrated version. Also, not too long ago, the Jewish Museum in New York City staged a great exhibition about this book.