We’re interested to see what input, if much, the community wants to offer in the effort to honor Dr. Percy Julian with a streetscape project along Chicago Avenue, from near his longtime home at East Avenue and over to Austin Boulevard.
As the village-hired consulting firm working on the project said last week, a major challenge is that so many people in Oak Park just aren’t familiar with Julian and his breakthrough work as an internationally respected chemist, or for the bravery he and his family showed in working to integrate an Oak Park that had no interest and a good bit of hate at the notion of Black families moving to the village. That would explain the firebombing of the home.
We strongly support this effort to recognize Dr. Julian in his hometown. Oak Park’s other lauded sons, Hemingway and Wright, had natural constituencies in the popular culture that allowed largely private philanthropic dollars to preserve and celebrate their local homes and status. And while to this day so many of us are still touched by the science Dr. Julian invented, we are going to need a more intentional effort to build his legacy in Oak Park.