This coming weekend, as part of our celebration of Black History Month, the Forest Preserves of Cook County is hosting events that will help attendees learn more about a pioneering environmental justice warrior, the Underground Railroad route through the Calumet Region, and more.
Crabtree Nature Center in Barrington will host a two-part program starting at 1 p.m. on Saturday, February 24. First up is a walk-and-talk delivered by Forest Preserves laborer Israel Hollins on the beautiful Giants Hollow Trail. The topic is the life and work of Hazel Johnson, known as the “mother of the environmental justice movement.”
After her husband’s death from cancer—and after a suspicious number of people in her Altgeld Gardens community also had died of cancer—Johnson discovered that the Calumet region had the highest levels of cancer incidence in the Chicagoland area. Further research revealed that the industrial waste being disposed of in her community—and many other Black, Brown, and low-income neighborhoods—posed grave health hazards to residents.
“That was her awakening to the struggle she was about to engage in for the rest of her life,” Hollins says. In 1979, Johnson founded People for Community Recovery, which initially focused on tenants’ rights in Altgeld Gardens, expanded its scope to focus on environmental justice. Her daughter Cheryl Johnson continues the work.
“It’s important to highlight Black environmentalists who lived in the Chicago region and made a huge difference in their community,” says Janice Culver, assistant director at Crabtree. “And Hazel Johnson is interconnected to the Forest Preserves, too, because Altgeld Gardens is adjacent to Beaubien Woods.”
After Hollins’ walk-and-talk, Crabtree will host a celebration featuring music, children’s books, hibiscus tea and other refreshments relevant to cultures of the Black diaspora, as well as an informative Zoom talk by historian Larry McClellan of the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project, a volunteer group in the south suburbs that keeps the mid-19th century history of the Underground Railroad alive.
The Underground Railroad and its connection to the Forest Preserves will be the focus of a self-guided event at Sand Ridge Nature Center in South Holland from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on both Saturday, February 24, and Sunday, February 25. Three of the four trails on the site will be dotted with informational posts about different aspects of the Underground Railroad, says Cre Walls, director of Sand Ridge.
“One will talk about navigating without a map and how freedom seekers found their way—maybe they used the stars, maybe they used landmarks, maybe they used the way the water was flowing,” he says. “Another trail will talk about different types of foods they ate along the way: acorns, berries, if they fished, what types of animals they might have eaten. The third trail will talk about the Underground Railroad in Illinois—places they stopped at, people they might have met along the way.”
Tom Shepherd of the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project will give a presentation on Sunday starting at 2 p.m. through 2:45 p.m.
Learn more about these events and others on our Events Page.