The early 1900s saw an influx of racism and discrimination in the Midwest, from anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, and anti-African American sentiment, to race riots in Springfield, Chicago, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Ku Klux Klan became a force in central Illinois. Segregation grew in Bloomington-Normal and what had been a thriving black middle class was gradually destroyed.

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Bloomington-Normal had only one documented lynching.

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John L. Walcott was Bloomington's first undertaker.

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Irons Folsom Fox blazed the path for women in Bloomington-Normal who had dreams of writing in the late 1800s.

Baseball fans remember the greats of the sport: the Babe Ruths, the Lou Gehrigs. And the players that didn't quite make the Hall of Fame often slip through the cracks of our memory.

One of Bloomington-Normal's early feminists, Anna May Christian, was proud to live her life as a single woman at the turn of the 20th century.

In 1935, switchboard operators for the Wabash Telephone Company handled an average of 60,000 calls coming through its downtown Bloomington building.

In the decade after women's suffrage, leaders of the female empowerment movement were eager to become more involved in governmental affairs.

On the Fourth of July weekend in 1956, one of Bloomington's most famous residents returned to rally support ahead of the presidential election.

Dr. Eugene Covington was the first and only African American physician in McLean County in the early 20th century.