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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 20, 2019)
Page 10 The Skanner BLACK HISTORY EDITION February 20, 2019 U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS Black History Ricki Stevenson, founder of Black Paris Tours., speaks about Sable during a Black History Month 2014 event. Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable N Maybe his father was a pirate and his mother an African slave. He may have been educated in France. But we know he founded Chicago and that, for years, he wasn’t recognized for it. Sometime in the 1780s, Du Sable and his family — he married a Potawatomie woman and had children — settled in the area then known as Eschecagou, near the mouth of the river. He lived there off and on for 20 years, enlarging his trading post and holdings. In 1800, he sold his Chicago land to John Kinzie, a White man. Kinzie was, for years, hailed as the first settler of Chicago. Du Sable died in 1818 in Missouri. During the 1960s, as Americans real- ized more and more African American A depiction of Pointe du Sable from A.T. Andreas contributions to the nation, du Sable 1884 book History of Chicago. started to get the credit he deserved. A 1963 article in Ebony magazine lamented that du Sable was not yet recog- nized in Chi- cago, point- ing out that his home was known as the Kinzie home- stead. In 1965, a plaza called Pioneer Court was built on the site of the du Sable home- stead, and in 1976, the same year Afri- The house built by John Baptiste Pointe du Sable close to the mouth of the Chicago can-American River as it appeared when owned by the Kinzie family in the early 1800s. History Month was federally the DuSable Museum of African-Amer- declared, the homesite was named a ican History, founded in 1961, located National Historic Landmark. in Washington Park. It is the oldest, and Since then, a number of bridges, before the National African-American roads and other Chicago-area places Museum in Washington, D.C., largest and institutions have been named for museum of African-American culture. du Sable. One of the most important is MOSES ENGINEERING COMPANY, NEW YORK ot much is known about Jean Bap- tiste Pointe du Sable’s early life; he was born around 1745, pos- sibly in Haiti, maybe in Canada. CHICAGO MAGAZINE The founder of Chicago is a mysterious man.