July 8 Illinois History Minute

It’s July 8th. And on this day in 2009, Cook County sheriff’s investigators raided Burr Oak Cemetery, a predominately Black cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Alsip. Acting on a complaint filed by the owners, they found that employees were reselling already used cemetery plots, either by digging up and dumping bodies from older graves or burying the recently deceased on top of them. Eventually, four employees were convicted in the case. A reinternment ceremony for remains that had been disturbed was held in 2016.

On this day in 1996, a groundbreaking ceremony was held on the University of Illinois campus for the current home of WILL Radio and TV. WILL would move into Campbell Hall for Public Telecommunication in 1998.