October 6 Illinois History Minute

It’s October Sixth. And on this day in 1818, Shadrach Bond was inaugurated as the new state of Illinois’ first governor. Bond had previously served as the Illinois Territory’s non-voting representative in Congress.

On this day in 1853, Black delegates and observers gathered in Chicago to open the Convention of the Colored Citizens of the State of Illinois. Topping the convention’s agenda was how to fight Illinois’ recently enacted Black laws, which used fines and indentured servitude to punish Black migration into the state.

Edith Benham Helm was born on this day in 1874. She married a prominent Navy Admiral from Grayville. But Mrs. Helm had her own distinctive position, as the social secretary to three Democratic First Ladies --- Edith Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Bess Truman.