Editorial: Remembering and honoring Margaret Burroughs

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It’s a name Chicagoans will now remember.

The Chicago Park District board on Wednesday voted to rename 31st Street Beach after the late Margaret Taylor Burroughs, finally giving the cultural leader a fitting and lasting tribute.

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It’s the third in a spate of recent namings for significant Chicago women. First came a tribute to former First Lady Maggie Daley, next for former Mayor Jane Byrne. And now Burroughs, the distinguished artist, writer and co-founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History. As with Daley and Byrne, all of Chicago will benefit from knowing about Burroughs, who died in 2010 at age 95 after serving 25 years as a Park District commissioner.

Burroughs was a pioneer among Chicago women, an inspiring leader of the African-American community and, purely and simply, a great Chicagoan. A gorgeous piece of lakefront property, a stunning beach on Chicago’s mid-South Side, is just the right spot.

Burroughs led a remarkable life and contributed greatly to the cultural scene in Chicago. She attended Englewood High School and earned a master’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She helped establish the South Side Community Art Center and helped found the Lake Meadows Art Fair in the early 1950s, an important showcase for African-American artists. And she and her second husband, Charles Gordon Burroughs, founded what would become the DuSable Museum, running it first out of their Bronzeville home in 1961.

During an announcement at the beach on Tuesday, as children played nearby, Ald. Will Burns said the tribute was needed “so that they know that there were powerful African-American people who saw the world not as it was, but as it could be.”

Burroughs was an artist, a doer and a trailblazer. Now, all Chicago will know her name, and most importantly, her story.

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