
For nearly five years, the former Foster School has been home to the Shorefront Legacy Center. For the general community, the site held a special significance being the de-facto segregated school in Evanston for decades before its shift to an experimental school in 1967. That site was the birthplace of the Dr. Martin Luther King Magnet School. Shorefront’s center had, for many, recalled their many stories and experiences in that school.
Shorefront has a new address!
Shorefront has made a new transition and continued moving from one historic home to a new historic home. On November 22, 2013, Shorefront took home in the lower level of Sherman United Methodist Church at 2214 Ridge Avenue. The congregation of Sherman represents the only historically African American United Methodist Church on Chicago’s Suburban North Shore.
In addition, Sherman UMC is named after Lula B. Sherman, an Evanston resident (c1920-1949) who donated the use of her home for the early organizing and worship services of this United Methodist movement.

With the assistance of our librarian volunteer, an archivist intern and a volunteer archivist (Cassandra, Angelique and Ben), along with several board members, the move took one week. The archivists focused on the Shorefront archives, cataloging, and transporting the items to the new site. Our librarian is reassembling the library holdings and creating a comfortable reading and research area. The Church is accessing enhancements to the general space.
Before the move, Shorefront remained busy until the week before the move. During the summer, the NAACP archives were processed along with several smaller collections. Shorefront held screenings of Alice’s Ordinary People at Shorefront and at the Metcalfe Building in Chicago. The center hosted Leadership Evanston’s history session, a presentation for staff at Lincolnwood Elementary School, and presented lecture for the Alumnae of Northwestern University on the local African American Communities.
Shorefront welcomed three group visits from Evanston Township High School’s senior studies class. The students viewed a short documentary on the Integration of Foster School and had an opportunity to learn more about proccessing archival collections from Angelique, our processor from the BMRC.
Lastly, Shorefront hosted a dinner for its honorary board. Eight members of the honorary board and six members of the board of directors enjoyed food from Hecky’s BBQ and were treated to a presentation by board president Chip Ratliff and founder Dino Robinson on Shorefront’s progress since 2002 and its vision for the future. After the presentation, the board fielded questions and ideas for consideration for its future benefit to the general community.
Shorefront Journal Volume One coming soon. . .
Shorefront Journal has been alive now for 15 months. As of this writing, the site has received over 11,200 views – averaging 26 per day. In January 2013, Shorefront made available its first annual, Shorefront Journal Volume 00, 2012, available on Lulu.com. The next annual, Volume 02 will be available January 2014 containing the 2013 postings – and you are going to love the cover! Why does Shorefront make the publication available? There are many who treasure a hard copy of the journal.
Encourage your contacts to visit the online journal and click “+Follow”. An email will be sent every time a new post appears while protecting your identity. We encourage comments! It adds to the article and has already proven useful in research. Sharing new information is an important part of the process! If you have a story or an idea for a story, please visit our submissions guidelines.
As always, don’t forget to like Shorefront on Facebook! It is the best way to get updates on Shorefront activities. Pass the link to your contacts!