By Dave Dahl
SPRINGFIELD – A young Abraham Lincoln stands watch over Second Street in front of the state Capitol, but he was not born in Illinois. Ronald Reagan was. And it’s possible a young Reagan could join Lincoln and others outside the statehouse.
Jamel Wright, Eureka’s first woman and first Black to be college president, tells an Illinois House task force on statues and monuments about the Reagan Eureka knows.
“The Eureka College Reagan story is an important and significant one to the life of understanding Ronald Reagan,” Wright told lawmakers. “However, it is not inherently political. It is a story of a young man who attended a college founded by abolitionists in 1855.”
There, Wright says, a freshman Reagan was called upon to give a speech supporting students who protested college conditions. The story goes that that was the first example of Reagan as “the Great Communicator” – and that through radio, Hollywood, the Screen Actors Guild presidency, and the U.S. presidency, the 1932 Eureka degree was the highest he had earned.
“Great Communicator”? State Rep. Mary Flowers (D-Chicago), who chairs the task force, says along with “Morning in America” comes “welfare queen.”
“This image has stuck,” Flowers said, “not because it was true – not because it was true – but because it was a convenient way to celebrate ‘morning in America’ without having to acknowledge the nightmare of systematic racism that is also very much a part of our history.”
Wright showed up at the task force meeting to support the idea of a Reagan statue for Springfield, and a group is forming to raise private money for it, pending legislative approval.
Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].
