Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we check out six SIU Press titles that won honors at the Illinois State Historical Society’s 2025 Best of Illinois History Awards. The awards were hosted April 26, 2025 in Springfield, and SIU Press is incredibly grateful to the Illinois State Historical Society for these honors.
Wear Some Armor in Your Hair: Urban Renewal and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Lincoln Park by Brian Mullgardt won this year’s Russell P. Strange Book of the Year Award! In August of 1968, approximately 7,000 people protested the Vietnam War against the backdrop of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. This highly televised event began peacefully but quickly turned into what was later termed a “police riot.” Mullgardt’s investigation of this event and the preceding tensions shines a light on the ministers, Yippies, and community members who showed up and stood together against the brutality of the police.
Four SIU Press books won awards in the “Books, Scholarly” category: The Lead Mine Men: The Enduring 45th Illinois Volunteer Infantry by Thomas B. Mack; Olmsted’s Riverside: Stewardship Meets Innovation in a Landmark Village by Cathy Jean Maloney; Watchman, Tell Us: John J. Bird and Black Politics in Post-Civil War Illinois by Wayne T. Pitard; and Pulling off the Sheets: The Second Ku Klux Klan in Deep Southern Illinois by Darrel Dexter and John A. Beadles, from our Saluki Publishing imprint.
Find out more on this week's edition of Inside The Blanket Fort.
