By: Nate Carsten
The Parkland Campus seems perfectly placed for all the students’ needs, but over 50 years ago, Parkland was in downtown Champaign, with many different buildings acting as separate faculty housing.
Guido’s, the bar and grill with the best alcoholic milkshakes in town, was once the Parkland library. You can find more fun history about this part of downtown here.
Photo Credits: Champaign County Historical Archives at the Urbana Free Library
The downtown situation for “Parkland” was only a temporary measure, as the board was planning on constructing the campus we call home now.
Back then, Parkland was called District 505 Community College. With a new building, it would need a new name. So, the board asked the people what the new and improved name should be. With this, there were a couple of interesting letters written back.
In early 1967 this took place with Lake of Woods Junior College or Lake View Junior College being contenders. But I believe the more interesting ones were Everett Dirksen Junior College and Elijah P. Lovejoy Junior College.
Everett Dirksen was an Illinois Republican Senator who served as Senate Minority Leader from 1959 to 1969. He also helped write and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Elijah P. Lovejoy was a man born in 1802 and ahead of his time. He was a Christian Minister, a journalist who started his paper, and above all, an abolitionist, the latter bringing his early death.
After moving his newspaper from St. Louis to Alton, Illinois, he shot and killed a pro-slavery mob. The mob aimed to destroy a warehouse where Lovejoy kept his press material and abolitionist materials. Lovejoy College sounds way more romantic when you take the weight of history on his name, and perhaps he will get his recognition one day.
