09/08/2026
What would you give up to make sure your community’s history was remembered?
Margaret Taylor-Burroughs and her husband, Charles, gave space in their own home.
In 1961, they helped start a museum on the ground floor of their house on Chicago’s South Side.
Working with a small group of supporters, they created a place where people could learn about Black history, art, and culture.
They called it the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art.
Today, we know it as the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center.
But pause for a moment on that first part.
A family home.
The kind of place where most of us keep our own photos, books, and treasured things became a place to share a much larger story.
Margaret brought an artist’s eye and a teacher’s sense of purpose to the work.
She made art, wrote books and poetry, and spent more than 20 years teaching at DuSable High School. She also taught at Kennedy-King College.
Helping people learn was already part of her daily life.
The museum gave that work another home. It made room for stories about Black life and achievement, with objects and artwork that visitors could see for themselves.
Think about what that can mean to a child.
You walk into a museum and discover that people from your community belong in the story.
Their work deserves to be studied.
Their lives deserve to be remembered. And perhaps your own ideas deserve a place, too.
The little museum grew beyond the house. It took the name of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and established its home in Washington Park.
Its collection now includes more than 15,000 pieces, from paintings and sculptures to objects that preserve moments in history.
That is a remarkable distance to travel from the ground floor of a family home.
Yet the beginning is what makes this story stay with you. Margaret, Charles, and their supporters took something deeply personal the history of their community and made space for other people to discover it.
Have you visited the DuSable Museum, or did you first learn about it on a school trip?
