Pekin, Illinois

In Illinois as elsewhere, indigenous peoples lived along rivers for transportation, water, and fishing. At the time of European exploration, the several historical tribes in the area were of the Anishinaabe-language family, within the larger Algonquian-speaking tribes.

In January 1680, Robert de LaSalle and 33 fellow explorers landed their canoes on the eastern bank of the Illinois River. They built a winter refuge in what is now the southeast quarter of section 1 of Pekin Township (25N 5W). They also encountered historical Kickapoo peoples to the east as far as the Wabash River near the present Illinois-Indiana border.

Pekin and the Pekin area has a rich Native American heritage. South of Pekin on the Mackinaw River was the site of Chief Lebourse Sulky's Village in 1812. This was how it looked to an American of the time:

At Little Makina, a river on the south side of Illinois, five leagues below Peoria, is a band, consisting of Kickapoos, Chippeways, Ottaways and Pottowottamies. They are called warriors, and their head man is Lebourse or Sulky. Their number is sixty men, all desperate fellows and great plunderers.

— Ninian Edwards, letter of May 1812, Elvirade, Randolph County, Illinois Territory[6]

Sulky oversaw a village with a mixed population of the Anishinaabe-speaking Pottawatomi, Kickapoo and Ojibwa people. He fought alongside Tecumseh in the War of 1812, as did most of the chiefs of the Illinois Valley area. Later, this area was the site of Chief Shabbona's Pottawatomi village in the period prior to and during the Black Hawk War of 1832. Like Sulky, Shabbona had joined with Tecumseh during the War of 1812 and was with him when he fell at the Battle of Tippecanoe. After the war, Shabbona made peace with the U.S. government and protected white settlers in the Pekin area during the Black Hawk War. (History of Tazewell County (1879), Charles C. Chapman, pp. 195–196, 254–265)

Following the Black Hawk War, the State of Illinois renegotiated treaties with the Native American tribes in the state to extinguish their claims and remove all Indians from the state. The Pottawatomi village was relocated about a mile north to Worley Lake for a short time, until the inhabitants were removed to a reservation near Topeka, Kansas. Shabbona later moved north to Seneca near the Illinois River, where he died in 1859 on land that the citizens of Ottawa had given him.

Farmer Jonathan Tharp, who came from Ohio, was the first non-Indian resident, building a log cabin in 1824 on a ridge above the Illinois River at a site near the present foot of Broadway Drive. Franklin School was later erected near this site. Other settlers soon joined him, including his father Jacob Tharp who arrived from Ohio in 1825. They lived near Chief Shabbona's large Indian village of about 100 wigwams, populated primarily by Pottawatomi, which was situated along Gravel Ridge, on the eastern shore of what is today Pekin Lake in northwest Pekin. Tharp's log cabin was south of Shabbona's village.

After a county surveyor laid out a "town site" in 1829, an auction of the town plat and site was held in Springfield, Illinois. The village site was awarded to Major Isaac Perkins, Gideon Hawley, William Haines and Major Nathan Cromwell. Mrs. Ann Eliza Cromwell selected the name of the city, Peking or "Pékin", the French spelling.[7] Nathan Cromwell named many of the city streets after the wives and daughters of early Pekin settlers. It was long held, as first expressed in W.H. Bates' history of Pekin included in the 1870 Pekin City Directory, that Cromwell was assisted by his wife Ann Eliza in the naming of the streets.

It has been stated that Mrs. Cromwell named the town "Pekin" because she thought Peking was on the exact opposite side of the world from the town she founded. Uncle John's Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader. Bathroom Reader's Press. 2004. (This is not as improbable as it sounds: in the late 1700s and early 1800s, China and the United States were often thought to be on the exact opposite sides of the world and towns were often named after locations in China. Another example is Canton, Ohio, named in 1805.) "Peking" was sometimes romanized as "Pekin" at this time, supported by several other US towns founded around this time named "Pekin" (example Pekin, Ohio).

Pekin is known as the site where Abraham Lincoln and other ambitious politicians struck a deal in the 1840s. Lincoln was among several local Whig politicians who wanted to serve in the U.S. Congress. To keep from splitting the Whig vote, the competitors agreed to support each other for one term each in Congress. The pact is called the Pekin Agreement in Lincoln biographies. Lincoln ran and was elected to the 30th United States Congress in 1846, and retired at the end of the term. This single term in Congress was Lincoln's only experience in Washington before he was elected President.

Although Illinois was a "free" state, pro-slavery sentiment was predominant throughout southern and central Illinois, which had been largely settled by Southerners, some of whom were slaveholders before the state was admitted to the union. Cities with pro-slavery sentiment included Peoria and Pekin (see Charles L. Dancey's "Pekin, KKK, blacks: It goes back to Copperheads, Union League," Peoria Journal Star, 13 April 1989). According to the 1949 Pekin "Centenary," p. 15,

"Pekin was a pro-slave city for years. Some of the original settlers had been slave-owners themselves, and the overwhelming sentiment in Pekin was Democratic. Stephen A. Douglas, not Abraham Lincoln, was the local hero, although Lincoln was well-liked, and had some German following."

Chiefly due to an influx of German immigrants after the Revolutions of 1848, abolitionist sentiment began to flourish in Pekin. Among Pekin's abolitionist leaders was Dr. Daniel Cheever, whose home at the corner of Capitol and Court streets was a depot on the Underground Railroad. Other Pekin abolitionists were the brothers Samuel and Hugh Woodrow. (Catherine Street in Pekin is named for Samuel's wife, and Amanda Street is named for Hugh's wife.)

During the Civil War, the inhabitants of Pekin were divided between the pro-slavery element, who favored the Confederacy, and the abolitionist and pro-Union element. Early in the war, the secessionist "Knights of the Golden Circle" openly supported secession and slavery in Pekin. The 1949 Pekin Centenary, p. 15, says the Knights were "aggressive and unprincipled," and "those who believed in the Union spoke often in whispers in Pekin streets and were wary and often afraid." As a response to the Knights' influence, Dr. Cheever and 10 other men gathered at 331 Court Street in Pekin on 25 June 1862 to establish the first council of the Union League of America, to promote patriotism and loyalty to the Union in the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Its members hoped to counter Northern disillusionment with President Lincoln's military policies after early Union defeats in the American Civil War. Although closely allied with the Republican Party, the League sought to enroll all Union supporters, regardless of party. The anti-slavery Germans of Pekin took an active role in the Union League in their city. Find more information on the Union League Here: Union League Club of Chicago.

In an early 20th-century revival, the Ku Klux Klan recruited new members as a fraternal organization, opposing new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and becoming influential in rapidly industrializing urban areas in the Midwest and West, as well as in the South. It had numerous members in Pekin and other Illinois cities.[8] It was during this period that leading Klansmen took over ownership of the city newspaper, the Pekin Daily Times; they used it as an organ of Klan viewpoints. They sold off the paper within a few years.

The city had an identity and reputation as a sundown town;[9] it was known to be hostile to black residents and few settled there. On the other hand, some Pekin church pastors participated in the civil rights marches of the 1960s, and U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen from Pekin was integral to achieving passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[10]

"In 2000, 707 of the 863 blacks are male, mostly 18–44. [The census recorded] 5 households with a total pop. of 16 blacks."[11]

The federal prison system has an institution in Pekin.

Pekin Community High School District 303 includes Pekin and some nearby areas. The district's high school is Pekin Community High School (PCHS).

The school teams were known as the Pekin Chinks from the 1930s until 1980 when the school administration changed the nickname to the Dragons.[18] The team mascots were a male and a female student wearing stereotypical Chinese attire. The mascots would strike a gong whenever the team scored. An earlier attempt was made by a visit of Chinese American groups to change the name from Chinks during the 1974–1975 school year; this was voted down by the student body. The event received national attention.

In the 1960s the campus was split into two buildings, with the freshman and sophomores at one campus (West Campus) and the juniors and seniors at another (East Campus). East Campus was expanded in 1997–1998, after which date West Campus closed and all four classes were reunited at the newer campus. After the local community lost in an attempt to save the school building, demolition on the west campus began in 2012 and was finished in 2014. A Dollar General now stands where the historic West Campus once stood.