Full Text of HR0513 101st General Assembly
HR0513 101ST GENERAL ASSEMBLY |
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| 1 | | HOUSE RESOLUTION
| 2 | | WHEREAS, Jun Fujita was born Junnosuke Fujita in a village | 3 | | near Hiroshima, Japan on December 13, 1888; he was among the | 4 | | Issei, the first generation to leave Japan; he settled in | 5 | | Canada first, where he worked odd jobs to save enough money to | 6 | | move to the United States; he then moved to Chicago and | 7 | | graduated from Wendell Phillips Academy High School; he studied | 8 | | mathematics at the Armour Institute of Technology, now known as | 9 | | the Illinois Institute of Technology, and planned to become an | 10 | | engineer; and
| 11 | | WHEREAS, The Japanese community in Chicago numbered only in | 12 | | the hundreds, and Jun Fujita made a home for himself among the | 13 | | creative class; to help pay his way through college, he took a | 14 | | job as the first and only photojournalist at the Chicago | 15 | | Evening Post, which later became the Chicago Daily News; he | 16 | | soon fell in love with Florence Carr; recognized as a | 17 | | mixed-race couple, they opted not to have children out of | 18 | | concerns over how a biracial child would be perceived and were | 19 | | prevented from marrying for many years due to laws prohibiting | 20 | | interracial marriages and relationships; and
| 21 | | WHEREAS, Jun Fujita established himself as a master in | 22 | | photojournalism when the profession was still in its infancy in | 23 | | 1919; he was one of the first photojournalists and the first |
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| 1 | | Japanese-American photojournalist; he was the only | 2 | | photographer to capture two of the century's biggest events, | 3 | | the aftermath of the St. Valentine's Day massacre and the | 4 | | sinking of the S.S. Eastland; and
| 5 | | WHEREAS, Jun Fujita also photographed and documented the | 6 | | racism against African-Americans in the Chicago area; his | 7 | | photograph of a black man who was beaten unconscious and lying | 8 | | on the ground inches away from the bloodied brick used by his | 9 | | assailants is one of the most viscerally powerful images from | 10 | | Chicago's 1919 race riots; and
| 11 | | WHEREAS, Jun Fujita typically let his images speak for | 12 | | themselves; in the case of the photograph of the man beaten | 13 | | during the riots, the photographer took the injured man to the | 14 | | hospital, where he later died, and only then rushed back to the | 15 | | newspaper offices with his film of the murder; and
| 16 | | WHEREAS, Noted images from the 1919 race riots are among | 17 | | the few photographs Jun Fujita actually saved of his own work, | 18 | | an indicator of their significance; therefore, be it
| 19 | | RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE | 20 | | HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that | 21 | | we recognize the importance of Jun Fujita's photography and the | 22 | | impact it had on highlighting the realities of racism at the |
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| 1 | | time; and be it further | 2 | | RESOLVED, That we urge that the history of Jun Fujita and | 3 | | his work be included in the African American history curriculum | 4 | | that is currently mandated and taught in all schools in the | 5 | | State; and be it further
| 6 | | RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be | 7 | | presented to the family of Jun Fujita, the Chicago History | 8 | | Museum, the Illinois Museum Association, the DuSable Museum of | 9 | | African American History, and the Illinois Press Photographers | 10 | | Association.
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