Who Was Hal Baron?
Collection Description
Policy researcher, professor, activist and philanthropist, Harold (“Hal”) M. Baron (1930-2017) is an unsung hero of the Civil Rights Movement. Preferring to work behind the scenes as a researcher and political strategist, not all of his body of work found publishers. In some instances, colleagues took credit for his high-profile accomplishments. As a result, Hal Baron has remained in obscurity.
Locations for Collection
Childhood
Harold Maurice Baron born in St. Louis, Missouri grew up in University City, the first suburb due west of downtown, lived in an upper-middle-class section, which was third Jewish, third Protestant, and a third Catholic. The rest of U City might have…
Youth
In high school race was hardly discussed as it was just assumed. The one teacher who broached the issue outside the conventional stereotypes did so within a frame of responsible stewardship. The most prestigious teacher in the school lived in…
The Chicago Maroon
Later in life, Dr. Baron would sometimes allude to his socialist roots, dating from his association with the Labor Youth League in the 1950s. But during his time as a PhD student at the University of Chicago, he wrote pieces published in the …
Chicago Urban League
Although I was committed to and supportive of the black movement theoretically and practically, my deep engagement was more accidental. When I was writing my dissertation, I taught at Wright Junior College in Chicago. The department chair got pissed…
Benjamin Willis
The desegregation of Chicago’s Public Schools played out as an epic drama in which Hal Baron spent years struggling against Superintendent Benjamin Willis and his inexorable network of allies.
Benjamin Willis—described in his Chicago Tribune…
The Chicago Freedom Movement
How Baron Got Into the Chicago Freedom Movement
Hal Baron’s role within the Chicago Freedom Movement went beyond his formal title of “Research Director” for the Chicago Urban League (CUL). Baron traveled the city to present for—in his own…
Gautreaux
Sixteen months after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, Hal Baron watched administrators riddle it with loopholes. Without immediate and decisive action, he argued, the U.S. would consign the new act to the same ineffective fate as that of…
The Poker Club
The Poker Club
Throughout his life, Dr. Baron maintained a complicated relationship with academia. He wanted his writings to be scholarly and he appreciated the pedagogical and investigative aspects of academic life. However, he always insisted that…
The Washington Administration
“He’s the most skilled political leader I’ve ever dealt with. Barack Obama would have a hard time being... smarter than Harold.” - Hal Baron
Hal was the public policy architect of the historic mayoral campaign of Harold Washington, and then served…
Central America
Following a lifetime of public service, research, and theoretical investigation of modern race relations, Baron became involved in economic and ecological development of base communities in Central America. He served as Chair of the Board of…
Reflections
Excerpted from Baron’s “Myrdal Preface: Remaking Race,” 2016 (Unpublished).
"'Nothing handed down from the past could keep race alive if we did not constantly reinvent and re-ritualize it to fit our own terrain. If race lives on today, it can do so…