RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, Julieanna L. Richardson will be honored by the Board of the Chicago Historical Society at its 27th Annual Making History Awards on June 2, 2021; and
WHEREAS, The Chicago City Council has been informed of her achievement by Alderman Edward M. Burke; and
WHEREAS, Julieanna will be receiving the John Hope Franklin Making History Award for Distinction in Historical Scholarship; and
WHEREAS, Over the past twenty-six years, the Making History Awards have honored 121 Chicagoans and 13 Chicago companies whose enduring contributions have made Chicago a better and vibrant place to live; and
WHEREAS, Julieanna was bom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to her parents, Margaret and Julius Richardson; and
WHEREAS, She attended Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan for high school, and in 1976 received her BA. degree in Theater Arts and American Studies from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she graded magna cum laude; and
WHEREAS, In 1980, Julieanna received her J,D. degree from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and
WHEREAS, After graduation from law school, Julieanna moved to Chicago to work for Jenner & Block, where she worked on both corporate and commercial matters with an emphasis on corporate, banking, and copyright law; and
WHEREAS, In 1985, she founded Shop Chicago, a first-of-its-kind regionally based home-shopping channel reaching 750,000 cable households in the Chicago market and featuring local vendors and retail establishments; and
WHEREAS, Julieanna started her own production company, SCTN Teleproductions, specializing in corporate videos, cable TV programming and new media which served as the local production arm for C-SPAN; and
WHEREAS, In February 2000, she founded HistoryMakers which has recorded more than 2,000 interviews (8,000 hours of footage) with both well-known and unsung African Americans, including General Colin Powell, Angela Davis, Julian Bond, Russell Simmons, Benjamin Carson, Harry Belafonte, Ernie Banks, Gwen Ifill, Maya Angelou, and President Barack Obama when he was an Illinois State Senator; and
WHEREAS, Julieanna currently sits on the Honors Council of Lawyers for the Creative Arts and was appointed in 2011 to the Comcast NBCUniversal African American Diversity Council; and
WHEREAS, In May 2012, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Howard University during the school's 144^ Commencement Convocation; now, therefore
BE IT RESOLVED, That we, the Mayor and the members of the Chicago City Council, assembled this twenty-first day of April, 2021, do hereby congratulate Julieanna L. Richardson on receiving the John Hope Franklin Making History Award and do hereby extend our best wishes to her; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, Thata suitable copy of this resolution be presented to Julieanna L. Richardson.
Edwa -d M. Burke Alderman, 14th Ward