RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, Josephine "Jo" Baskin Minow, age 95, passed away in Chicago on February 17, 2022;and
WHEREAS, The Chicago City Council has been informed ofthis occasion by Alderman Thomas Tunney of the 44th Ward: and
WHEREAS, Baskin Minow was born in Chicago on November 2, 1926, to Bessie and Salem Baskin, founder ofthe Baskin clothing stores. Jo grew up in Lakeview, attended Senn High School and received a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University in 1948; and
WHEREAS, Baskin Minow had a lifetime love affair with Chicago and Chicago history, spawned by her family's presence in the city for five generations; and
WHEREAS, she was the wife of Newton Minow for 72 years, who served as the chair of the Federal Communications Commission under John F. Kennedy and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2016, Ms. Baskin Minow blazed her own trail in Chicago through social and political landscapes; and
WHEREAS, While raising her own three children, Ms. Baskin Minow also fought to improve the lives of others. After teaching kindergarten and 5th grade at Francis W. Parker School in the late 1940s, she later became president ofthe Juvenile Protective Association originally founded by Jane Addams; and
WHEREAS, She also was a staunch believer in equal rights and advocacy, starting in her college days when she participated in the Quibblers — a group advocating against the exclusion of members of racial minority groups from university housing — at Northwestern University. In the mid-1970s, Ms. Baskin Minow joined a group of women pushing department stores to end racial discrimination, meeting with Marshall Fields to advocate for Black sales associates to be allowed on the floor; and
WHEREAS, In 1978, Ms. Baskin Minow returned to Northwestern University, to be a founding member of the Northwestern University Women's Board; and
WHEREAS, Her love for the city's history and its iconic institutions was demonstrated through her involvement in t...
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