Time: Sunday, 11/9/25, 2-3:30pm
Location: Wilmette History Museum, 609 Ridge Road, Wilmette, IL 60091, Phone: (847) 853-7666
https://wilmettehistory.org/event/ouilmette-documentary/
The Wilmette History Museum is proud to host the premiere of Ouilmette, a compelling new film that brings to life the story of Sharon Hoogstraten’s ancestor, a central figure in our community’s early history. Through archival research, storytelling, and cinematic interpretation, the film explores themes of settlement, heritage, and identity, inviting audiences to reflect on the lives that shaped Wilmette. This special premiere offers a chance to honor local history while engaging in meaningful conversation about how the past continues to inform our present. Join us for an afternoon of film, history, and community connection.
Produced with the historical consultancy of Sharon Hoogstraten (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) and Cole Rattan (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) and descendants of the Ouilmettes. Native American Music by William Buchholtz, Elexa Dawson, and Mark Jourdan.
Free for members, $5 for non-members
3-Month Series for One Important Text
The Warmth of Other Suns - The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
Sunday, 10/26/25: Part 1-3 IN-PERSON at Hugh's house: Sunday, 10/26/25, 1-3pm
Sunday, 12/21/25, 1-4pm Part 4: IN-PERSON at Ami's house in Glenview (Please RSVP by contacting Cindy or Maya and to get Ami's address.)
Sunday, 1/11/26 - LOCATION AND TIME TBD: Part 5 (to finish the book)
About The Warmth of Other Suns
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S FIVE BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
“A brilliant and stirring epic . . . Ms. Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what John Steinbeck did for the Okies in his fiction masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath; she humanizes history, giving it emotional and psychological depth.”—John Stauffer, The Wall Street Journal
“What she’s done with these oral histories is stow memory in amber.”—Lynell George, Los Angeles Times
In this beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson presents a definitive and dramatic account of one of the great untold stories of American history: the Great Migration of six million Black citizens who fled the South for the North and West in search of a better life, from World War I to 1970.
Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.
Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.
ABOUT US:
We are a group of adults and teens committed to anti-racist work, equity, and relationship building.
Join us to discuss works primarily by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) writers to learn about the BIPOC experience and history. Learn how to take action through our discussions.
Our goal is to move beyond conversation in order to create positive change in our community.