Title: Joseph Blackburn Rogers Papers, 1898-1976
Collection identifier: 239
Primary Creator: Rogers, Joseph Blackburn
Extent: 0.8 cubic feet
Subjects: Baptists, Clergy, Cook County--Chicago (Ill.), Genealogy, Prohibition, Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919, Sermons, Temperance, United States--Politics and government, World War, 1914-1918
Forms of Material: Personal papers, Professional papers
Joseph Blackburn Rogers (1867-1934) was born and raised in Kentucky, where he at first began a career as a teacher and then decided to study law. In 1895, he was ordained as a Baptist minister, and spent two years preaching in Kentucky before he moved to Moweaqua, Illinois, in 1897. He later served in Springfield from 1902 to 1907, in Quincy from 1907 to 1914, and Chicago from 1914 until his death in 1934.
In Chicago, Rogers served as the minister of the LaSalle Avenue Baptist Church. Once a thriving, upper-class neighborhood, the area by 1914 had become a rooming house district populated largely by newcomers to the city. Rogers took the dying church and revitalized it. He established kindergartens, a weekend vocational school, an employment bureau, programs for feeding and housing the unemployed and homeless, and several youth programs. Assistant ministers preached in Finnish, Swedish, and Persian. Under Rogers's direction, the church established nine satellite churches and fourteen Sunday Schools in the city and suburbs. The minister's favorite project became apartment housing where young people could live in a Christian atmosphere. His culminating effort was the seventeen-story Roger Williams Apartments at 1211-1217 North LaSalle Street, constructed beginning in the late 1920s. Due to financial problems, the apartments went into receivership and passed to new owners.
Rogers became a well-recognized figure on the post-World War I Chicago scene. Best known as an advocate of Prohibition, Rogers campaigned against gambling, prize fighting, and prostitution as well as alcohol. While a strong supporter of the national Republican party, he constantly sparred with the Chicago and state Republican organizations, which he considered corrupt. Rogers strongly backed America's entry into World War I, made Liberty Loan speeches, and established firm anti-communist credentials. His sermons and writings captured his views on private enterprise, church membership, the role of Christianity in the world, and the social and political issues of the day.
Baptists
Clergy
Cook County--Chicago (Ill.)
Genealogy
Prohibition
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
Sermons
Temperance
United States--Politics and government
World War, 1914-1918
Repository: Illinois History and Lincoln Collections
Acquisition Source: D. Katharine Rogers donated the collection to the University Library in 1981 and 1982.
URL: https://files.archon.library.illinois.edu/ihlcsfa/rogers-joseph-blackburn.pdf
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