Featured Evanstonian: Lori Osborne

Press release from the City of Evanston:

03/10/2022 3:00 PM

In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re featuring Lori Osborne, a longtime resident who has dedicated her career to studying the history of women in Evanston.

Lori moved to Evanston with her family in 1990. Shortly after, she began volunteering at the Evanston History Center (EHC) and the Frances Willard House Museum, where she became passionate about the community’s history. Building on that passion, along with her love of old buildings and architecture, of which Evanston has plenty, she found her way to the graduate program at Loyola University Chicago in Public History.

After earning her master’s in 2004, she began working at the Evanston History Center as an archivist and not long after became the director of the Evanston Women’s History Project, a position she’s held for the past 15 years. Most recently, she also serves as the director at the Frances Willard House Museum.

Over the past 15 years, the Evanston Women's History Project has involved countless hours of ongoing research (by many volunteers, interns and EHC staff) leading to the sharing of women's stories through exhibits, events and a website. The project was initially formed by a group of funders at the Evanston Community Foundation who wanted to help shed light on the lives of women and women’s organizations throughout Evanston history. The project is now based at the Evanston History Center. In the past few years, the project’s focus has been on telling more of the story, with a focus on Black women in leadership in Evanston and other BIPOC.

In addition to her previously mentioned volunteer work, Lori has served as a member of the League of Women Voters of Evanston, the Woman’s Club of Evanston, and the Northminster Presbyterian Church.

“Women’s history in Evanston is critical to the foundation of the community. Women have been involved in the story from the very beginning, starting with a push for women's education in the 1850s. This established a tone in the community that encouraged women to become educated” said Lori. “That tone then encouraged women to take larger roles outside of the home, moving into activism in the temperance and suffrage movements to the women’s rights movement.”

This press release was produced by the City of Evanston. The views expressed here are the author’s own.