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1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, Jun Fujita was born Junnosuke Fujita in a village
3near Hiroshima, Japan on December 13, 1888; he was among the
4Issei, the first generation to leave Japan; he settled in
5Canada first, where he worked odd jobs to save enough money to
6move to the United States; he then moved to Chicago and
7graduated from Wendell Phillips Academy High School; he studied
8mathematics at the Armour Institute of Technology, now known as
9the Illinois Institute of Technology, and planned to become an
10engineer; and
 
11    WHEREAS, The Japanese community in Chicago numbered only in
12the hundreds, and Jun Fujita made a home for himself among the
13creative class; to help pay his way through college, he took a
14job as the first and only photojournalist at the Chicago
15Evening Post, which later became the Chicago Daily News; he
16soon fell in love with Florence Carr; recognized as a
17mixed-race couple, they opted not to have children out of
18concerns over how a biracial child would be perceived and were
19prevented from marrying for many years due to laws prohibiting
20interracial marriages and relationships; and
 
21    WHEREAS, Jun Fujita established himself as a master in
22photojournalism when the profession was still in its infancy in
231919; he was one of the first photojournalists and the first

 

 

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1Japanese-American photojournalist; he was the only
2photographer to capture two of the century's biggest events,
3the aftermath of the St. Valentine's Day massacre and the
4sinking of the S.S. Eastland; and
 
5    WHEREAS, Jun Fujita also photographed and documented the
6racism against African-Americans in the Chicago area; his
7photograph of a black man who was beaten unconscious and lying
8on the ground inches away from the bloodied brick used by his
9assailants is one of the most viscerally powerful images from
10Chicago's 1919 race riots; and
 
11    WHEREAS, Jun Fujita typically let his images speak for
12themselves; in the case of the photograph of the man beaten
13during the riots, the photographer took the injured man to the
14hospital, where he later died, and only then rushed back to the
15newspaper offices with his film of the murder; and
 
16    WHEREAS, Noted images from the 1919 race riots are among
17the few photographs Jun Fujita actually saved of his own work,
18an indicator of their significance; therefore, be it
 
19    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE
20HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
21we recognize the importance of Jun Fujita's photography and the
22impact it had on highlighting the realities of racism at the

 

 

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1time; and be it further
 
2    RESOLVED, That we urge that the history of Jun Fujita and
3his work be included in the African American history curriculum
4that is currently mandated and taught in all schools in the
5State; and be it further
 
6    RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
7presented to the family of Jun Fujita, the Chicago History
8Museum, the Illinois Museum Association, the DuSable Museum of
9African American History, and the Illinois Press Photographers
10Association.