President Barack Obama is expected to announce the Pullman Park neighborhood in Chicago as the country's newest national monument. The move is part of a larger effort to recognize more diversity in the country's public lands.
"President Obama will designate Chicago’s Pullman Park district, an iconic site in African American and labor history, a national monument next week," reports Juliet Eilperin.
The possibility that Pullman could gain the protection of the National Park Service first made news in January of 2014. At the time, caution was the word regarding the plausibility of the neighborhood becoming a national park.
"The area, which includes nearly 90 percent of the original buildings that rail car magnate George Pullman built a century ago for his factory town, was the birthplace of the nation’s first African American union," according to Eilperin.
Katherin Skiba also reports that the news about President Obama's forthcoming designation (under the powers of the Antiquities Act) has elicited a positive response from supporters of the plan to add the neighborhood to the system of national parks. Skiba quotes a spokeswoman for House Democrat Robin Kelly, who represents the Pullman area, to express the congresswoman's vision for the new national monument as a tourist attraction benefitting the entire state, not just the city of Chicago.
FULL STORY: Obama to make Chicago’s Pullman Park a national monument
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