Anna-Lisa Cox

Anna-Lisa Cox, is an active historian, writer, and lecturer on the history of race relations in the nineteenth-century Midwest. She has been the recipient of numerous awards for her research, including the National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholars Award, the Gilder Lehrman Foundation Fellowship, and the Pew Younger Scholars Fellowship. She received her M.Phil. in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge, and her Ph.D. in American history from the University of Illinois. She is currently a Scholar in Residence at the Newberry Library of Chicago. Anna-Lisa first got interested in studying Covert while a senior at Hope College in Michigan. She had to do a senior paper in history and wanted to do local history because she already loved doing primary research (i.e. working with original documents, not just books). Hope College was about twenty miles from Covert, and a friend told her about the old and established African American community living there. As to why she found an integrated community interesting, that is a more complicated issue. Anna-Lisa was raised by parents who were passionate believers in integration and equal rights for all Americans, and her mother was an active participant in the Civil Rights struggles in Chicago in the late 1960's. These were not dead values, rather, her family daily lived out its beliefs in integration and equality. When she discovered an entire community that had done the same, but more than a hundred years ago, she was immediately moved and intrigued. In addition to researching and writing about issues surrounding race relations in the Midwest, Anna-Lisa is also a committed volunteer for City Light's Partners in Education Program . Since 1998 she done intensive one on one tutoring of inner-city minority students through this program. Starting in 2001 she has also been active in City Light's scholarship program, which gives scholarships to tutoring students who have been accepted to private high schools in Chicago. Her passion is helping the tutoring and scholarship students get into college and negotiate the tricky path to getting financial aid. Anna-Lisa currently lives on the South Side of Chicago with her husband, Michael and their dog Andy.