Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the six organizations that hosted Crossroads: Change in Rural America in Illinois—Chester Public Library (Tammy Grah, project director), the Old School Museum in Winchester (Tricia Demby Wallace, project director), the Shelby County Bicentennial Committee (Brenda Elder and Freddie Fry, project directors), the Atlanta Museum (Catherine Maciariello, Rachel Neisler, and William Thomas, project directors), Marshall Public Library (Alyson Thompson, project director), and the DeKalb County History Center (Michelle Donahoe, project director)—and the many volunteers, staff members, and board members of those institutions, as well as other organizations and individuals who contributed in multiple ways to the exhibition and related activities in each community.

I thank the members of the Museum on Main Street program staff within the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service for their kindness and support: Tiffany Cheng, Terri Cobb, Robbie Davis, Carol Harsh, and Selwyn Ramp. Thanks also to the curators of Crossroads: Change in Rural America: Ann McCleary of the University of West Georgia Center for Public History and Debra Reid of The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.

My gratitude to our enormously helpful exhibition consultants: Patricia Miller of the Illinois Heritage Association and Lance Tawzer of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum (and previously of Naper Settlement). Additionally, I thank Illinois Humanities and appreciate the contributions of many current and former Illinois Humanities employees, board members, interns, and consultants, including (but not limited to) Fairouz AbuGhazaleh, Tarshel Beards, Alyssa Bierce, H.O. Brownback, Donna Burton, Mary Daniels, Paul Durica, Deborah Epstein, Mark Hallett, Elliot Heilman, Morven Higgins, Jin Jun, Gabrielle Lyon, Kay Rippelmeyer-Tippy, Abigail Hart Schmitt, Colin Smith, Zerline Thompson, Tia Williams, Jenn Yoo, and Angel Ysaguirre. Thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities for its support of Illinois Humanities’ activities.

I also thank professors Jessica DeSpain of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Travis Stimeling of West Virginia University for their helpful advice regarding publication of this essay. I am grateful to the Illinois Open Publishing Network for the opportunity to publish “A Bicentennial Crossroads” and to the members of its staff—Elizabeth Budd, Alex Dryden, Beatrice Pavia, Mary Ton, Dan Tracy, and Angela Watters—for their patience and gracious assistance.