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Reader SubmissionsA standing invitation

From the editor's desk

Send Me Your Story

Your grandparents had a piece of this. I'd like to put it on the record before it's gone.

· · ·

If your grandfather worked the bandstand at Cawley's, or your great-aunt was a hostess at the Silver Congo, or your family kept a matchbook from the Cotton Club in a drawer for sixty years — I want to know. I'm Kevin Champlin. I built this site. I'm one person, not a publication, and I read every message that comes in.

The newspapers are gone. The microfilm is fading. The people who watched First Street fill up on a Saturday night in 1946 are mostly gone too. What survives is in family photographs, attic boxes, and the stories told at kitchen tables. There is no other archive being assembled for this. If your family has a piece of it, the only way it gets preserved is if you send it.

What I promise back

  • 1.I write back personally within seven days. From kevin@champlinenterprises.com. By name. Confirming what you sent and what I'll do with it.
  • 2.If your story or photographs make a future edition of the field study, I send you the credit line as it'll appear, before anything is published.
  • 3.If your photograph is the first surviving image we have of one of the named clubs — Silver Congo, Cotton Club, Rose Bowl, Club 359, Little Jimmy's Club 109, or any of the others — it gets its own dossier page on this site, with you credited as the source.
  • 4.Nothing gets sold or syndicated.This isn't a content farm. The field study is non-commercial. Your story stays here, with the credit you set, with the option to withdraw it any time.

Already on the record

The Cosgrove family · the Cawley family · the Hegeler-Carus descendants · the late Herbie Hummer (via Steve Stout's Starved Rock Stories) · the Canal Corridor Association

And the empty seats at this table are waiting for you.

Your name

Your email

I write back from kevin@champlinenterprises.com — within seven days.

Subject — what's your story about?

Tell me the story

Photographs, matchbooks, postcards, documents

Up to 10 files, 25 MB each. JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PDF. Period photos of any of the named clubs are especially welcome — even out of focus or marked up.

Permission

This might not work. Most submissions will be a paragraph or a single photograph. That's fine. The smallest piece is still a piece.

Or by mail

If forms aren't your thing, write to me directly at kevin@champlinenterprises.com. I read every message.