Lane was born into an America where slavery was still in full force

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/10646418-452/1st-black-siu-grad-made-good-in-city.html

1st black SIU grad made good in city

By MARK BROWN [e-mail] February 14, 2012 9:36PM

Alexander Lane, the first African-American man to graduate from what would become Southern Illinois University, moved to Chicago in the early 1890s.

Lane enrolled at Rush Medical College, earned his doctor’s degree in 1895 and started a practice on the South Side. Later, he was elected twice to the Illinois House of Representatives, the first time in 1906 — three years before the NAACP was established.

All this clearly qualifies Lane as a trailblazer for African Americans in Illinois, yet one about whom little was known beyond that bare biographical outline.

That was before educators at SIU’s Paul Simon Public Policy Institute made it a point last year to dig deeper.