William (Bill) Adelman
1932 – 2009
Board member
Dr. Bill Adelman was a respected board member of the Maxwell Street Foundation (MSF). Bill was not only Professor of Labor & Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois at Chicago, but he was Founding Member/Vice President of the Illinois History Labor Society. His willingness to share his knowledge about labor history on Chicago’s West Side and particularly in the vicinity of Maxwell Street, contributed greatly to our mission at a time when the Foundation gathered and extolled significant historical events that occurred in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. Two such events were the 1877 Chicago German Furniture Workers Union attack by the National Guard at the West Side Turner Hall located at 12th St. (Roosevelt Rd.) and Union, and the following Battle of the Viaduct nearby at Union and 16th Streets that same day. Bill’s labor-related research appears in our book, Chicago’s Maxwell Street (Arcadia Publishing, Inc. 2002), produced by the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition in association with the Chicago Historical Society, in a caption that he guided and illustration he provided.