Middle West US
Exploring Midwest History and Culture
An Immigrant Institution Reckons with its Past
February 11, 2026
By Jane Simonsen
Augustana College was founded in Chicago in 1860 as an effort to make a place for Swedish-Lutheran immigrants to maintain their faith traditions in a divided nation. By 1875, the seminary and college had settled on the banks of the Mississippi in Rock Island, Illinois, cultivating a campus where students could remain rooted in their Swedish Lutheran identity while navigating in a new homeland.
As ICE raids in Chicago and Minneapolis draw attention to the immigrant Midwest, many are struggling to understand how belonging is defined in a region so recently settled by immigrants like those who founded Augustana. Contributors to the volume Called to Reckon (all former or current Augustana students, faculty, and administrators) consider how well an institution founded by immigrants has lived out its historical commitment and current mission to be both “rooted and open.”…Read More
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“Here on the prairies of Illinois and the Middle West we can see a long way in many directions…Here there are no barriers, no defenses, to ideas and aspirations. We want none; we want no shackles on the mind or the spirit, no rigid patterns of thought, no iron conformity.”
-Adlai Stevenson