Meet Lulu Johnson – Johnson County’s New Namesake. A graduate of SUI – BA in 1929 and a Masters in History (1930) – Johnson went on to distinguish herself as the second African-American woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in History, and the first to receive a Doctorate of any kind in Iowa! In June 2021, Johnson County, Iowa did something that rarely happens – they officially changed their eponyn, removing a racist slave-holding southerner in favor of this amazing African-American Iowa farm girl who spent her life teaching us things we all need to know.

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Visit our Black History Month page…

Our Picture Of The Week is an Our Iowa Heritage blog series that offers you a little bit of Iowa trivia from a large selection of stories on our website. Subscribe to this FREE blog and you’ll get a new email from us daily. Click to learn more.

February 8, 1980 – St. Mary’s Catholic Church & Rectory – located at 220 E. Jefferson Street – is designated on the National Register of Historic Places.

The first Mass in Iowa City was celebrated by a frontier missionary, the Rev. Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli on December 20, 1840. It was attended by 28 people in a building that doubled as a private home and a hotel owned by Ferdinand Haberstroh. St. Mary’s parish was established by Mazzuchelli in 1841, named St. Mary of the Assumption, and a small building was largely completed by 1842. The current 1869 church was built around the existing one, which then was demolished from the inside and carried out piece by piece. The beautiful 140-foot steeple on the new facility was added in 1874.

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This Day In History is an Our Iowa Heritage blog series that offers you a little bit of Iowa trivia from a large selection of stories on our website. Subscribe to this FREE blog and you’ll get a new email from us daily. Click to learn more.

February 7, 1857 – After receiving a vote of confidence and a guarantee of annual funding from the Sixth General Assembly of Iowa, the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) is birthed in Iowa City.

Did you know that the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI) was formed right here in Iowa City in 1857? Did you also know that over the last 168 years (1857-2025), SHSI has had its offices and historical collections on or near campus – in seven different Iowa City locations? From Old Capitol to Schaeffer Hall, and from an Old Stone Church to the UI Centennial Building, SHSI has shown its faithful commitment to bringing the important stories of Iowa’s past into the everyday lives of today’s UI students.

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This Day In History is an Our Iowa Heritage blog series that offers you a little bit of Iowa trivia from a large selection of stories on our website. Subscribe to this FREE blog and you’ll get a new email from us daily. Click to learn more.

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