By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — The city plans to rename a portion of Court Street in honor of John Briggs, who was the city’s first African American hotel owner and created a safe haven and social space for Black travelers and residents.
City Council members voted Monday to approve the honorary designation, which spans Cedar Street to Chestnut Street.
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The recommendation was put forward by Brandi DeShawn Brown, an educator and author who self-published a history book about Briggs, who was her great, great uncle.
Briggs owned and operated the Briggs Hotel from 1938 to 1959. He also owned The Briggs Mounds resort at Lake Koshkonong, Wisconsin, for 15 years.
“We’re talking still Jim Crow, we’re talking about a time when segregation was legal,” Brown said in a presentation last year at the African American Resource Center at Booker Washington Community Center. “We are talking about a time where here this Black man was prospering as well as having established his own business.”
The thee-story yellow-brick building on Court Street was listed year-after-year in The Green Book, a guidebook for African American travelers that published from 1936 to 1966 to help identify friendly locations amid racial segregation.
“In the middle decades of the 20th century it was really the only hotel available to Black travelers coming to Rockford,” said Laura Furman, curator of collections and education for Midway Village Museum. “It was a social center for those who lived here, it was a home for some people who rented rooms, but it was also one of few places where travelers of color could find hospitality.”
The building, which was in the 400 block of Court Street, has long since been demolished.
Midway Village has an exhibit on Rockford and The Green Book, which was created by travel writer and postal worker Victor Hugo Green.
Research from Brown and Midway Village into the Green Book shows the Briggs Hotel was one of places for Black travelers in need of a place to stay here.
“It was really the Briggs Hotel and people opening their private homes,” Furman said. “The New York Public Library has digitized all of The Green Books that were being printed for a couple of decades, and Rockford is in every last one of them.
“The Briggs Hotel is the only one that is ever listed as a actual hotel. Everybody else who’s listed as providing hospitality in Rockford is a private family in Rockford willing to open a room to house travelers.”
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Briggs was also a World War II veteran who served in Germany, according to his obituary. He died April 23, 1959, at age 65.
Brown said her great, great uncle built his company’s reputation on hospitality and entertainment.
“Many Blacks that migrated from the South to the north during this time, the Briggs Hotel was their first living place when they first moved to Rockford,” Brown said in the presentation, which is availble on YouTube. “The Briggs Hotel was the key place for Black socialization and entertainment.”
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas