Josephine Baskin Minow 1926-2022

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Josephine Minow, civic leader who focused on social justice and history, dies at 95

By BOB GOLDSBOROUGH

CHICAGO TRIBUNE |

FEB 27, 2022 AT 4:37 PM

Josephine Baskin Minow was a civic leader with a keen interest in social justice and Chicago and Jewish history.

Minow was the past president of the Juvenile Protective Agency, which provides services for abused and neglected children, and a member of the Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation.

She also wrote three children’s books and was responsible for two exhibits celebrating Jewish history in Chicago at the Chicago History Museum, where she had served on the board for 30 years.

“Jo Minow loved the Chicago History Museum since she first visited as a child,” said Gary Johnson, the museum’s president emeritus. “As a trustee … she shared with the Chicago History Museum the best practices she saw in the many other organizations she was involved with.”

Minow, 95, died of natural causes on Feb. 17 at her Streeterville home, said her daughter Mary.

Born Josephine Dorothy Baskin in Chicago, Minow was the daughter of Salem Baskin, who founded the Baskin clothing stores and started his own advertising agency, and Bessie Baskin. She grew up in Lakeview and graduated from Senn High School. She received a bachelor of science degree from Northwestern University in 1948.

After college, Minow worked for a year as an assistant to the advertising director for the Mandel Brothers department store, followed by a year teaching at the Francis W. Parker School.

In 1949, she married Newton Minow, who went on to serve as chairman of the FCC during the presidential administration of John F. Kennedy, followed by a long career at the Sidley Austin law firm, where he remains senior counsel.

The couple was living in the Washington, D.C., area when Josephine Minow had a very small role in the 1962 political thriller “Advise & Consent,” playing the secretary of the character played by Henry Fonda.

In 1958, she joined the board of directors of the Juvenile Protective Association, which she later led as the group’s president, from 1973 until 1975. Minow’s desire to help children in at-risk situations extended to her work on the board of the Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation.

“She was a person who had exceptional life experiences — the opportunities with the Kennedy administration and she had been everywhere in the world — and she was at the same time, so down-to-earth and able to laugh at herself and enjoy life and bring joy to anyone around her,” said Sheila Merry, the retired executive director of the Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation.

Minow co-chaired the Juvenile Task Force of the Chicago Community Trust from 1978 until 1980 and was active in the Cook County Justice for Children Initiative and the Chicago Foundation for Education.

She sat on many boards, and was a founding member of Northwestern University’s women’s board in 1978. Minow also was on the women’s boards of the University of Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History. She was a longtime trustee of the Ravinia Music Festival, and from 1980 until 1983, she chaired Know Your Chicago, a U. of C.-sponsored group that organizes annual lectures and tours that promote civic awareness and participation.

In 1992, Minow published a children’s book in verse that she wrote and her son-in-law illustrated, “Marty the Broken Hearted Artichoke.”

“She was always making whimsical rhymes, and she had the title in her head for years and years,” Mary Minow said. “My dad finally said, ‘It’s time to write the book,’ and she sat down and wrote this wonderful story about different vegetables. I know that it started with the title.”

Minow subsequently wrote two more children’s books, “Pineapple Pete’s Remarkable Feat,” which was published in 2012 and illustrated by her son-in-law, and “A Light in Every Window,” which also came out in 2012 and was illustrated by her granddaughter.

Minow and her husband commissioned the 2006 book “Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark,” which was published by the University of Chicago Press.

“We love Chicago, where our great-grandparents settled when they and the city were very young,” she wrote in the book’s preface.

In her later years, Minow continued to focus on social justice. At age 85, she co-chaired an event at which she was honored for her longtime support of Chicago’s Center on Hasted, which is a community center for the LGBT community.

And while in her late 70s, she worked to restore the name of the African American Olympic great Jesse Owens to a Chicago school. In 2013, a school in West Pullman bearing Owens’ name was part of a wave of school closures, and with support from Minow and others, another school building nearby was renamed after Owens.

Minow was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Caroline Margaret McIlvaine Making History Award from the Chicago HistoryMuseum in 2018.

Minow is also survived by two other daughters, Nell and Martha; and three grandchildren.

Services were private. A memorial service is being planned to take place at the Chicago History Museum in the spring.

Josephine ‘Jo’ Baskin Minow, Chicago philanthropist and political influencer, dies at 95

Josephine “Jo” Baskin Minow left her mark on the city’s cultural institutions and took pride in her years of advocacy work during her “lifetime love affair with Chicago,” her family said.

Feb 19, 202 Chicago Sun-Times

When Josephine “Jo” Baskin Minow would return to her hometown of Chicago, she’d look down at the sprawling city beneath the plane and say, “I just want to throw my arms around the city I love it so much.”

And the city felt her love — a prominent organizer and advocate, she served on boards at the Chicago History Museum, Northwestern University, Chicago’s Center on Halsted, Ravinia Music Festival and more during her “lifetime love affair with Chicago and Chicago history,” according to Nell Minow, her daughter.

She died Friday at 95 at her home in Lake View due to ongoing health complications.

The wife of 72 years of Newton Minow, who served as the chair of the FCC under John F. Kennedy and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2016, Ms. Baskin Minow blazed her own trail in Chicago through social and political landscapes.

She was honored with the Caroline Margaret McIlvaine Making History Award for Distinction in Creative Cultural Leadership in 2018 from the Chicago History Museum, where she served 30 years as a trustee. In 2015, The museum dedicated the Jo Baskin Minow Balcony Gallery in her honor.

“That was her greatest love,” Nell Minow said. “She would walk over there from her house on Briar Place and spend the day there.”

She also was a staunch believer in equal rights and advocacy, starting in her college days when she participated in the Quibblers — a group advocating against the exclusion of members of racial minority groups from university housing — at Northwestern University. In the mid-1970s, Ms. Baskin Minow joined a group of women pushing department stores to end racial discrimination, meeting with Marshall Fields to advocate for Black sales associates to be allowed on the floor.

“She didn’t like to see people get picked on,” Nell Minow said. “She was always somebody to stand up for anybody that was not being treated fairly.”

In 1978, Ms. Baskin Minow returned to Northwestern University, where she graduated with a B.S. in 1948, to be a founding member of the Northwestern University Women’s Board.

Her advocacy spanned the length of her life — at 85, she co-chaired an event for the Center on Halsted, an LGBTQ community center. She was elated, Nell Minow said, when they asked her to cut the ribbon.

While raising her own three children, Ms. Baskin Minow also fought to improve the lives of others. After teaching kindergarten and 5th grade at Francis W. Parker School in the late 1940s, she later became president of the Juvenile Protective Association originally founded by Jane Addams.

While she was president, the meeting space didn’t allow women to enter through the front door — leading Ms. Baskin Minow to change their location in order to ensure every member could come through the same door.

Her work with children led her to be part of the Citizens Committee of the Juvenile Court and she became a prominent member of the Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation.

Combined with her passion for writing, Ms. Baskin Minow funneled her advocacy for kids into children’s books — the first, published in 1992, called “Marty the Broken-Hearted Artichoke,” was distributed free to nonprofits across the country.

While Hillary Rodham Clinton was the first lady, she chose to read Ms. Baskin Minow’s book at the inauguration of the “Reach Out and Read” project at the University of Chicago Friends Children’s Clinic.

In her 80s, she received an award from Ravinia Music Festival for her work as a trustee. Her involvement in the festival, starting in her 60s, was an homage to her days in high school when she and her friends would take a streetcar and two trains to hear the music in Highland Park, Nell Minow said.

Her love for the city’s history and its iconic institutions was demonstrated through her involvement in the Women’s Boards of the University of Chicago, the Field Museum and as a governing member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. When she was 80, she became a member of the Board of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.

While her husband worked in government in Washington D.C., Ms. Baskin Minow left her mark in the country’s capital, too. She helped create the Hospitality and Information Service (T.H.I.S.), operating out of the Department of State, which welcomes diplomats and their families to D.C. and helps them navigate stays in the capital.

“Hilariously funny,” until the end of her life, Nell Minow said her mother would often quote Bette Davis, saying, “old age isn’t for sissies.”

“We’d say, ‘well good thing you’re not a sissy, you seem to be handling it pretty well,’” Nell Minow said.

Between board meetings and events alongside powerful political figures, Ms. Baskin Minow found time to chronicle her family’s life in scrapbooks. She had ones dedicated to each of her daughter’s lives, their family, Newton’s career and more — totaling 70 volumes that she donated to the Chicago History Museum, Nell Minow said.

“She was unbelievably meticulous,” Nell Minow said. “She updated them constantly, and they’re just treasure troves.”

Ms. Baskin Minow is survived by her husband and their three daughters, whom she dubbed “the three Portias” — Nell, Martha, and Mary. She’s also remembered by her two sons-in-law, David Apatoff and Joseph Singer, and three grandchildren, Benjamin and Rachel Apatoff and Mira Singer, and Rachel’s husband, Scott Collette.

Services will be private. In lieu of flowers, her family suggests donations to preferred charities. 

PASSAGES Civic leader, LGBTQ+ ally Josephine Minow dies at 95 2022-03-01

Josephine Baskin Minow—a civic leader with an interest in social justice and Chicago and Jewish history—has died at age 95, The Chicago Tribune reported. Minow was the past president of the Juvenile Protective Agency and a member of the Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation. In her later years, Minow continued to focus on social justice. At age 85, she co-chaired an event at which she was honored for her longtime support of Chicago's Center on Halsted, a community center for the LGBTQ+ community. Also, while in her late 70s, she worked to restore the name of the African American Olympic great Jesse Owens to a Chicago school. memorial service is being planned to take place at the Chicago History Museum in the spring. The Chicago History Museum has selected the Josephine Baskin Minow Award of Excellence essays, and the Minow family would like to congratulate the awardees on their dedication, insight, and outstanding work. Our thanks, also, to the staff of the CHM for their support.