Lucy Parsons, Jesse Binga and Julius Rosenwald

Chicago History Museum, public domain, Sun-Times file

We asked readers which history-making Chicagoan more people should know about. Here’s what you said, lightly edited for clarity:

“Rudy Lozano. A visionary activist who changed the city for the better and gave his life for it. His legacy still lives on strongly today.” — Antonio Ramirez

“Alice Gerstenberg, a playwright and theater maker who pioneered the Little Theatre Movement and explored the inner life of women onstage in the 1910s. Berger Park Cultural Center has produced a short play festival dedicated to her work for the past few years.” — Eileen Tull

“Lucy Parsons for her massive influence on the labor movement at the turn of the 20th century, especially the eight-hour day.” — Dustin Henry Currier

“Julius Rosenwald, originator of Sears as a Chicago commercial pillar, founder of the Museum of Science and Industry (refusing the vainglorious naming rights recently assumed by Ken Griffin), supporter of African American education as a builder of African American schools throughout rural Alabama.” — David Jones

“Jesse Binga, the first Black banker in Chicago.” — Robert Pierce

“Kitihawa, an important Potawatomi trader in her own right, she was a founder of Chicago, no less than her husband Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, who is often credited with that alone. She represents the amazing versatility of native people who lived, worked and often married and built cross-cultural family with people of African and European descent for 200 before the U.S. government’s forced Indian Removal policy. Because her children remained here and married, there are likely descendants of Kitihawa walking among us in Chicago today.” — Jesse Mumm

“Hazel M. Johnson for spotlighting the ways that environmental pollution contributed to racist social policies.” — Bilal Dardai

“Bertha Palmer: Businesswoman, philanthropist, president of the Board of Lady Managers for the World’s Columbian Exposition, donor of Impressionist paintings to the Art Institute of Chicago.” — Margaret Sheehan