Clarence Hill

For many years Mr. Hill, a self-employed janitor in downtown Champaign, went about his work always dressed in Sunday best. As usual he dressed elegantly for this photograph. He came to Champaign from Centralia in 1928 and recalls the irony that Blacks could not eat in the same restaurants in which they were employed as cooks, dishwashers, and janitors.

Source: Raymond Bial's In All My Years: Portraits of Older Blacks In Champaign-Urbana, Champaign County Historical Museum, 1983.