Peggy Montes met artist Margaret Burroughs when she was in her art class at 17.
Burroughs took Montes under her wing, and after graduation, Montes “followed her to Michigan Avenue” to the space where Burroughs initially co-founded the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center.
She remembers Burroughs as a “surrogate mother” who helped shape her career.
Montes, now 88, still carries a passion for empowering women and educating children through the museum she founded, the Bronzeville Children’s Museum.
It’s easier for Montes to name the Chicago institutions she does not have a relationship with, whether as a philanthropist, trustee, awardee or founder.
The Bronzeville native is chairman emerita at DuSable Museum, member of the Black Creativity Program at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry and co-founder of the Leadership Advisory Council at the Art Institute of Chicago, to name a few.
“You see, I’m very busy,” Montes says.
Beside the arsenal of awards and accomplishments is a woman well aware of her mark on Chicago’s cultural and political history, and she has more goals on her to-do list.
Montes says she knows why so many social and political powerhouses have sought her help: “I am intelligent, I have wisdom, I’m beautiful, and I’m going to do what is right.”
Beginnings as a teacher
Montes was born in Bronzeville and graduated from DuSable High School. She went to Chicago State University — formerly Chicago Teachers College.
She taught for years before earning her master’s and becoming a counselor. She later helped open Percy L. Julian High School as head of counseling.
“I loved teaching because it was a way of helping children expand their environment,” she says.
After college, Montes married Paul J. Montes, who became vice chairman of Seaway Bank for five years. They were married 53 years until his death in 2014. The couple had two children and three grandchildren.
Aspirations for women and politics
Montes’ career pivoted to politics in the early 1980s, as she got involved in Harold Washington’s campaign for mayor “because they knew about my reputation,” Montes says.
“I was able to galvanize the women of the city of Chicago to come behind us to make certain that we elected Harold Washington,” Montes says. “Women are never given credit for the roles that they play in helping to elect all these men. The women, [we] do all the labor, get them elected, and you throw them aside.”
Montes knew she wanted something in return for helping Washington become the first Black mayor of Chicago.
“I said, ‘When I get you elected — when our women get you elected — we want the first Chicago Commission on Women to be established,’” she remembers.
The Mayor’s Advisory Commission on Women’s Affairs was created by executive order in 1984, with Montes as its executive director.
Montes’ key goal was to appoint more women to government positions. In the commission’s early years, Washington raised female representation in mayoral staff to 39% from 12%.
Under her leadership, Women’s History Month was observed for the first time in Chicago’s history in March 1986.
“I said, ‘Why is there no celebration of women and what women do?’ Women are always overlooked, but they are behind the people at the top. We are not only mothers and wives but workers in the community to help make our communities better.”
Montes dedicated nearly three decades to her work on the commission.
Peggy Montes shows a copy of a 1987 photo of her, Mayor Harold Washington and female Chicago Fire Department firefighter academy graduates. Montes is at Washington’s left in the photo, while current Chicago Fire Department Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt apears at Washington’s right.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Opening her own museum
In 1998, Montes took on yet another new frontier in her career — opening her museum dedicated to African American culture and history. Originally located in Evergreen Park, Bronzeville Children’s Museum opened that year and was named for the neighborhood where many African Americans settled during the Great Migration.
The hardest part, she says, was finding space for the museum. But Montes had a plan to get the museum as close as possible to its namesake neighborhood, and it opened at 9301 S. Stony Island Ave. in Calumet Heights in 2007.
“When I discovered that there was no such thing, not one African American children’s museum in the country, that became my goal to establish [it],” Montes says. “But I had no idea that it would be the only one even in 2025, and my goal was never to be the only one, but only to be serving as a guide … so that children in other cities could learn about their history and culture at an early age.”
The museum is dedicated to teaching children ages 4 to 9 about African American history and culture, with tours through rooms like the museum’s inventors hall and the Madam C.J. Walker beauty salon area.
Montes says she doesn’t plan on being involved in the museum “forever” but hopes it will continue.
“I have other things I’m interested in doing,” she says.
“I’m just blessed to say that I’m still here,” she adds. “People called me an icon so many times, I had to look up what the word meant,” she muses. “I’m going on 89, but I’m still a beautiful lady in motion.”
.
