The National Park Foundation has announced gifts totaling nearly $8 million in support of the Pullman National Monument in Chicago.

Built in the 1880s as a neighborhood for Pullman Company employees, many of them African-American porters and maids just decades removed from slavery, the district also is where Pullman employees organized a strike in 1894 after the company refused to lower rents in tandem with reductions in employee wages. The strike, which shut down rail travel west of Detroit, affected about two hundred and fifty thousand workers in twenty-seven states.

The gifts will support a range of projects in the historic neighborhood, the city's first National Park Service site, including a visitor center, educational exhibits, and programming designed to teach schoolchildren, the community, and visitors about the importance of the Pullman Company to America's industrial history. A lead gift was provided by NPF board member Bryan Traubert, president of the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation, with additional support provided by NPF board member Brien O'Brien and his wife, Mary Hasten; the Union Pacific Foundation; Joyce Foundation president and NPF board member Ellen Alberding and her husband, Kelly Welsh; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the Robert R. McCormick Foundation; and the David Hiller Charitable Fund.

The gifts advance the White House's Centennial Initiative marking the hundredth anniversary of the National Park Service in 2016, a multiyear effort to invest in the system’s most important assets, engage park service volunteers and the next generation of supporters, and leverage public-private partnerships to enhance the national park experience for millions of visitors.

"This funding is a testament to the strong support from the Chicago community to tell the story of Pullman through the national parks," said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. "Public-private partnerships help our national parks achieve the margin of excellence, and I commend the philanthropists for their generosity that will help Pullman get off to a strong start."