Joliet street name offers lasting tribute to community leader Louise Coleman

A new street sign will pay lasting tribute to the late Louise Colman, who is remembered for watching over her South End community as if she were the mother of the Joliet neighborhood.

A small ceremony was held Saturday to unveil the sign that designates a section of Joliet Street between McDonough and Munroe streets with the honorary name Louise Coleman Drive.

The seemingly simple sign is meant to serve as a lasting tribute to someone described as “this lovely, lovely lady ... who had the insight to do what was honest, what was fair, what was true.”

Those were the words of Ralph Bias, a Joliet businessman and community leader upon whom Coleman would call if she needed help finding jobs for young people she worried would otherwise get into trouble.

“She was a good lady, and we will miss her,” Bias said. “We will miss the many things that she did.”

Coleman died Sept. 15, 2023, at the age of 86.

Never connected directly to a government or social service agency, Coleman helped young people find work, guided them into the business world, loaned money to neighbors in need, and fed anyone in the neighborhood who wanted to stop by her Joliet Street home on Sundays and Wednesdays.

The corner that bears the street sign in Coleman’s honor is just a few doors away from the two houses where she lived and the barber shop she managed.

Her daughter-in-law, Kendra Coleman, spearheaded the street dedication and said it was a way to memorialize Coleman.

“Ms. Lou, as we knew her, will forever be remembered,” Kendra said in comments before the unveiling of the sign.

Mayor Terry D’Arcy and City Council member Jan Quillman joined the ceremony.

“Louise Coleman was there to lend a hand to people who were too proud to ask for help,” D’Arcy said at the ceremony. “We need more people like Louise Coleman.”

Coleman “was just a mom taking care of her kids” when she moved to Joliet from Chicago in 1967, said her son Ricky Coleman.

“We had relations here,” he said. “They were working at Uniroyal.”

Joliet seemed to be a good place to find work, and Colmeman’s mother did go to work for Uniroyal, he said.

Their first house was at 410 S. Joliet St., located just south of the honorary sign on McDonough Street.

“She had five kids,” Ricky said. “We all grew up in this neighborhood.”

They later moved to 345 S. Joliet St., and the family still owns that house just a few doors north of the corner where the sign was set up.

Coleman left Uniroyal to work at the Caterpillar plant in Joliet. She was not a barber, Ricky said, but she became one after an injury made it impossible to keep working at the factory.

“She had to keep working, and that’s why she took up barbering,” he said.

Coleman went to work at Seward’s Barber Shop, located at the corner Joliet and McDonough.

Her life seemed to revolve around the corner where her honorary street sign now stands.

It was at Seward’s, where Louise Coleman started as a barber but eventually became manager of the shop, her involvement in the neighborhood deepened.

“Once she became a barber at this location she began mentoring all the kids – everyone who sat in her chair,” Ricky said.

Coleman was known to advise young men and boys to look for opportunities to better their lives in an area where they might otherwise get caught up in crime.

She gave free haircuts to boys whose families could not afford to pay.

Ricky said she even gave rent money to families in need, many of whom paid her back but not all.

Twice a week, his mother hosted meals for anyone who wanted to stop by the house at 345 S. Joliet St.

“Every Wednesday and Sunday she cooked,” Ricky said. “The whole community would come to the house and eat. That went on for 20 years.”

Louise Coleman’s influence mentoring extended beyond the young men in the neighborhood.

“She was like a grandmother to me,” Latisha Fox said.

Fox owns the All About You Beauty Salon at 826 W. Jefferson St. Her first professional experience was at Seward’s Barber Shop when Coleman let Fox work there.

“She was a mentoring figure – a role model,” Fox said. “She gave me the entrepreneurial skills and the professionalism to open my business.”

Coleman was Kiara Ford’s actual grandmother. Ford owns the Krown Lux Boutique at 1321 W. Jefferson St.

“My grandmother was definitely an inspiration for that,” Ford said. “She gave me the blueprint for being an entrepreneur.”

For those who attended the street dedication ceremony, it was one way to give back to Louise Coleman for all she did for the neighborhood.

Ricky Coleman described the tribute to his mother as “enormous.”

“She was very influential,” he said, “and the people loved her.”