The Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic is an annual parade held since 1929 in Chicago, Illinois. The Bud Billiken Day Parade is the largest African-American parade in the United States. Held annually on t
Bud Billiken Logo
A 1926 Bud Billiken comic strip
The Chicago Department of Human Resource float in the 1973 parade. Photo by John H. White.
A Barack Obama float for 2004 U.S. Senate race in the 2004 parade.
Billiken
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The Billiken is a charm doll created by an American art teacher and illustrator, Florence Pretz of Kansas City, Missouri, who is said to have seen the mysterious figure in a dream. It is believed that
Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic
…1923 by Abbott, who had been considering adding a youth section to the Chicago Defender newspaper. While dining at a Chinese restaurant he noticed a Billiken. Some of the early Billiken columns were written by Willard Motley, who later became a prominent novelist. In the early 1930s, names of international…
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of November 7, 1909, the Billiken sketch at the left is by Florence Pretz and the drawing of Pretz is by journalist Marguerite Martyn.
Billiken statue on the campus of Saint Louis University
The mascot of the Saint Louis Billikens
Two Billikens from the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition of 1909