List of Famous people born in Illinois, United States of America

Alfred Leo Abramowicz was a Catholic auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Chicago who served as Director of the Catholic League for Religious Assistance to Poland from 1960–1995, working as a principal US fund-raising and organizational contact for the Catholic Church in Poland and for the Polish Solidarity movement.

Archibald MacLeish was an American poet and writer, who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. MacLeish studied English at Yale University and law at Harvard University. He enlisted in and saw action during the First World War and lived in Paris in the 1920s. On returning to the United States, he contributed to Henry Luce's magazine Fortune from 1929 to 1938. For five years, MacLeish was the ninth Librarian of Congress, a post he accepted at the urging of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From 1949 to 1962, he was Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.

Tim Griffin is an American film and television actor best known for his roles in Grey's Anatomy Covert Affairs and film work.

Theodore Edward Rokita is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 44th and current Attorney General of Indiana. He served as the member of the United States House of Representatives from Indiana's 4th congressional district from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he served two terms as Secretary of State of Indiana from 2002 to 2010. When Rokita was elected to office in 2002 at age 32, he became the youngest secretary of state in the United States at the time.

Kenneth M. "Keni" Burke is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist who began his career with four siblings in the 1970s band the Five Stairsteps.

Jane Margaret Byrne was an American politician who was the first woman to be elected mayor of a major city in the United States. She served as the 50th Mayor of Chicago from April 16, 1979, until April 29, 1983. Byrne won the Chicago mayoral election on April 3, 1979, becoming the first female mayor of the city, the second largest city in the United States at the time. Until the election of Lori Lightfoot in 2019, she was the only female mayor of Chicago. Prior to her tenure as mayor, Byrne served as Chicago's commissioner of consumer sales from 1969 until 1977, the only woman to be a part of Mayor Richard J. Daley's cabinet.

Kenneth Roth is an American attorney who has been the executive director of Human Rights Watch since 1993.

Shawn Ryan is an American screenwriter and television producer.

Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin was an American geologist and educator. In 1893 he founded the Journal of Geology, of which he was editor for many years.

George Taylor Jester was a businessman and politician in Texas, where he served as Lieutenant Governor from 1895 to 1899. He was born in Macoupin County, Illinois to Levi and Diadema Jester, and had several siblings. After their father died in 1851, their mother moved the family to Navarro County, Texas, where she joined her father.