Showing posts with label Chicago History Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicago History Museum. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Centennial of ‘Red Summer’ will pass with few noting moment’s significance

Come Saturday, a raft will float out in Lake Michigan and will cross over the invisible dividing line between 29th and 26th streets – a boundary that back a century ago was the cause of bloodshed and the race riots of 1919 that have come to be known as “Red Summer.”
National Guard tries to restore order to South Side
That is, for those of us who have any historic recollection at all. Many more will likely let the moment pass by without any note of what happened some 100 years ago that day.

FOR THOSE WHO need to be reminded, it was in the afternoon of July 27 that a young black man named Eugene Williams went swimming in the lake off of 29th street – the portion of the beach where black people were permitted to be.

But while swimming, he drifted north. When he tried to come ashore near 26th Street, he had ventured into the portion of the beach that locals intended to be for white people.

White people, who’d probably have thought of themselves as proud Sout’ Siders, reacted poorly. They began flinging rocks, boulders and anything else they could grab ahold of at Williams – driving him back into the water.

Where he eventually drowned.
Amongst the more honest accounts of what happened a century ago
BLACK BEACH-GOERS AT 29th Street saw what happened, and reacted violently too. Pretty soon, it was an all-out race riot on the beach with Chicago police making arrests amongst the black people. That eventually spread to various parts of Chicago. With the Bridgeport neighborhood becoming the center of some of the most violent activity against black people.

It wasn’t just in Chicago. The years after the First World War saw many movements of hostility against black people, with many whites seemingly eager to let blacks know they “didn’t belong.”
A Tribune accounting of how large an area the riot covered
The death tally in Chicago alone reached the hundreds, with the National Guard eventually having to be sent in to restore order. In fact, those troops wound up using Comiskey Park as their home base – primarily because the White Sox’ ballpark was in the middle of the area where the most intense violence occurred.

In his Mayor Daley biography “Boss,” writer Mike Royko got deep into these happenings, trying to put together an argument that the future mayor must have been aware of what was going on in his neighborhood, if not directly involved – even though Richard J. himself always claimed to have no personal memories of that summer.

WHICH IS TYPICAL of how Chicago came to forget about the deaths. It was a thing of the past; something ugly and not worth remembering any longer.

And anybody who’s bothering to recall what happened? They’re probably trouble-makers themselves!
Bodies were found in all kinds of places in Chicago
So I’m kind of glad to learn the Chicago History Museum is sponsoring a program for Saturday meant to remind people of just what happened on the beach that summer a century ago.

They’re even planning to have people on a raft float across the invisible barrier. Only this time, no people on shore waiting to throw stones.

THERE IS ONE aspect of all this I find amusing – the fact that the entirety of the beach in that portion of the Lake Michigan shoreline is now named for Margaret T. Burroughs.
BURROUGHS: Beach now in her honor

The same Margaret Burroughs who was the artist and poet and who later went on to found the DuSable Museum of African-American History. I knew her late in life when she served on the Chicago Park District board and was devoted to preserving the memories of black culture in Chicago.

I’m sure that all the individuals who threw rocks a century ago would be appalled at the notion of “their” beach being “taken over” in such a manner.

Just as I’m sure the descendants of those individuals are now appalled at anyone trying to remind us now how bad the behavior was back then. For it seems that the old cliché, “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” think the answers to our modern-day problems lie in their ignorance.

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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Lincoln birth Bicentennial is low-key

Perhaps we political observers are fortunate that no one in the Illinois Legislature thought about Abraham Lincoln when they were putting together the list of charges upon which former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office.

If they had, it is likely that Blagojevich would have had added to the list of allegations against him that he was disrespecting the memory of the most Illinois-affiliated president in U.S. history (although Barack Obama could equal him in due time).

AFTER ALL, THE past year was supposed to be a series of local celebrations allowing communities to tout their connections to the 16th U.S. president, leading up to the big day on Thursday – the Bicentennial of Lincoln’s birthday in 1809.

But Blagojevich, among his many actions as governor, tried to keep the government budget under control by slashing away at the funding the state should have provided to support festivities paying tribute to Lincoln.

Just over $5 million was what Blagojevich took from the Lincoln Bicentennial festivities. That might not sound like much in the overall scheme of the state budget (which can exceed $50 billion).

But it could have helped create a bigger perception that people in Illinois remember the memory of Lincoln. There literally were moments when it seemed like the historic preservation officials in Kentucky (where Lincoln was born) and Indiana (where he lived much of his childhood) cared more about Thursday than anyone in Illinois did.

NOW THOSE OF us who pay attention to political minutia have heard the stories about how Blagojevich was jealous about Barack Obama, what with all the attention his national campaign for president got him during 2008.

With everybody thinking that Obama was the model for the ideal Illinois politico, Blagojevich became an afterthought.

We literally get the impression that Obama (who went out of his way to create Lincoln allusions during his presidential campaign whenever appropriate) cared more about the memory of Honest Abe than Blagojevich ever did.

Which is why it likely is appropriate that Obama is making his first Illinois appearance since taking the oath of office as president in Springfield, Lincoln’s hometown and the place where his remains are buried at the city’s Oak Ridge Cemetery.

SPRINGFIELD HAS ITS annual Lincoln’s Birthday ritual at the tomb, but this Bicentennial year will be the one that sees a president show up to partake in the event.

For those who happen to be anywhere near the Illinois capital city on Thursday, there’s another unique event.

The Old State Capitol (the building that Lincoln would have known as the Statehouse – the current one dates to 1877) will host a naturalization ceremony, allowing central Illinois residents who have become U.S. citizens to take the oath of office in the same building where Lincoln once delivered his “House Divided” speech (although a younger generation is bound to think of it primarily as the place where Obama kicked off his presidential campaign).

What would be truly nice is if this Lincoln Bicentennial were to create a dialogue as to what Lincoln and his presidency truly was about.

TOO MANY PEOPLE want to twist the Lincoln legacy to fit their ideological perspective about life.

Too many hardcore GOP people (which used to boast that it was the “Party of Lincoln”) want to believe that Lincoln was some sort of hypocritical racist, while too many Democrats want to believe he’d be one of them – if he were alive today.

I can’t help but think that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

What intrigues me the most about the Lincoln legacy is that he is the government official who got stuck having to cope with the basic ideological split that appears to define the United States, and he came along at the moment when the split became so intense that we began shooting at each other.

BE REAL. NO matter how much modern day politics seem to have reached a new low when it comes to partisan hostility, I always put it into perspective by noting that no one is talking about secession, or taking up arms against their neighbor.

Instead, too many people who bother to partake in Lincoln events on Thursday will get hung up on the image of log cabins or stove pipe hats for one day. Then, they’ll move on to something else.

That’s a shame.

It is the reason why I am inclined to take advantage of the Chicago History Museum’s Lincoln Bicentennial offer. Instead of the usual $14 admission fee – all it will cost to get into the facility at the south end of Lincoln Park will be $0.01.

THE MUSEUM THAT likes to say it has Lincoln’s death bed in its collection of Chicago and Midwestern U.S. artifacts plans to kick off a special Lincoln exhibit to run for the next year.

Think about it. Not only will you get a chance to overdose on Lincoln memorabilia (and some other cool stuff related to Chicago), all it will cost you is one of those “Lincoln head” pennies that take up too much space among your pocket change. What else is a penny worth these days?

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Illinois ought to be the focal point of all the Abraham Lincoln festivities (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29074111/) taking place across the nation.

It could (http://www.lincoln200.net/) have been bigger and better. Thanks Rod.

Will there be some people to whom the extent of their Lincoln festivities on Thursday (http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2009/02/07/news/doc498dfc8dd6efe935445868.txt) will be to watch the PBS special about his life? Probably.

The 1865 railroad tour that took Abraham Lincoln's remains from Washington to Springfield, Ill., included this stop in Chicago at what was then City Hall. Lincoln posed for the above photograph just prior to getting the 1860 nomination for president at the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Both illustrations provided by the Library of Congress collection.