The Lunchtime Theater - Chicago Memorial Day Massacre of 1937, in two parts.

THE DIGITAL RESEARCH LIBRARY OF ILLINOIS HISTORY JOURNAL™ PRESENTS

THE LUNCHTIME THEATER.

Chicago Memorial Day Massacre of 1937 - part 1

Chicago Memorial Day Massacre of 1937 - part 2

In the Memorial Day massacre of 1937, the Chicago Police Department shot and killed ten unarmed demonstrators in Chicago, on May 30, 1937. The incident took place during the "Little Steel Strike" in the United States. The incident arose after U.S. Steel signed a union contract but smaller steel manufacturers (called 'Little Steel'), including Republic Steel, refused to do so. In protest, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) called a strike.

On Memorial Day, hundreds of sympathizers gathered at Sam's Place, headquarters of the SWOC. As the crowd marched across the prairie towards the Republic Steel mill, a line of Chicago policemen blocked their path. The foremost protesters argued their right to continue. The police, feeling threatened, fired on the crowd. As the crowd fled, police bullets killed 10 people and injured 30. Nine people were permanently disabled and another 28 had serious head injuries from police clubbing plus another 100 others were badly beaten with clubs.

Years later, one of the protesters, Mollie West, recalled a policeman yelling to her that day, "Get off the field or I'll put a bullet in your back." No policemen were ever prosecuted.

A Coroner's Jury declared the killings to be "justifiable homicide". The press often called it a labor or red riot. President Roosevelt responded to a union plea, "The majority of people are saying just one thing, {A plague on both your houses}." In the wake of the massacre, the newsreel of the event was suppressed for fear of creating, in the words of an official at Paramount News agency, "mass hysteria."

Today, on the site of Sam's Place stands the union hall of the United Steelworkers and a memorial to the 10 people who died in 1937.

Lost Towns of Illinois - The Village of Forksville, Illinois.

Originally named the Forks before any houses were built. Sometime later it was officially named Forksville for its location at the fork of the McHenry-Chicago and Little Fort (Waukegan) roads, in Lake County, Illinois. At the beginning of the Village's settlement, there were about 150 people living there.

Huson & Booth owned the only general store in Forksville. F. Gale owned the hotel which had a handful of rooms. There were three lime kilns that burn over 3,000 bushels a year. The village had two boot and shoe makers that were owned by J. M. Delaree and David Lewis. Forksville had one cooper shop which was also owned by D. Lewis, and one blacksmith shop. Dr. Malindy was the physician and S. S. Hamilton, Esq, was an attorney. Considerable winter wheat was raised in the village.

The Forksville post office was established on March 24, 1848 with David Lewis being appointed the first postmaster. Forksville was surveyed and laid out October 12, 1849. 

David Lewis served as postmaster until May 12, 1851. The post office was renamed to Volo on November 27, 1868 (possibly at the suggestion of Greek immigrants who named it for the town of Volo (Volos) in eastern Greece. There were a total of thirteen postmaster appointments until the post office was discontinued on June 14, 1904, and the mail was ordered to be sent to Round Lake.

The June 7, 1851, Gazette announced that the road was planked to Hainesville, and that it was planned to go on six miles further to Forksville. Seven hundred thousand feet of planks were on hand for the extension.

Before 1868 the Forksville log school-house gave way to a frame one which was in use until about 1915.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Chicagoan Gwendolyn Brooks, Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet, (1917-2000).

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FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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Gwendolyn Brooks was a highly regarded, much-honored poet, with the distinction of being the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize. She was also a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress ─ the first black Woman to hold that position ─ and named poet laureate of the State of Illinois in 1968.

A 32-year-old housewife and part-time secretary has won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her second book of poetry "Annie Allen," published in 1949, a ballad of Chicago Negro life. The first Woman to capture one of the famed awards, she is the mother of a 9-year-old boy and the wife of Henry Blakely, a partner in an auto repair shop.

Many of Brook's works display a political consciousness, especially those from the 1960s and later, with several of her poems reflecting the civil rights activism of that period. Her body of work gave her, according to Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor George E. Kent, "a unique position in American letters. Not only has she combined a strong commitment to racial identity and equality with a mastery of poetic techniques, but she has also managed to bridge the gap between the academic poets of her generation in the 1940s and the young black militant writers of the 1960s."

Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, but her family moved to Chicago when she was young. Her father was a janitor who had hoped to become a doctor; her mother was a schoolteacher and classically trained pianist. They were supportive of their daughter's passion for reading and writing. Brooks was thirteen when her first poem, "Eventide," appeared in American Childhood; by the time she was seventeen, she published poems frequently in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper serving Chicago's black population. After such formative experiences as attending junior college and working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she developed her craft in poetry workshops and began writing the poems, focusing on urban blacks, that would be published in her first collection, "A Street in Bronzeville."

Brooks taught extensively around the country and held posts at Columbia College Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago State University, Elmhurst College, Columbia University, City College of New York, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Legacy and Honors Partial Listing

• 1968, appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois.
• 1985, selected as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, an honorary one-year position whose title changed the following year to Poet Laureate. 
• 1988, inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. 
• 1994, chosen as the National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecturer, one of the highest honors in American literature and the highest award in the humanities given by the federal government. 
• 1995, presented with the National Medal of Arts. 
• 1995, honored as the first Woman of the Year chosen by the Harvard Black Men's Forum. 

Awards Brooks Received:

• The Frost Medal
• The Shelley Memorial Award
• An American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.

Illinois Schools Named For Gwendolyn Brooks:

• Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy High School at 250 E 111th Street , Chicago, IL.
• Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School at 325 S Kenilworth Avenue, Oak Park, IL. 
• Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School at 14741 Wallace Street, Harvey, IL.
• Gwendolyn Brooks Elementary School at 2700 Stonebridge Boulevard, Aurora, IL.
• Gwendolyn Brooks Elementary School at 3225 Sangamon Rd, DeKalb, IL.
  
  
• Brooks also received more than seventy-five honorary degrees from Universities Worldwide. 

Kitchenette Building

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, Grayed in and gray. "Dream" mate, a giddy sound, not strong like "Rent," "Feeding a Wife," and "Satisfying a Man."

But could a dream sent up through onion fumes Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes And yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall, Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms,

Even if we were willing to let it in, had time to warm it, keep it very clean, anticipate a message, and let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! Not for a minute! Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now, We think of lukewarm water and hope to get in it. 

                                                                               Gwendolyn Brooks

Brooks died of cancer at the age of 83 on December 3, 2000, at her home on Chicago's South Side. She is buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.