Betty Friedan, a Peoria, Illinois native, helped spark a new wave of feminism.

Betty Freidan

A women's rights leader and activist, Betty Freidan was born Bettye Naomi Goldstein on February 4, 1921, to Russian Jewish immigrants in Peoria, Illinois. She attended Peoria High School and graduated "Summa Cum Laude" from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1942. 

Friedan trained as a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, but became a suburban housewife and mother in New York, supplementing her husband’s income by writing freelance articles for women’s magazines. 

After conducting a survey of her Smith College classmates at a 15-year reunion, Friedan found that most of them were, like she was, dissatisfied suburban housewives.  After five more years of researching history, psychology, sociology and economics and conducting interviews with women across the country, Friedan charted American middle-class women’s metamorphosis from the independent, career-minded New Woman of the 1920s and '30s into the housewife of the postwar years who was supposed to find fulfillment in her duties as mother and wife.  

She married Carl Friedman, who later dropped the 'M' in his last name to create the more distinctive "Friedan," a theater producer, in 1947 while working at UE News. She continued to work after marriage, first as a paid employee and, after 1952, as a freelance journalist. 

This research turned into "The Feminine Mystique" (1963), a book regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the twentieth century as it helped ignite the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s, transforming American society and culture. The overwhelming response of readers who were similarly dissatisfied in that role led Friedan to co-found and become the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 to work towards increasing women’s rights. National Organization for Women lobbied for enforcement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the first two major legislative victories of the movement, and forced the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to stop ignoring and start treating with dignity and urgency, claims filed involving sex discrimination.

In 1969, Friedan helped establish the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, which would later change its name to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Billington, Friedan, Ireton, and Rawalt, 1966.

Betty divorced Carl in May 1969, later claiming to have been a battered wife. Carl died in December of 2005.

She helped found and lead other women’s groups, such as the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. As a leader of these organizations, Friedan was influential in helping change outdated laws that were disadvantageous to women, such as sex-segregated help-wanted ads and hiring practices, unequal pay, and firing a woman who was pregnant instead of providing her with maternity leave.   

 

Within the diverse women’s movement, Friedan received criticism for focusing too much on issues facing primarily white, middle-class, educated, heterosexual women. Radical feminists also criticized Friedan for working with men. Friedan insisted that the women’s movement had to remain in the American mainstream. Otherwise, they would be dismissed, and nothing would change. In the end, Friedan’s mainstream attitude provided a balance to other women’s rights leader’s more radical attitudes.    

Since the 1970s, Friedan published several more books, taught at New York University and the University of Southern California, as well as lectured widely at women’s conferences around the world. Friedan’s vision, passion, foresight, and hard work helped created a society where women are more equal to men and have more choices when deciding how to live their lives. Friedan has made a lasting impact on American society. 

Friedan died of congestive heart failure at her home in Washington, D.C., on February 4, 2006, her 85th birthday. 

Note the "Second Class" 5¢ U.S. Postal Stamp.

VIDEO

How It Began: Betty Friedan and the Modern Women's Movement

(runtime - 1:36:10)

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Lost Communities of Chicago - Township of Jefferson - Village of Jefferson

Early settlers named the area’s first post office for President James Monroe. The name "Monroe" was already in use in another community in Illinois that was named Monroe, so they decided to honor President Thomas Jefferson instead. 

The State formed the Township of Jefferson in Cook County, Illinois, in 1850. When the township was founded, Chicago (population 30,000) was still a walkable urban area contained within a radius of a couple of miles. By 1855, the village had 50 buildings. On August 6, 1872, they changed from the township organization to the village organization.

This region comprised most of what is now known as Chicago's Northwest Side, including the entirety of the following community areas: Jefferson Park, Avondale, Logan Square, Hermosa, Forest Glen, Dunning, Albany Park, Portage Park, Irving Park, Montclare, and Belmont-Cragin.

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In 1872 Norwood Park Township was created from the northwest corner of Jefferson. In 1889, Chicago annexed the rest of the township and ceased functioning independently. Norridge, Harwood Heights, and the town of Norwood Park were all part of the Norwood Park Township that had been cut out of Jefferson Township before the rest of Jefferson Township was annexed to the city. Norwood Park would be annexed later, with the at-the-time unincorporated parts of Norwood Township (Norridge and Harwood Heights) remaining unannexed. 

A tiny bit of Norwood Park Township remains unincorporated (not part of any city or suburb, but directly under county control) along Bryn Mawr between Cumberland and Canfield.

NOTE: This was a comment from "Unknown" on Blogger. (I would have used their name if they didn't select unknown instead of their name and stuck to the facts.)

In 1889 the Village of Jefferson was annexed into the city of Chicago. Its borders were Devon Avenue on the north, Harlem Avenue on the west, Western Avenue to the east, and North Avenue to the south. It added 36 square miles of property t chicago. 

By the year of annexation, Jefferson had become active and prosperous. The Jefferson settlement was linked to the city of Chicago by the Milwaukee and Elston Plank Roads, both of which had been in operation since the 1850s. These roads had initially been Indian Trails, and they were later called the “Upper” (Milwaukee) and “Lower” (Elston) roads.  Elston got its name from Dan Elston, a former alderman and bricklayer who graded, maintained, and principally used the road. Both Milwaukee and Elston became toll roads owned by Amos Snell, and they operated until the annexation (tolls were necessary on planked roads to cover the costs of repair and maintenance). At that time, citizens burned down the toll gates in protest of first, having to pay the tolls and indignation over the extreme increase in traffic. 

Chicago Tribune, Thursday, February 9, 1888

Amos J. Snell, the West Side millionaire, was shot dead early yesterday morning by burglars in his residence, at the northwest corner of Washinton Boulevard and Ada Street. The murder was committed shortly after 2 o'clock in the morning.

The Amos J. Snell Mansion

The murder of Amos J. Snell has never been solved.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Abraham Lincoln used "Blue Mass" (Mercury Tablets) to treat some of his health issues.

It is well known that Abraham Lincoln used Blue Mass[1] also known as Blue Pills (Mercury Tablets) regularly, but there is debate over what ailment the medicine was intended to address. Historians most commonly state that Lincoln used Blue Mass in the treatment of constipation.

Some historians believe that Lincoln's flashes of temper may have been symptoms of mercury poisoning, brought on by Blue Mass, also a common remedy for "melancholy" depression. It may have been both, as it was commonly believed during the time period that problems of digestion, the failure of the liver to properly secrete bile, could lead to mental disorders. In addition to outbursts of rage, the mercury Lincoln ingested may have caused insomnia, forgetfulness, and possibly hand tremors.

Lincoln's use of Blue Mass may have altered his behavior and may explain the erratic behavior and violent rages to which he was subject over a period of years before the Civil War (April 12, 1861 - April 9, 1865).

One story of Lincoln's angry outbursts claims that during one of the famous 1858 Senate debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, in response to an accusation by Douglas about Lincoln's record in Congress, Lincoln furiously grabbed the collar of a former congressional colleague who, Lincoln said, knew the charge was false, shook the man violently "until his teeth chattered."

Some historians believe that this explains the contrast between his earlier behavior (while he was perhaps suffering from mercury poisoning from his use of Blue Mass) and his later behavior during the war (after he had stopped taking Blue Mass), given that most of the effects of mercury poisoning are reversible. Lincoln took the pills which were as widely used in the 18th and 19th centuries as Prozac is today.

Dr. Marshall Baldwin's Nervous Pills contained an undisclosed
amount of mercury leading to heavy metal poisoning.

Blue Mass was prescribed for anything they thought was related to the liver. But that was based on a faulty theory. It only poisoned you.

Blue Mass (aka; Blue Pills) or as a liquid syrup was sold from horse-drawn wagons, such as this one, all over the country. Each vendor mixed their own formula so the amount of mercury was unknown.

Lincoln's health has been more scrutinized in recent decades, as some scientists have sought to show that he inherited a genetic ailment called Marfan Syndrome, which can lead to a gaunt frame, slender fingers, and internal bleeding. Today geneticists consider this diagnosis unlikely.

A study in July of 2001 gives a new perspective on a president revered for his calm and focused leadership through the historic crisis of the Civil War. That steady temperament appears to have emerged only after Lincoln claimed to have stopped taking the pills that his law partner William H. Herndon said was Blue Mass.

There is, however, evidence that Lincoln continued to take Blue Mass. An interview given by his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, to a correspondent from the Pittsburgh Chronicle suggests that Lincoln continued his use of the medication, despite his earlier statements to the contrary.

In an interview, Mrs. Lincoln described an instance in which her husband's "usual medicine," the mercury-based "blue pills," made him terribly ill. Mrs. Lincoln recalled the fact that her husband had been very ill, for several days, from the effects of a dose of blue pills taken shortly before his second inauguration. She said he was not well, and appearing to require his usual medicine, blue pills, she sent to the drug store and gave him a dose that night before going to bed, and that next morning his pale appearance terrified her. "His face," said she, pointing to the bed beside which she sat, "was white as that pillow-case, as it lay just there," she exclaimed, laying her hand on the pillow—"white, and such a deadly white; as he tried to rise he sank back again quite overcome!" She described his anxiety to be up, there was so much to do, and her persistence and his oppressive fatigue in keeping him in bed for several days. They both thought it was so strange that the pills should affect him in that way, as they never had done so before. They both concluded that they would not get more medicine from that pharmacy, as the attendant evidently did not understand how to make up prescriptions.

NOTE: Abraham Lincoln had Malaria,[2] at least twice. The first time was in 1830 (21 years old), along with the rest of his family. They had just arrived in Illinois that year. The second episode was in the summer of 1835 (26 years old), while living in New Salem, Illinois. Lincoln was then so ill, he was sent to a neighbor's house to be medicated and cared for. Malaria, during that time period, would often rear its ugly head throughout ones lifetime.

RUMOR: Lincoln had Marfan syndrome. Today geneticists consider the diagnosis unlikely.  

UNFOUNDED: Lincoln's son, Willie, died from typhoid fever. It is only speculation that Lincoln suffered from typhoid fever at the Gettysburg address. But it is more likely that Lincoln had a mild case of smallpox, because his personal valet, William H. Johnson, develop smallpox caring for Lincoln after the Gettysburg address and he died from it.

Unfortunately, since no hair samples from Lincoln during this period are available, it is impossible to determine whether or not he was truly suffering from mercury poisoning while he was taking Blue Mass.

Did Lincoln's Blue Mass Pills Cause Uncontroable Anger?

Abraham Lincoln reached over and picked a man up by the coat collar at the back of the neck and shook him "until his teeth chattered." He became so angry "his voice thrilled and his whole frame shook." Lincoln only stopped when someone, "fearing that he would shake Ficklin's head off," broke his grip. A new study suggests that mercury poisoning may explain Lincoln's bizarre behavior. 

Lincoln during in this 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debate is a far cry from our vision of Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting patient and thoughtful with the weight of the nation on his shoulders. A study published in the Summer of 2001, issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine reformulates a common anti-depressive medication of the nineteenth century and shows that it would have delivered a daily dose of mercury exceeding the current Environmental Protection Agency safety standard by nearly 9000 times.

"We wondered how a man could be described as having the patience of a saint in his fifties when only a few years earlier he was subject to outbursts of rage and bizarre behavior," said Norbert Hirschhorn, M.D., retired public health physician, medical historian and lead author of the study. 

"Mercury poisoning certainly could explain Lincoln's known neurological symptoms: insomnia, tremor, and the rage attacks," said Robert G. Feldman, M.D., professor of neurology, pharmacology, and environmental health at the Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health, an expert on heavy metal poisoning and co-author of the paper. "But what is even more important, because the behavioral effects of mercury poisoning may be reversible, it also explains the composure for which he was famous during his tenure as president."

Lincoln was known to have taken "blue mass," a pill containing mercury, apparently to treat his persistent "melancholia," (then known also as hypochondriasis.) In 1861, a few months after the inauguration, however, perceptively noting that blue mass made him "cross," Lincoln stopped taking the medication. 

"We wanted to determine how toxic the mercury in the blue mass pills was likely to be," said Ian A Greaves, M.D., associate professor of environment and occupational health and associate dean at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, coauthor. "We used a nineteenth-century recipe to recreate blue mass. The ingredients included, besides mercury, licorice root, rose-water, honey and sugar, and dead rose petals. It was compounded with an old-fashioned mortar and pestle and rolled to size on a 19th-century pill tile. But, in accord with 20th-century safety standards, we wore surgical gowns, gloves, masks, and caps and worked with modern ventilation equipment."

Caution was well advised. The method of compounding the blue mass pill, dispersing the mercury into fine particles and increasing its surface area, was meant to assure its absorption into the body and did. The vapor released by the two pills in the stomach would have been 40 times the safe limit set by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Health. The solid element of mercury absorbed from two pills would have been 750micrograms. The EPA indicates that only up to 21micrograms of any form of mercury per day may safely be ingested. Someone who ate the common dose of two to three little pills per day would have seriously risked poisoning. 

"The wartime Lincoln is remembered for his self-control in the face of provocation, his composure in the face of adversity," said Hirschhorn. "If Lincoln hadn't recognized that the little blue pill he took made him 'cross,' and stopped the medication, his steady hand at the helm through the Civil War might have been considerably less steady." 

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] Blue mass was used as a specific treatment for syphilis from at least the late 17th century to the early 18th. Blue mass was recommended as a remedy for such widely varied complaints as tuberculosis, constipation, toothache, parasitic infestations, and the pains of childbirth.

A combination of blue mass, and a mixture called the common black draught, was a standard cure for constipation in early 19th century England and elsewhere. It was particularly valued on ships of the Royal Navy, where sailors and officers were constrained to eat rock-hard salted beef and pork, old stale biscuits (hardtack), and very little fruit, fiber, or other fresh food once they were at sea for an extended period.

It was a magistral preparation, compounded by pharmacists themselves based on their own recipes or on one of several widespread recipes. It was sold in the form of blue or gray pills or syrup. Its name probably derives from the use of blue dye or blue chalk (used as a buffer) in some formulations.

The ingredients of blue mass varied, as each pharmacist prepared it himself, but they all included mercury in elemental or compound form (often as mercury chloride, also known as calomel). One recipe of the period included (for blue mass syrup):

33% mercury (nearly one-third, measured by weight) 5% licorice25% Althaea (possibly hollyhock or marshmallow)3% glycerol34% rose honeyBlue pills were produced by substituting milk sugar and rose oil for the glycerol and rose honey. Pills contained one grain (64.8 milligrams) of mercury.

Mercury is known today to be toxic, and ingestion of mercury leads to mercury poisoning, a form of heavy metal poisoning. While mercury is still used in compound form in some types of medicines and for other purposes, blue mass contained excessive amounts of the metal: a typical daily dose of two or three blue mass pills represented ingestion of more than one hundred times the daily limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States today.

[2] Malaria was a common disease in Chicagoland and southern Illinois in pioneer days, wherever swamps, ponds, and wet bottomlands allowed mosquitoes to thrive; the illness was called ague (a fever or shivering fit), or bilious fever when liver function became impaired; medical historians believe that the disease came from Europe with early explorers around 1500; early travel accounts and letters from the Midwest reports of the ague, such as those of Jerry Church and Roland Tinkham, the details of which are extracted from their writings:

From the Journal of Jerry Church, when he had "A Touch of the Ague" in 1830: And the next place we came to of any importance, was the River Raisin, in the state of Michigan. There we met with a number of gentlemen from different parts of the world, speculators in land and town lots and cities, all made out on paper, and prices set at one and two hundred dollars per lot, right in the woods, and musquitoes and gallinippers thick enough to darken the sun. I recollect the first time I slept at the hotel, I told the landlord the next morning I could not stay in that room again unless he could furnish a boy to fight the flies, for I was tired out myself; and not only that, but I had lost at least half a pint of blood. The landlord said that he would remove the musquitoes the next night with smoke. He did so, and after that, I was not troubled so much with them. We stayed there a few days, but they held the property so high that we did not purchase any. The River Raisin is a small stream of water, something similar to what the Yankees would call a brook. I was very much disappointed in the appearance of the country when I arrived there, for I anticipated finding something great, and did not know but that I might on the River Raisin find the article growing on trees! But it was all a mistake, for it was rather a poor section of the country. We then passed on to Chicago, and there I left my fair lady-traveler and her brother, and steered my course for Ottawa, in the county of Lasalle, Illinois. Arrived there, I put up at the widow Pembrook`s, near the town, and intended to make her house my home for some time. I kept trading round in the neighborhood for some time, and at last, was taken with a violent chill and fever, and had to take my bed at the widow`s, send for a doctor, and commence taking medicine; but it all did not do me much good. I kept getting weaker every day, and after I had eaten up all the doctor-stuff the old doctor had, pretty much, he told me that it was a very stubborn case, and he did not know as he could remove it, and thought it best to have counsel. So I sent for another doctor, and they both attended me for some time. I still kept getting worse and became so delirious as not to know anything for fifteen hours. I at last came to and felt relieved. After that, I began to feel better and concluded that I would not take any more medicine of any kind, and I told my landlady what I had resolved. She said that I would surely die if I did not follow the directions of the doctor. I told her that I could not help it; that all they would have to do was to bury me, for my mind was made up. In a few days, I began to gain strength, and in a short time, I got so that I could walkabout. I then concluded that the quicker I could get out of those "Diggins" the better it would be for me. So I told my landlady that my intention was to take my horse and wagon and try to get to St. Louis; for I did not think that I could live long in that country, and concluded I must go further south. I accordingly had my trunk re-packed and made a move. I did not travel far in a day, but at last arrived at St. Louis, very feeble and weak, and did not care much how the world went at that time. However, I thought I had better try and live as long as there was any chance.

From a letter by Roland Tinkham, a relative of Gurdon. S. Hubbard, describing his observations of malaria during a trip to Chicago in the summer of 1831: The fact cannot be controverted that on the streams and wet places the water and air are unwholesome, and the people are sickly. In the villages and thickly settled places, it is not so bad, but it is a fact that in the country which we traveled the last 200 miles, more than one half the people are sick; this I know for I have seen it. We called at almost every house, as they are not very near together, but still, there is no doubt that this is an uncommonly sickly season. The sickness is not often fatal; ague and fever, chill and fever, as they term it, and in some cases bilious fever are the prevailing diseases.