On December 10

On this day in ...
... 1931, the Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on Jane Addams; she was a co-winner with Nicholas Murray Butler. Nobel Committee Chair Halvdan Koht said in his presentation speech:

(credit)

'America helped – perhaps it would be more correct to say compelled – Europe to create a League of Nations which would provide a firm basis for peaceful coexistence among nations. It was a crushing blow that America herself did not join this organization, and without doubt her failure to do so contributed largely to the failure of the League of Nations to live up to expectations. We still see too much of the old rivalries of power politics. Had the United States joined, she would have been a natural mediator between many of the conflicting forces in Europe, for America is more interested in peace in Europe than in lending her support to any particular country.
'It must be said, however, that the United States is not the power for peace in the world that we should have wished her to be. She has sometimes let herself drift into the imperialism which is the natural outcome of industrial capitalism in our age. In many ways she is typical of the wildest form of capitalist society, and this has inevitably left its mark on American politics.
'But America has at the same time fostered some of the most spirited idealism on earth.'

A longtime advocate of peace, suffrage, and measures to alleviate poverty, Addams was emblematic of that idealism – of "the work which women can do peace fraternity among nations," Koht continued. But Addams, who was then 71 years old, was admitted to a hospital in Baltimore on this day in 1931, and so was unable to attend the ceremony in Oslo, Norway. She would die 4 years later in the city where she had long lived, Chicago. We IntLawGrrls honor her as a transnational foremother.

(Prior December 10 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

On December 2

Depiction of the 1942  nuclear experiment

On this day in ...
... 1942 (70 years ago today), in "a jury-rigged laboratory" on a squash court underneath the Stagg Field bleachers at the University of Chicago, occurred the 1st human-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. At the head of this experiment was Enrico Fermi, an Italy-born Nobel laureate in physics who'd fled his homeland a few years earlier, during the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. A coded message from Fermi to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt thus heralded the nuclear era:

'The Italian navigator has landed in the new world.'

Fermi's Manhattan Project breakthrough would advance U.S. efforts to construct an atomic bomb.

(Prior December 2 posts are here, here, here, here, and here.)

On October 8

On this day in ...
... 1871 (140 years ago today), on an autumn night that followed what had been a parched summer in Chicago, a city filled with wooden buildings, flames leaped in a barn. The Chicago Historical Society tells it this way:

[J]ust after nine o'clock, a fire broke out in the barn behind the home of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary at 13 DeKoven Street. How the fire started is still unknown today, but an O'Leary cow often gets the credit.

Fire rages in the city for 2 days, till a rainfall quenched the flames. It left a disaster:

At least 300 people were dead, 100,000 people were homeless, and $200 million worth of property was destroyed. The entire central business district of Chicago was leveled.

The Great Fire sparked a "spirit of recovery that flourished in its aftermath," and contributed, according to this account, and as presaged by the Chicago Tribune editorial above right, to the development of the skyscraper and other urban innovations. (image credit)

(Prior October 8 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Moving up

Indulge us, if you will.
Proud to announce that, for the 1st time ever, IntLawGrrls ranks as a most-viewed law profs' blog.
According to compilations by Paul L. Caron, Associate Dean and Professor at Cincinnati College of Law, this past quarter we 'Grrls were 35th in page views, at 214K-plus.
What's more, we placed 2d for increase in viewers and visitors these past months -- 35.9% and 28.8%, respectively.
Heartfelt thanks to all the 'Grrls who've contributed, whether it was our Kampala International Criminal Court series, accounts of scholarship, commentary on current events like the Gulf oil spill, intercountry adoptions, or Bloody Sunday truths, or celebrations of intlaw experts. Our heartiest thanks to all our readers. Visit us any time -- as they used to say in Chicago, early and often!

On November 17

On this day in ...
... 1866, Voltairine de Cleyre (right) was born in Leslie, Michigan, into a poor family with ties to the Underground Railroad. Sent to a convent school in Canada where her family hoped she would get a better education, de Cleyre soon embraced atheism and free-thought movements of the day. Following the 1887 Haymarket executions about which we've posted here, she became an anarchist. She was, in the words of Russia-born anarchist Emma Goldman, "the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced." Her many speeches and writings may be found in a number of collections, among them Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre (Sharon Presley & Crispin Sartwell eds., 2005). De Cleyre survived 2 suicide attempts and 1 assassination attempt before dying from meningitis in Chicago in 1912.

(Prior November 17 posts are here and here.)

On September 24

On this day in ...
... 1969 (40 years ago today), in a federal courtroom in Chicago, jury selection began in the trial of 8 men indicted on charges of conspiracy and crossing state lines to incite riots at the Democratic National Convention held in the same city 13 months earlier. Judge Julius Hoffman rejected the requests of defense attorneys for what came to be known as the Trial of the Chicago 8. (It would be reduced to 7 (above right (credit)): the case of defendant Bobby Seale, a Black Panther leader, was severed after he had spent several court days bound and gagged (below left (credit)) by order of the judge). To tease out jurors' "cultural bias" the defense proposed questions like these:

'Do you know who Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix are?'
'Would you let your son or daughter marry a Yippie?'
'If your children are female, do they wear brassieres all the time?'

The only question allowed:

'Are you, or do you have any close friends or relatives who are employed by any law enforcement agencies?'

That was the 1st of many contested judicial decisions in the course of a bizarre 5-month trial before a jury that comprised "two white men and ten women, two black and eight white." The judge's behavior would prompt the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, in United States v. Dellinger (1972), to reverse the convictions of the 5 men whom jurors had found guilty; they were Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, and Rennie Davis.

(Prior September 24 posts are here and here.)

On July 19

On this day in ...
... 1799 (210 years ago today) , a soldier who'd accompanied French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on his campaign in Egypt discovered "a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria." On it were passages in 3 scripts, Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Egyptian demotic, "all of identical meaning." The stone thus "held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been 'dead' for nearly 2,000 years." Seized from the French 2 years later when Napoleon was defeated, this Rosetta Stone (left) has been at London's British Museum for the last 2 centuries. (A prior IntLawGrrls post on Napoleon's Egyptian adventure is here.)
... 64 (1,945 years ago today), fire swept Rome while its Emperor Nero fabulously fiddled. "Fabulously," that is, because a near-contemporaneous account does not put that musical instrument in Nero's hands. Rather, historian Tacitus wrote in his Annals of Imperial Rome:

Now started the most terrible and destructive fire which Rome had ever experienced. It began in the Circus, where it adjoins the Palatine and Caelian hills. ...Fanned by the wind, the conflagration instantly grew and swept the full length of the Circus. There were no walled mansions or temples, or any other obstructions which could arrest it. ...
... A rumor had spread that, while the city was burning, Nero had gone on his private stage and, comparing modern calamities with ancient, had sung of the destruction of Troy. ... People believed that Nero was ambitious to found a new city to be called after himself.

In an aftermath that future residents of Chicago and San Francisco would find familiar, the charred city was rebuilt to greater glory. And whether Nero liked it or not, it kept its original name of Roma.

(Prior July 19 posts are here and here.)

Labor Days past

(It's Labor Day today in the United States. To mark this annual end-of-summer homage to workingfolk, IntLawGrrls offers photos of Labor Days past in Chicago, from the archives of the defunct Chicago Daily News, online courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America take part in the 1915 parade, in which 10,000 marched. (photo credit)

1915: Josephine Altgeld Fredricks unveils a statue of her uncle, the late Governor John P. Altgeld, who lost re-election on account of his 1893 pardon of defendants in the Haymarket case, stemming from a police death when a bomb was thrown at a labor rally. (photo credit)

Straightforward message about solidarity, 1904 parade (photo credit)

On August 31

On this day in ...
... 1962, Trinidad and Tobago gained full independence from Britain. It then joined the Commonwealth of Nations, and though independent, it "acknowledged the British monarch as the figurehead chief of state from 1962 until 1976." Since then it's been a parliamentary republic. In 1498 Christopher Columbus had landed on Trinidad, the larger of the 2 islands that comprise the Caribbean country. Today Trinidad and Tobago, which is about the size of Delaware, has a population of 1.3 million.
... 1979, Sally Rand died of congestive heart failure at a hospital in Glendora, California. She'd been born Harriet Helen Gould Beck 75 years earlier in Hickory County, Missouri; Cecil B. DeMille gave her her stage name in the 1920s. Rand gained global renown in 1933 and 1934 at the "Streets of Paris" concession (right) at Chicago's Century of Progress World's Fair. (photo credit) There throngs watched her dance to classical music, waving giant ostrich-befeathered fans that appeared the only cover of her seemingly nude (but actually bodysuited) self. Her famous fan dance is captured in the video below. Rand's political side extended to more than sexual politics, according to her New York Times obituary:

During the 1930's, when her notoriety was at its height, she made repeated appearances before small-town civic groups and spoke out in favor of the republican forces in the Spanish Civil War.

On August 28

On this day in ...
... 1968 (40 years ago today), Chicago police waged a "pitched battle" against anti-Vietnam War protesters just outside the Democratic National Convention hall where, inside, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey was nominated as Democrats' candidate for President. Tactics used by the police drew "scorn and mockery" from "[f]oreign newsmen from East and West."
(photo credit)
... 1943 (65 years ago today), amid anti-Nazi strikes in which Danes had been taking part for a month, the Danish government refused a Nazi ultimatum that the government declare a state of emergency, accepting censorship and summary justice and outlawing strikes. Hours later, the German military imposed its own state of emergency and seized control of the country. (credit for photo of Danish protesters)

On August 12

On this day in ...

... 1833 (175 years ago today), Chicago was founded. About 350 people lived in the town, which spanned a 3/8-square-mile area that still is at the heart of the city's Loop. Its name is a Native American word, but its meaning is uncertain -- some say it meant "wild onion" or "skunk"; others, "strong" or "great." Today Chicago (flag above right) -- the 3d largest U.S. city, with a population of 2.8 million living in a 237-square-mile area -- is vying with other cities in the world to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

... 1898 (110 years ago today), at 4:23 p.m., representatives of Spain and the United States signed an armistice ending the Spanish-American War. As part of the agreement, Spain gave up its claim to Cuba, agreed to U.S. occupation of the Philippines, and ceded Puerto Rico and other colonial holdings to the United States. (map credit)

Sweet Home Chicago redux

My home city's humming these days.
Chicago's Sen. Barack Obama just clinched the Democratic Presidential nomination, in a year when another of the 3 last-remaining candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton, was born in Chicagoland.
The Chicago Cubs hold the best record in baseball this season, fully 100 years after the last time the North Siders won the World Series. On the South Side, the Chicago White Sox are 1st in their division, too.
And then there's the international scene.
As posted, more than a year ago the City of Big Shoulders elbowed out Los Angeles to become the U.S. entrant in the '16 Olympics competition. Yesterday the city made the final cut: as Doha, Qatar, Prague, Czech Republic, and Baku, Azerbaijan fell by the wayside Chicago was named 1 of 4 finalists to sponsor the 2016 Olympic Games. It competes from now till October 2, 2009, against Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Madrid, Spain, and Tokyo, Japan. One tough bunch.


(credit for photo of 1967 sculpture by Pablo Picasso, Chicago's Civic Center landmark)

Remembering

(Today -- Memorial Day in the United States -- IntLawGrrls presents photos of past observances of this woman-started event. All are courtesy of the Library of Congress' archive of photos from a newspaper no longer in existence, the Chicago Daily News)





1917: A fur-stole-clad Ella Cermak, presumably the daughter of Anton J. Cermak, then a state legislator and later mayor, "posing with a soldier in front of a light colored panel for Tag Day, i.e. Memorial Day, in a room in Chicago, Illinois." (credit)

circa 1904: "Image of a Memorial Day observation, with children with American flags gathered among the tombstones in a cemetery in Chicago, Illinois." (credit)

1922: A young girl and 3 servicemembers stand at a decorated grave at Mount Carmel Cemetery, Hillside, Illinois. (credit)

On May 1

On this day in ...
... 1830, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was born -- or so she said. Some historians now believe she was in fact born on Aug. 1, 1837. It's their view that the labor agitator took the unusual step of claiming to be 7 years older than she was in order to cultivate a grandmotherly image, to establish herself as the matriarch of the labor movement. The reason that Jones (left) moved her date of birth up several months ought to be obvious: today is May Day, the date on which workers around the world have been marching for labor rights since the Chicago march of 1886 on which we've posted. What is certain is this: Jones was born into a tenant farming family in Cork, Ireland, immigrated to the United States, and became a labor organizer after losing her husband and children to yellow fever and her dressmaking shop to the Chicago fire. The transnational foremother of IntLawGrrl Johanna E. Bond, Jones led many a May Day march before her death in 1930. Here's a sample quote from the "fiery," 5-foot-tall Jones:

I'm not a humanitarian. I'm a hell-raiser.

... 1932, the Convention (No. 29) concerning Force or Compulsory Labor, the Forced Labour Convention that the International Labour Organization had adopted on June 28, 1930, entered into force.

Remembering Harold, thinking about Barack

Twenty-five years ago today Chicago made history when Harold Washington was sworn in as mayor.
The 42d person to lead America's Second City, Washington, who was serving in Congress at the time of his election, became the 1st African-American to hold that position. (photo credit) In a bruising primary, he'd bested the incumbent, Chicago's only woman mayor, Jane M. Byrne, as well as Richard M. Daley, presumptive heir to the seat his father had held for 2 decades. Still more bruises followed in the contest against Republican State Rep. Bernard Epton, as the website of the local CBS affiliate reported:

90 percent of white voters in Chicago, including ward bosses, turned their back on the Democratic Party. The atmosphere of the city became divisive and hostile in ways that would be difficult to imagine ... a quarter century later.
... It became a campaign of slurs, accusations, charges and counter-charges, and a contest dominated by the issue of race. ...

I remember it well.

The election took place while I was a student at Chicago's Northwestern University School of Law, from which Washington had earned his J.D. in 1952, a time when, according to campus lore when I was there, the school was considered "progressive" for setting aside 2 seats in each class, 1 for a woman, 1 for an African-American. (Washington's set-aside sibling also proved her mettle: Dawn Clark Netsch was graduated magna cum laude, became a politician and Northwestern law professor, and, in 1994, the 1st woman to receive the Illinois gubernatorial nomination of a major party.) Although decades had passed, in 1983 the city remained splintered, a metropolis of ethnic enclaves circled by unseen but well known walls. Isolation fed bitter, overt hostilities.

Emblematic of the ugliness of the 1983 campaign was a button that my relative saw worn openly on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange: Beneath the circle-with-slash that's the universal sign of "NO" was a green watermelon against a black background.

And yet, that year, Chicago began to rewrite its history. Citywide turnout on Election Day was nearly 88%, the highest ever. In the end a coalition of African-American, Latina/o, and "white 'lakefront liberal' voters" elected "Harold," as supporters called him, by a slim margin.

Washington's 4 years as mayor -- he died from a heart attack in 1987 -- were landmark. The city fared as it had under other mayors. That fact of competence eroded Chicago's entrenched ugliness. And though Daley eventually did become mayor, his way of running things proved far more inclusive than that of his father.

Harold's breakthrough, moreover, inspired a generation -- not only this onetime lakefront law student, but also a man who came to the city in the '80s to work with poor people. That man was Barack Obama (right), now himself a Member of Congress, now taking his own bruising as he endeavors to repeat in the national arena what Harold achieved in Chicago.

(Cross-posted at Slate's Convictions blog)

On September 3, ...

... 2007 (today), Americans celebrate Labor Day, a no-work day in honor of working folk. Most other countries mark this on May Day. It's said, though, that U.S. President Grover Cleveland shied from the 1st of May out of concern that it was too closely linked to labor militancy and to the Haymarket Riots of May 1886. Politics notwithstanding, it's a great final-summer-fling-weekend for all. Cause enough to celebrate.
... 1981, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979, entered into force. On adherence to the Convention, the U.N. Division on the Advancement of Women writes:

Currently, 185 countries -- over ninety percent of the members of the United Nations -- are party to the Convention. An additional State has signed, but not ratified the treaty, therefore it is not bound to put the provisions of the Convention into practice.

That lone signer-not-a-party? The United States.

On May 1, ...

... 1867 (140 years ago today), Illinois' 8-hour law, the 1st in the United States, took effect. When Chicago employers resisted -- as detailed in James Green's Death in the Haymarket -- their employees walked out, shutting down many industries. But within a week police and troops broke the strike, and long workdays resumed in spite of the new law. Nearly 2 decades later, on May 1, 1886, tens of thousands marched for the 8-hour-day throughout the country, with greater success. May 1 remains International Workers' Day in much of the world. This is not the case in the United States -- amid the Cold War in 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared the date Law Day or Loyalty Day.
... 2007 (today), marks yet another May Day holiday, called Lá Bealtaine in Gaelic, and a fixture on the Celtic calendar for centuries. The day marks the beginning of the light half of the year, and traditionally was marked by bonfires on the eve and by flower-garlanded May bushes and dancing on the day. (circa 1903 photo of schoolgirls 'round a Maypole from the Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-0000348, courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society, available via Library of Congress).

Sweet Home Chicago

Can't resist a plug for my home city of Chicago. The U.S. Olympic Committee yesterday picked the City of the Big Shoulders as the place where big-shouldered athletes ought to compete in the 2016 Olympic Games. Chicago won out over Los Angeles. Though a nice enough place, LA's no Chicago. OK, so Chicago's weather can be a bit extreme. But it boasts a jewel of a lakefront park, insatiable sports fans, unrivaled public art and urban architecture, power-pols, prizewinning theater, and blues to beat all. Frank Sinatra called it his kind of town; blues legend Robert Johnson wrote:

Come on, baby don't you want to go
To the same old place, sweet home Chicago

Given expected competition -- Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Rome, Tokyo, and Prague -- we'll have to wait and see where the International Olympic Committee wants the '16 Games to go.