Chicago’s Great Fire
If you’re a person with a taste for history and you live in Chicago, there are some stories that you can’t avoid.* The Columbian Exposition. The rise of the skyscraper. The Hay Market Square riot.** The Chicago Fire. But the thing about stories that you “know” through osmosis is that you often don’t really know them at all. (Or maybe that’s just me.)
Urban historian Carl Smith’s book on the Chicago Fire made that blinding clear to me.
In October, 1871, a devastating fire swept through Chicago, destroying much of the forty-year-old city in a few days and leaving 90,000 people homeless. In Chicago’s Great Fire, The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City, Smith tells the story of both the fire and Chicago’s astonishing recovery.
Smith’s description of the fire’s path across the city is gripping. Despite the fact that the reader already knows how the story ends, he creates narrative tension through a series of vignettes based on the memories of those who fled the fire—including the long-maligned Mrs. O’Leary.***
His discussion of why Chicago was vulnerable to fire and how it rebounded so quickly are equally fascinating. He describes the rapid growth of Chicago and a city government unwilling to listen to warnings about the potential danger of fire. He explores the city’s divisive class, religious, and ethnic differences—which at their simplest broke down into wealthy and middle-class native-born Protestants of British descendent versus everyone else, with a special disdain for Irish Catholics—and the struggles for political control resulting from those differences. He examines the outpouring of international support after the fire, thanks in large part to rapid news reports made possible by the railroads and the telegraph. He considers innovations that shaped the response to the fire, including the creation of professional fire departments and the expansion of the popular press. He ends with the role the fire has played in Chicago’s self-image over the 150 years since the city burned.
Chicago’s Great Fire is a colorful and careful account of the growth and regrowth of an American city seen through the lens of the disaster that helped define it.
* And why should you? They are fascinating stories.
**More accurately the Hay Market Square massacre in my humble opinion.
***Spoiler alert: Smith demonstrates convincingly that neither O’Leary nor her cow were responsible for the disaster.
Most of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers
The Thrill of the Vote
This post first ran on election day in 2008. My feelings on the subject haven’t changed:
It’s election day in Chicago. I just walked home from voting for a new mayor and a new alderman–and I miss my old neighborhood.
For ten years I lived in South Shore: a white graduate student/small business owner/writer in a neighborhood dominated by the African-American middle class. My neighbors were police officers, schoolteachers, fire fighters, electricians, and social workers. We didn’t have much in common most of the year–except on election day.
As far as I’m concerned, voting is thrilling. My South Shore neighbors agreed. Voting in South Shore felt like a small town Fourth of July picnic. Like Mardi Gras. Like Christmas Eve when you’re five-years-old and still believe in Santa Claus. No matter what time of day I went to vote, my polling place was packed. Voters and election judges greeted each other–and me–with hugs, high fives, and “good to see you here, honey”. First time voters proudly announced themselves. Elderly voters told stories about their first election. People made sure they got their election receipts; some pinned them to their coats like a badge of honor. An older gentleman sat next to the door and said “Thank you for exercising your right to vote” as each voter left. The correct response was “It’s a privilege.”
Except for occasional confusion when the machine that takes the ballots jams, my current polling place is low key. Election judges are friendly and polite, but hugs are not issued with your ballot. When the young woman manning the machine handed me my receipt, she told me to have a good day. I said “It’s always a good day when you get to vote.” In South Shore, that would have gotten me an “Amen.” In politically active, politically correct Hyde Park, it got me an eye-blinking look of surprise and a hesitant smile.
I started home, thinking maybe I was the only one in the neighborhood whose pulse beat faster on election day. A block from the polls I ran into a young man walking with a small boy, no more than six years old. The little boy stopped me, with a grin so big that he looked like a smile wearing a wooly hat.
“Did you vote yet?” he asked. “My dad is taking me to teach me how to vote.”
“It’s a privilege,” I said.
He gave me the highest five he could manage.
* * *
This year, I balanced the risk against the joy and decided to once again vote in person. It is indeed a privilege.
So tell me, did you exercise your right to vote?
From the History in the Margins Archives: You Can’t Vote Because…
If you’ve been hanging around here on the Margins for a while, you may have read this one before. I think it’s worth repeating.
![[Suffragists in parade] (LOC)](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3033/3313669287_b8229543b5.jpg)
From sixth century Athens on, who has the vote and why has been a touchy and evolving subject in democracies. People who already have the vote have hesitated to extend it to others for two basic reasons. Those with the vote don’t think those without the vote have the capacity to make good choices. Those with the vote fear they will lose power.
Over the centuries, people in power have come up with plenty of reasons not to extend the franchise to those who don’t yet have it. Here are a few of the classics:
You can’t vote because
- You’re a slave
- You’re a woman
- You don’t own property
- You don’t own enough property
- You don’t practice the right religion
- You are the wrong race or ethnicity
- Your father or grandfather couldn’t vote
If you’re lucky enough to have the vote, use it. Because democracy is a terrible thing to waste.