March 8, 1971 – Fans who show up at the Chicago
Coliseum and the International Amphitheater to watch the Muhammad Ali – Joe
Frazier fight on closed circuit television end up staging their own boxing
matches as police are mobilized to combat near riots at both venues. Trouble breaks out at the Coliseum at 1513
South Wabash Avenue when projection equipment breaks down, and the audience of 7,000
people is asked to leave the building minutes before the fight is due to
begin. Some angry patrons begin to throw
ticket counters through the front windows; others toss folding chairs and
bottles from the balcony onto the main floor of the building. Close to 80 police officers are summoned to
restore order. At the Amphitheater at
Forty-Third Street and Halsted a thousand people are turned away when the
building reaches its 13,000-person capacity.
Bottles and rocks are thrown, and 40 windows are broken on the Halsted
Street side of the building. Police and
maintenance staff members turn fire houses on the crowd, and the riot is
ultimately brought under control. Police
are kept busy all night long, even rushing to the Civic Opera House when fans
who are turned away at the Coliseum show up there, hoping to gain entrance at
the last minute. All of this occurs
exactly a dozen years to the day that Ali won the Golden Gloves Championship at
the Chicago Stadium, a young boxer from Louisville using his birth name,
Cassius Clay.
March 8, 1952 -- Students of the Navy Pier branch of the University of Illinois start a mile-long petition for a state-operated four-year college in Chicago at a dance and rally at the pier. M. L. Berenbaum, president of the parents' organization at the pier, signs the petition after Representative Paul Randolph, who promises legislation to establish a four-year branch of the state university. Berenbaum says that nine out of ten students at the pier live at home and work part time in Chicago and that many of those cannot afford to leave the city to continue their educations after they complete the two-year courses of study at the pier.
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