August 5, 1912 – As the new
National Progressive Party with Theodore Roosevelt at its head is at the
beginning of its rise, suffragettes parade through Chicago in recognition of
the fact that the new party will carry a plank in its platform that advocates
giving women the right to vote.
According to the Chicago Daily
Tribune, “A crowd of many hundreds, flaunting banners and headed by a band,
formed in front of the Art Institute and marched to the Coliseum. It included women of every age and many
stations in life. There were gray haired
grandmothers and young girls still with their schooling unfinished; mothers of
families and old maids.” [Chicago Daily
Tribune, August 5, 1912] So many women showed up for the parade that it was
difficult to get the march organized. At
one point the main group of marchers was asked to move back about six
feet. Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCulloch,
responding to the request, said, “What!
Retreat? We never retreat!” A squad of mounted police leads the
procession, followed by a marching band, the band followed by a group of young
women from the University of Chicago. The lead automobile carried Miss Jane
Addams, Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth and Mrs. Isabella Blaney, a delegate from California. Other cars follow, but the most impressive
portion of the procession is made up of the ranks of women, many of whom have
never been in a public march before. One
Methodist deaconess, Miss Estella Manley, says, “We are progressives and believe
in suffrage because we see the necessity of a progressive movement in our work
against the traffic in women. No one
realizes how ineffective a law can be and how much a community is in need of
progressive lawmakers until one has done some uplift work in a community.”
August 5, 1970: With 200 police officers gathered from seven other suburbs on hand, Highland Park’s Ravinia Park gives its stage to Janis Joplin and the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The Chicago Tribune describes the scene as a mob consisting of “20,000 clapping screaming youths listening to the Full Tilt Boogie band . . . Highland Park Police Chief Michael Bonamarte waiting for a riot.” [Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1970] “In her satin hooker clothes,” Tribune music critic Linda Winer writes, “no less than a full fall of purple feathers sitting atop her tangled hair, foot stamping, bottom waving, Southern Comfort swigging Miss Joplin could almost convince you to just watch her sing all night.” Eight days after the concert at Ravinia Joplin gives her final public concert at Harvard Stadium. On October 4, in the middle of recording her album Pearl, she fails to show up at the studio, and at the age of 27 she is found, dead of an overdose at Hollywood’s Landmark Hotel.
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