Illinois History Minutes

Carl Sandburg was born on this day in 1878, to a poor family living in a three-room house in Galesburg. Carl left school at age 13, working manual jobs to support his family, but found time to take some college courses and to start writing poetry.

Carl Sandburg wrote that poem describing Chicago as “Hog Butcher for the World”, and also a poem short enough to teach to schoolchildren, which he recorded years later. Sandburg was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for his multi-volume biography of Lincoln during the Civil War. He spent the last part of his life in North Carolina but is buried in Galesburg near the house he was born in.

On this day in 1859, a joint session of the Illinois General Assembly voted to re-elect Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas to a third term. In those days, state lawmakers, not voters, chose U-S senators. And the legislature’s Democratic majority ensured Douglas victory, despite Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln’s strong showing in public debates with Douglas a few months earlier. Lincoln and Douglas plus two other candidates would face off for president in 1860, with Lincoln the victor.

“The Wiz”, an African-American take on Chicagoan L. Frank Baum’s “Wizard of Oz”, opened on Broadway on this day in 1975. The show won seven Tony awards, including one for University of Illinois alumnus DeeDee Bridgewater as the good witch Glinda.

It’s January 4th, this day in 1896 when Everett McKinley Dirksen was born to German immigrants in Pekin. Dirksen spent nearly half his life representing Pekin and Illinois in Congress, including a decade as Senate Minority Leader. His deep voice and old-fashioned oratory led some to call him the “Wizard of Ooze”. It led Dirksen to cut a patriotic spoken word record that made the Top 40 charts in 1967.

Dirksen’s bargaining skills helped break a southern Democratic filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And he co-authored the Voting Rights Act in 1965. A fiscal conservative, Dirksen is widely credited with joking, in response to big-spending proposals, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money”.

It’s January 3rd, and on this day in 1952, the University of Illinois football team was on a train, returning from Pasadena California, where, on New Year’s Day, they upset Stanford 40 to 7 in the Rose Bowl. Illinois was actually behind for much of the game, until the third quarter when Stanford quarterback Gary Kerkorkian threw a long pass downfield. Illinois went on to score 34 unanswered points.

The NPR news quiz show, “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” premiered on Chicago’s WBEZ on this day in 1998. Long-time host Peter Sagel would join the show a few months later.