Illinois History Minutes

It’s September 9th, and late at night on this day in 1968 --- police arrested nearly 250 Black University of Illinois students, who had camped out in a lounge of the Illini Union to protest problems with the university’s program to recruit low-income, minority students. Most were freshmen in that program, known as the Special Education Opportunities Program, or Project 500.

It’s September 8th. And on this day in 1930, Chicago-born cartoonist Chic Young launched Blondie, a comic strip whose title character began as a scatterbrained Prohibition-era flapper, but evolved into a level-headed housewife, married to scatterbrained Dagwood Bumstead. Chic Young’s son Dean Young oversees the strip today.

It’s September 7th, the legal birthday of Raggedy Ann. Writer and illustrator Johnny Gruelle, who was born in Arcola, received a patent for his rag doll with red yarn for hair, black buttons for eyes and a triangle nose, on this day in 1915. There are conflicting stories about Raggedy Ann’s origins, but a common element is Gruelle’s retrieval of an old homemade rag doll from the attic of his parents’ house in Indianapolis. Starting from there, Gruelle developed the Raggedy Ann character, inspired by his daughter.  Gruelle produced picture books about Raggedy Ann and his brother Raggedy Andy from 1918 into the 1970s.

It’s September 6th, the day in 1955 when a funeral for 14-year-old lynching victim Emmett Till was held at the Roberts Temple, Church of God in Christ, on Chicago’s south side. Tens of thousands of people attended the funeral, where Mamie Till-Mobley insisted that the casket be opened to display her son’s mutilated body. Days earlier in Mississippi, Till had been abducted, tortured and murdered by the husband and brother-in-law of a young white woman that the teenager had supposedly offended.

Today is Labor Day, a holiday born partly out of the 1894 strike against the Pullman factory in Chicago … and a subsequent railroad boycott. After the American Railroad Union ignored court orders, President Grover Cleveland sent Army troops to Chicago to stop strikers from obstructing the trains.

It’s September 2nd, the day Albert Goodwill Spalding was born in Byron in 1849. Spalding played professional baseball in the 1870s, including pitching and managing for the Chicago White Stockings, forerunner of the Chicago Cubs. Spalding helped popularize the use of baseball gloves. And he helped organize the National League. Albert Spalding also ran a sporting goods store with his brother in Chicago that grew into a major sports equipment manufacturer, now part of the Russell Corporation.

It’s September First, the date in 1931 that marks the release of “The Galloping Ghost”, a 12-chapter movie serial starring former Fighting Illini football star Harold “Red” Grange. Grange plays  -- what else --- a college football star, who chases down gamblers who have blackmailed his teammate.

It’s August 31st, and on this day in 1918, Jim Jordan married Marion Driscoll, in their hometown of Peoria. In time, the Jordans would become one of radio’s most successful comedy teams, meeting up in Chicago with writer Don Quinn to create Fibber McGee and Molly.

It’s August 30th, the day that Burgomeister won the nearly 300-thousand dollar Hambletonian Stakes in 1980. That was the last year the annual harness race for three-year-old trotting horses was held at the Du Quoin State Fair in southern Illinois.

It’s August 29th --- which was opening day at the Chicago Amphitheater for the 1864 Democratic National Convention. Delegates approved a “Peace Democrat” platform, calling for immediate talks with the Confederacy to end the Civil War. But they nominated a “War Democrat” candidate, the young General George McClellan, who favored fighting on to restore the Union.