Haymarket & Pullman
June 13, 2009
Our last day in Chicago was bitter sweet. What a great trip; yet I was ready to go home. We visited the site of the Haymarket tragedy. The incidence shows how much these men (and women) were willing to fight to gain the rights they (and we) deserved. I believe the men that hanged for the crime were wrongfully sentenced and paid the ultimate price for living at a time when the wealthy businessman had so much power. Today the police would not get away with shooting into crowds, the courts could not accuse individuals based on circumstantial evidence and most likely one would not get the death penalty for voicing a view through assembly and petition. This information could be shared with students when teaching the Bill of Rights; especially when talking about our freedom of speech, our freedom of petition, and our freedom of assembly.
Of course we had some downtime when we ate lunch at the Lithuanian restaurant. For lunch they served meat dumplings, kugela, and stuffed cabbage along with applesauce and sour cream; a very traditional Lithuanian meal. They were very accommodating making sure everyoned left with full stomachs.
Our last stop of the tour took us to Pullman’s planned community. We toured the Historical Society’s Building, a bit of the neighborhood; where each house looked the same, the Florence Hotel; where Pullman greeted special guests and had a suite himself, the Greenstone Church, and finally the Pullman factory. An archaeologist gave us her view of what they look for when working with such a historical site. One interesting detail was the belief that Pullman, who was very controlling, would signal for someone in the factory to bring him things to his suite at the hotel using different colors of blinds from his window. What an interesting day!
