The City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days Of Disaster That Gave Birth To Modern Chicago, Krist - B

                 On July 21, 1919, a Goodyear dirigible, Wingfoot Express,  burst into flames over the Loop, and crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank building at LaSalle and Jackson. It fell through the skylight over a two story rotunda, killed thirteen, and injured many more.

                  The year had opened on a high note of enthusiasm and commitment to advancing the Chicago Plan. The mayor, Big Bill Thompson, declared for reelection. But the year that ensued was restless and disconcerting. The mayor's win was much closer than expected, the mayor and the governor were opposed to each other, there were bombings in Black communities, crime was up, and Prohibition took hold on July 1. On the afternoon of July 21st, the city council passed the City Plan ordinances.

                      Within hours of the first air disaster in the US, city officials arrested the pilot and an executive from Goodyear. The following evening, a Scotch immigrant couple reported their six-year old daughter missing. An unsettled transit strike added to the city's woes. On the 26th, a municipal court judge leapt to his death from his 11th story office window. Then, after days of intense questioning, a neighbor acknowledged he had killed the little girl. On the 26th, a Black boy went rafting in Lake Michigan and drowned after a white man hit him in the head with a thrown rock. A riot ensued as the South Side became a battlefield. The mayhem continued the following day. The transit strike expanded to the point that every public transport vehicle in the city ground to a halt. The riots spread around the city on day three. Under a tremendous amount of pressure, the mayor called out the militia."Someone had to be held accountable for the profound collapse of civil order that Chicago had just experienced. And there were many determined to see that it would be Big Bill Thompson."

                  On August 1, the transit strike was ended and the rioting wound down. "Over the next few days, the battered city began to recover." When the mayor realized that the governor had been able to settle the transit strike by raising fares 40%, he knew he had a scapegoat.  He  denounced the fare increase, and threatened to take over the transit system. When the state's attorney began to prosecute only Blacks and the South Side objected, he did too. On Oct. 17, Thomas Fitzgerald, the child murderer, was hung before the largest crowd to ever witness an execution in Chicago. On election day, voters approved a bond issue to implement the Chicago Plan. Thompson began to plan his revenge on the governor, who hoped to be the Republican nominee for president. The convention was at the Chicago Coliseum. He was a delegate controlling 17 votes, and he theatrically marched out of the convention, arranged for a major newspaper to thrash the governor, and killed Governor Lowden's chances. In November, the Thompson machine swept every state and city office.

                That summer, the Michigan Avenue drawbridge over the Chicago River was completed, connecting the Loop with the north side. "Big Bill's lakefront parks, his new boulevards and plazas, his glorious museums and stadiums, would continue to rise and change the skyline of Chicago for the better." But, it was a city of corruption, violence, and vice. "For better or worse, the Chicago of the twenty-first century, perhaps the most architecturally distinguished and physically attractive city in the Americas, is in no small part a creation of the Thompson administration. " A fun read for anyone with a Chicago connection.