Mapping the long trail of working class history By Jon Anderson, Chicago Tribune
'Working people are central to the creation of a great city,' said Leon Fink, a professor of labor studies at UIC and one of the map's organizers. There are, Fink added, powerful lessons to be learned from studying old buildings, tenements, neighborhood churches, meeting halls--even underpasses.
One of the map's items, for example, is '16th and Halsted: Battle of the Viaduct.'
It marks the spot, in the Pilsen neighborhood, of a violent clash in 1877 between protesting members of the Chicago German Furniture Workers Union, now Local 1784 of the Carpenters Union, and the combined forces of the Illinois National Guard and Chicago police.
That's close to Thalia Hall, once a center of Bohemian activism, and Casa Aztlan, a neighborhood house for the Mexican community, now covered with cultural murals. It's also near the site of the McCormick Reaper works, which was at the heart of the struggle for an eight-hour working day.