Chicago in the Great Depression
Chicago in the Great Depression

Author: James R. Schonauer

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2015-01-05

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1439649111

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Carl Sandburg called Chicago the "City of the Big Shoulders," and those shoulders withstood the stock market crash of 1929. Chicagoans rallied to collect funds to celebrate the centennial of the city's incorporation in 1833. A Century of Progress International Exposition, held in 1933 and 1934, brought jobs and businesses to Chicago and cheered people with the prospect of new technology and the promising face of the future. Neighborhood churches and community organizations helped each other, and the Great Migration brought new arrivals from the American South. Together, these factors helped to hasten the end of Prohibition and the fall of notorious gangsters like Al Capone and John Dillinger. Jazz rolled in, with Chicagoans dancing along to the tunes of the big bands. Even if pocketbooks were bare, souls were full of hope.

The 1933 Chicago World's Fair
The 1933 Chicago World's Fair

Author: Cheryl Ganz

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2012-01-06

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0252078527

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Chicago's 1933 world's fair set a new direction for international expositions. Earlier fairs had exhibited technological advances, but Chicago's fair organizers used the very idea of progress to buoy national optimism during the Depression's darkest years. Orchestrated by business leaders and engineers, almost all former military men, the fair reflected a business-military-engineering model that envisioned a promising future through science and technology's application to everyday life. But not everyone at Chicago's 1933 exposition had abandoned notions of progress that entailed social justice and equality, recognition of ethnicity and gender, and personal freedom and expression. The fair's motto, "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms," was challenged by iconoclasts such as Sally Rand, whose provocative fan dance became a persistent symbol of the fair, as well as a handful of other exceptional individuals, including African Americans, ethnic populations and foreign nationals, groups of working women, and even well-heeled socialites. Cheryl R. Ganz offers the stories of fair planners and participants who showcased education, industry, and entertainment to sell optimism during the depths of the Great Depression. This engaging history also features eighty-six photographs--nearly half of which are full color--of key locations, exhibits, and people, as well as authentic ticket stubs, postcards, pamphlets, posters, and other it