I enjoyed reading the article by Alyssa Rangel, “Saul Alinsky and Notre Dame” in the December 2023 issue of Culture Wars. It provided a lot of interesting details and gave the backgrounds of some of the characters who have greatly affected our communities and our Church, especially in Chicago. I paused when I read the statement, “with the backing of Bishop Bernard Sheil,” who Alinsky already had in his pocket, ‘the overwhelming majority of the parish priests were backing us, and we were holding our organizational meetings in their churches.’”[1] I reacted thinking, “How could a bishop and so many priests be connected to someone so notorious?” Maybe part of the answer is in the city’s story.

Chicago was the traditional homeland of the Council of the Three Fires – made up of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations.[2] These were the people Fr. Jacques Marquette came to live with in the winter of 1674. He founded the mission of the Conception in order to bring the Gospel to this land.[3]

Later in 1790, Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable established the first permanent settlement in present-day Chicago. He was the son of a French father and a Black African slave mother. He married a member of the Potawatomi tribe, Kitthawa, better known as Catherine, in the Catholic church in Cahokia, Illinois in 1778.[4]

The City of Chicago was incorporated in 1837 and quickly grew because of its location which serves as a transportation hub. The Illinois & Michigan Canal was constructed linking the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River which greatly facilitated trade. The digging of the canal was done mostly by Irish immigrants. This work was arduous and dangerous, many of the men died. Two early settlers John Sullivan & James Murphy donated land for a cemetery so the workers would have a Christian burial. Also on the site, St James Church was built where the descendants of the two generous donors are parishioners to this day.[5]

Chicago would continue to grow and become a major railway hub. Even today, half of all U.S. rail freight continues to pass through Chicago.[6] The Union Stock Yard was the end of the line for the livestock. There the slaughterhouses, meat packaging and other elements of the animal-industrial complex did their work. Incorporated in 1865, The Union Stock Yard covered 345 acres and was the location of the processing plants of Armour, Swift, and Morris. As Upton Sinclair said in The Jungle, “They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”

This all needed a large labor force and waves of immigrants responded. Initially, the workers were mostly German and Irish. But the new arrivals found the stockyard’s working conditions horrid. Attempts were made to organize the laborers. On May 1, 1886, workers at the stockyards joined a nationwide strike for an eight-hour workday.[7] Three days later this event led to the Haymarket Square Riot on May 4,1886. Ever since then, Chicago has become an infamous arena of conflict between Capital and Labor.

By the late nineteenth century waves of other migrants came to work in the stockyards; primarily Polish, Lithuanian, Bohemian, and Italian. Published In 1906, The Jungle tells a fictional account of its protagonist Jurgis Rudkus and his wife Ona and their experiences at stockyards. Rudkus came to America in hope of improving his family’s lot from the poverty of Lithuania. But, things do not go well for them working in the stockyard and their life in the Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood. The novel’s tragic story inspired academics and reformers to work for social change in these working class neighborhoods.

In 1937, Joe Meegan became the director of Davis Square Park located in the Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood. He was the son of an Irish immigrant who labored long hours in the stockyards.[8] He was married to Helen Marie (nee Brady) and they had nine children.[9],[10] His brother Peter became a priest and later was the secretary for Bishop Sheil. Meegan also was involved with Bishop Sheil and his Catholic Youth Organization (CYO)…

[…] This is just an excerpt from the April 2024 Issue of Culture Wars magazine. To read the full article, please purchase a digital download of the magazine, or become a subscriber!

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Articles:

Culture of Death Watch

Not that Innocent: Who are the Real

Villains in the Life of Britney Spears? by Eric Brandt

Saul Alinsky’s Chicago by Jack Kopreus

Features

The Ethnic Cleansing of German Minorities after the War by Dr. E. Michael Jones

Reviews

Satanism as the Hidden Grammar of America by Sean Naughton

(Endnotes Available by Request)

[1]                “Saul Alinsky and Notre Dame,” https://culturewars.com/news/saul-alinsky-and-notre-dame 

 

[2]                “Indigenous Tribes of Chicago,” ALA, https://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/diversity/chicago-indigenous 

 

[3]                http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=view&term_id=2376&keyword=marquette 

 

[4]                “History of DuSable,” Dusable Heritage Association, https://www.dusableheritage.com/history 

 

[5]                “St James' Incredible History,” St. James at Sag Bridge, https://historicstjames.org/historical-society 

 

[6]                “Chicago History,” Chicago, https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/about/history.html 

 

[7]                “The Union Stockyards: ‘A Story of American Capitalism,’” The Union Stockyards, https://interactive.wttw.com/chicago-stories/union-stockyards/the-union-stockyards-a-story-of-american-capitalism 

 

[8]                Slayton, Robert A. Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Page 193. 

 

[9]                “Helen Meegan Obituary,” Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 30, 2001, https://legacy.suntimes.com/us/obituaries/chicagosuntimes/name/helen-meegan-obituary?id=30223805 

 

[10]               Slayton, Robert A. Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Page 193; Ibid p. 200

 

[11]               “Joseph Meegan, Back of Yards Council Co-Founder,” Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1994, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1994-07-09-9407090073-story.html 

 

[12]               Robert Slayton, “Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council,” Encyclopedia of Chicago, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/100.html; Horwitt, Sanford. Let Them Call Me Rebel. 1989; Jablonsky, Thomas J. Pride in the Jungle: Community and Everyday Life in Back of the Yards Chicago. 1993; Slayton, Robert. Back of the Yards. 1986. 

 

[13]               Slayton, Robert A. Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Page 202-203. 

 

[14]               Matt 6:33

 

[15]               https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html