Chicago Reader, June 10, 2010 — In December 1898, some Chicagoans began wearing twine—twisted into the shape of a hangman’s noose—in their buttonholes. It was their way of sending a message to the City Council about an upcoming vote. “I will not be surprised to see some hanging done in the streets of Chicago,” said Mayor Carter H. Harrison II, sizing up the city’s mood. For years, citizens had been complaining about shoddy service on Chicago’s privately owned streetcars… Read my story in the Chicago Reader.
Illustration by Rick Froberg