CHICAGO, June 30, 2009 – Exercise your First Amendment rights and relive the exciting public debates that immortalized Washington Square Park. Join the Newberry Library, along with the McCormick Freedom Museum and the Poetry Foundation, for music and lively debates on current issues, and engage in some good-natured heckling with the crowd. This year, relive the Lincoln-Douglas debates in honor of the Lincoln Bicentennial, and get your photo taken with Abe Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Author Alex Kotlowitz will sign his books before the debates, from 12 to 1 pm, and Rick Kogan will MC this exciting day of activities and speakers.
This year's soapbox debate topics include:
In the spirit of courageous advocacy of freedom of speech, the John Peter Altgeld Award will be presented to Barb Thill, former adviser to the Statesman newspaper at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire. Thill resigned in the face of changes imposed on the school’s journalism program after a controversial article on student sex life ran in the January edition of the Statesman.
“This year’s Altgeld Award is presented to an award-winning scholastic-journalism advisor who stood up to administrative censorship,” said Shawn Healy, managing director of the McCormick Freedom Museum. “Thill sacrificed her professional career for the principle of press freedom embodied in the First Amendment and the sanctity of student journalism.”
Previous award recipients include Dawn Sherman, Jorge Mújica, the American Library Association, Kathy Kelly, and Leon Despres. The award is named for John Peter Altgeld, governor of Illinois from 1893 to 1897, who is best remembered for championing labor reform and pardoning three men convicted for the Haymarket bombing.
The festivities are scheduled from 1 pm to 4 pm on Saturday, July 25 in Washington Square Park, with related programming starting at 9 am. The park is directly across the street from the Newberry Library, which is located at 60 West Walton Street, between Clark and Dearborn.
Along with the Bughouse Debates, the Newberry Library's 25th Annual Book Fair will be held inside the Library's main floor lobby. More than 110,000 used books will be sorted into 70 categories in this four-day book extravaganza. The Fair begins on Thursday, July 23, and stock will continue to be replenished until Sunday, July 26.
Schedule of Events on Saturday, July 25
9 am – Complimentary yoga presented in Washington Square Park by lululemon athletica
10 am – Book Fair opens
10:30 am –Complimentary kids’ yoga presented in Washington Square Park by Get Healthy Chicago
12 pm - Meet the Author: Alex Kotlowitz (book signing)
12:50 pm – Live Music by Black Bear Combo
1 pm – Rick Kogan Welcome
1:15 pm – Presentation of the Altgeld award to Barb Thill
1:35 pm – Main debate (Lincoln vs. Douglas)
2:15 pm –Memorial tributes to Studs Terkel, Leon Despres, Franklin Rosemont and Judith Krug.
2:30 pm – Soapbox Debates
3:45 pm – Dil Pickle award presented
6 pm – Book Fair closes for the day
This year’s debates are sponsored by the McCormick Freedom Museum, the Poetry Foundation, and the Newberry Library.
About Bughouse Square
Bughouse Square (from “bughouse” slang for mental health facility), the popular name for Washington Square Park, was the city’s most popular, boisterous, and radical free speech space from the 1910s through the 1930s. Orators mounted soapboxes and spoke to responsive, vocal crowds. Bohemians, poets, atheists, and religionists of all persuasions entertained bystanders. The Square’s core contributors, however, came from the ranks of the Wobblies, men and women of the Industrial Workers of the World, whose radical views, wit, and humor made them champion soapboxers and perennial crowd favorites. World War II and a post-war crackdown against socialists and communists, however, led to Bughouse Square’s decline and by the mid 1960s it had all but ceased to exist. The Newberry Library revived the Park’s free speech legacy with the Bughouse Square Debates in 1986.