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| Crucible of Free Speech: A Night in Bohemia
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| While strikes and street demonstrations captured the headlines, a quieter phenomenon reshaped the possibilities for free expression in Chicago. The modern city spawned neighborhoods that became home to nonconformists and outcasts�artists, radicals, and sexual minorities�from the farms and small towns of the Midwest, as well as from Chicago�s tightly knit working-class communities.
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Like the impoverished and unconventional artists who became familiar characters in nineteenth-century European literature, these nonconformists were known as �bohemians,� a mistaken reference to gypsies, who were once thought to come from the Eastern European region of Bohemia. Chicago�s bohemians, like those in New York City�s Greenwich Village, were at the forefront of many artistic, literary, and cultural trends.
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