Chicago's Interracial Debating Classic, January 25, 1931
Before the advent of television, lectures and debates provided public entertainment. Social activists used these venues to present their ideas and to educate their constituencies. This flyer promotes a debate involving A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, both leaders of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), as optimists, and Ben Reitman and David Tullman, both white radicals associated with the Dill Pickle Club, as pessimists. Although the exact topic of the debate is unclear, both sides supported unionization as well as racial integration. In 1931, the BSCP was engaged in a campaign to gain formal recognition as the union of African American porters and maids who worked on Pullman sleeping cars.
Sherwood Anderson, “Jack Jones—The Pickler.”
In this article from the Chicago Daily News, the novelist Sherwood Anderson describes the diverse audience at the Dill Pickle Club: “The street car conductor sits on a bench beside the college professor, the literary critic, the earnest young wife, who hungers for culture, and the hobo.”
The Season in Full Swing at the Dill Pickles
An advertisement for a week of events at Chicago's Dill Pickle Club suggests the eclectic mix of radicalism and ribaldry typical of the club. During the fall of 1930 Mae West's melodrama “Sex” played at Chicago's Garrick Theater promising audiences “55 people” on stage and “555 Thrills.” Earlier in the year, West became an unlikely icon of free speech when she prevailed over New York City prosecutors who accused her of producing obscene plays. Hypolite Havel was an anarchist intellectual and former associate of Emma Goldman. Ralph Chaplin was an editor and illustrator for the Industrial Workers of the World and the author of the labor anthem “Solidarity Forever.”
Anti-War Dance, 1918
Chicagoans organized many protests against American involvement in World War I, including this Anti-War Dance sponsored by the bohemian Dill Pickle Club. Critics of the war charged that large manufacturers were the most likely to profit from the war while workers were the most likely to die in the trenches. The war deeply divided Chicago's radicals. Some believed that it was necessary to remain loyal to the government once Congress declared war. Others urged active resistance to mobilization and the draft.
Portrait of Jack Jones, 1919
A portrait of Jack Jones by Polish immigrant artist Stanislaus Szukalski. A Canadian by birth, and a one-time labor organizer, Jones managed the Dill Pickle Club in Chicago from 1914 to 1931. His friend and collaborator Szukalski, who maintained a studio nearby, was a modernist painter and sculptor and part of the city's bohemian cultural scene. The portrait appeared in an article about Jones by the novelist Sherwood Anderson (image #137).
Dill Pickle Club House and Chapel
A handbill advertises three plays at Chicago's Dill Pickle Club. An inset map shows artists' studios nearby. The plays touched on social and political issues including labor conflict, abortion, drug use, and Irish nationalism.
Sexual Reform on a Scientific Basis
Cover of the literary magazine Earth published in Wheaton, Illinois. Magnus Hirschfeld, an openly gay German physician, was a long-time advocate of human rights for sexual minorities. The article appeared around the time Hirschfeld was lecturing in Chicago.
The Liberty Belle: She's Cracked
A woman dressed in flapper fashion delivers a speech from a soapbox. She points to a sign reading “Liberate the Libido,” a reference to the growing popularity of the work of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who argued, in part, that repressed sexual feelings could manifest themselves in antisocial behavior. A handwritten note at the bottom of the cartoon comments: “A typical scene at the Dill Pickle Club.”
Dill Pickle Lending Library
Among Chicago's most unusual contributions to the culture of modern urban life was the Dill Pickle Club, located at 18 Tooker Alley just east of Bughouse Square. Operating as a coffeehouse, art gallery, and speakeasy, 'The Pickle' welcomed hoboes, prostitutes, professors, and every variety of nonconformist passing through Chicago. The club hosted weekend jazz dance parties and little theater productions of Strindberg, Ibsen, O'Neill, and local playwrights. It hosted serious lectures by university professors and spoof debates staged for pure entertainment. In its early years, the Pickle was a meeting place for some of Chicago's most famous authors, intellectuals, and radicals, including Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, Floyd Dell, Clarence Darrow, Ben Reitman, Lucy Parsons, Ralph Chaplin, Ben Hecht, Harriet Monroe, and Vachel Lindsay.
