Celebrate today in the history of Chicago: Casimir Pulaski

Since the first Monday of March is celebrated in honor of Casimir Pulaski, there are 10 things from the archives of the tribune about the Polish -born American heroes.

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Weather records (From the National Weather Service, Chicago)

• High temperature: 80 degrees (1974)

• Low temperature: Minus 6 degrees (1873)

• Precipitation: 1.21 inches (1966)

• Snowfall: 3.9 inches (1960)

1. Pulaski is known as the father of the American cavalry.

Pulaski met Benjamin Franklin in Paris in 1776, where the Polish military veteran offered its services for the American Revolution. In September 1777, he fought in the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania, where he led an attack against the British, which wore to rescue the withdrawing American army.

After Brandywine, George Washington Pulaski made a general and appointed him the first leader of the US cavalry. He led Pulaski’s Legion, a brigade of German Hessians, French and Poland, the Charleston, South Carolina, overtaken by the British in 1779. This fight contributed to turning the flood in favor of the Americans in the south.

2. But Pulaski is not the only Polish hero of the American War of Independence. There is also Tadeusz (Thaddeus) Kosciuszko.

Kosciuszko is a symbol for more than Polish pride and heroism. He rejected the oppression of Jews and farmers in Poland and slavery in America. He was an early leader of universal human rights.

There is a statue of Kosciuszko compared to the Shedd aquarium on the solidarity drive.

3. Pulaski only lived in the USA for two years.

Pulaski offered his services for the American revolution and wrote Washington known: “I came here where freedom is defended to serve and live or die for it.”

Pulaski arrived in the USA in July 1777. He was shot during a cavala slope during the siege of Savannah and died on October 11, 1779. He was most likely 34 years old.

4. Pulaski was forced from Poland.

Before he came to the United States, Pulaski was a military leader in his homeland in Poland. He was born in Warka on March 6, 1745 (although some sources say in 1747). Pulaski became a general who tried to “free his country from Russian invaders,” said George Otto from the Polish American Congress.

When the Polish military was overwhelmed by Russia in regular battles, he and his cavalry with co -habits instead turned to Guerilla attacks on horseback. Finally, he realized that the raids “no place went against superior armed forces” and fled to France.

5. Pulaski Day was celebrated for the first time in Illinois in 1986.

Although the Chicago had held parties and parades in honor of Pulaski for decades, the state only honored him for more than two centuries after Pulaski’s death.

Jim Thompson, Governor Illinois, signed an invoice on March 2 that created the state holiday – the day before the first celebration. According to a tribune story, Illinois initially “surprised” Illinois from 1986.

The legislators of the Chicago region had tried to pass the bill for some time, but always came down to the opposition, “where they have never heard of Pulaski,” said Lucyna Migala, a native of Pole and a radio broadcaster, the tribune at the time. Migala’s brother, George, said that city workers who got the day off asked him who was Pulaski.

6. The legislators have tried to kill the holiday since the first day.

On the same day on which it was celebrated for the first time, MP John Countryman von Dekalb of the Tribune said that he had pushed to lift the law in the General Assembly in Illinois. Countryman said Pulaski’s birthday should not be honored with a statutory public holiday.

While the holiday originally required a day off for all school districts in Illinois, the legislators of the state in 1995 passed a legislative template that enabled the school districts to skip their vacation.

Some legislators continued to urge Pulaski Day – and Columbus Day – to be abolished as a state holidays. However, it never succeeded and supported the movement for the Pulaski Day with increasing awareness of the general.

“Controversy attracts attention. People who have probably never heard of Pulaski will be interested, ”Edward Dykel, President of the Roman Catholic Union of America, told The Tribune in 1995.

7. Pulaski road is longer than the vacation, but was still controversial.

It was originally called Crawford Avenue after Peter Crawford, a pioneer born in Scotland who helped organize the municipality of Cicero. The street was named after Crawford in 1883; The City Council of Chicago voted 50 years later to change the name for Pulaski, and it officially changed in 1934.

Traders protested on the street and feared that their business had tribune the 50-year-old drama, according to an article from Tribune from 1985. A spokesman for the city club, Lester H. Forbes, said that the change would present the thousands of residents of the Crawford Avenue inhabitants a “serious wrong wrong” and his goal to honor Count Pulaski completely fail. “

However, the Cook County judge John Prystalski accused those who opposed the change in the bigotry and claimed that “some objections to a street (with a name) that ends with skiing could object. We could just as well be honest. People with these names are as good as everyone else. We live in an age of change. “

The merchants sued after the change and made it twice to the top court of Illinois (and lost both times).

The name of the Crawford Avenue continues to live near North and South.

March 8th is not the only Pulaski day.

The schools in Wisconsin celebrate the Pulaski Day every year on March 4, but children still have to go to class when it comes to a day of the week. Instead, it is known as the day of public school observation, where teachers are asked to “grant children of tradition, who preserve the US company and raise awareness of our cultural heritage”.

There is also a Bundestag – General Pulaski Memorial Day – on October 11th to commemorate Pulaski’s death. It was approved by the congress in 1929.

9. Pulaski has been an honorary citizen US citizen since 2009.

The congress passed a law in 2009 and made Pulaski an honorary citizen of the United States, who was signed by President Barack Obama on November 6, 2009. The draft law was originally introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-ILL.

At that time, Pulaski was only the seventh foreigner in view of the award. He joined William Penn, a founder of the Pennsylvania colony, and his wife Hannah. the Marquis de Lafayette, a Frenchman who supported the American Revolution; British Prime Minister Winston Churchill; Swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg who saved Jews during the Holocaust; and mother Teresa.

10. Pulaski may have been intersex.

A Smithsonian Canal Documentary, which was premiered in April 2019, is causing the case that Pulaski may have been intersexual, or with a body that does not fit properly in standard definitions of men and women.

In “The General was female?” Scientists used skeletal remains and DNA tests to make a case that a skeleton with female characteristics was Pulaski’s. The debate about whether the skeleton really is has been moved to a monument since 1854 when his remains in a monument in Savannah, Georgia.

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