The Awakening of Chicago’s Political Consciousness

With the DNC coming up in Chicago next week, I thought it’d be fun to dive into the Windy City’s history. I spoke with Professor Scott Berg about one of Chicago’s defining events: the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Professor Berg (George Mason University) is the author of The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City's Soul. We discussed how Chicago was in its adolescence heading into the fire—and how, when immigrants were scapegoated in the resulting chaos, the working class pushed back, forming “a lasting political sensibility... that has never died.”