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Interstate 88 (west)
Interstate 88 is entirely within the state of Illinois. It runs from an intersection with Interstate 80 near Moline, Illinois to an intersection with Interstates 290 and 294 in Hillside, Illinois, near Chicago.
Prior to its designation as an Interstate Highway, the route was known as Illinois state highway 5, and before that, Illinois 190.
In 2004, IDOT (Illinois Department of Transportation) renamed the freeway portion to the "Ronald Reagan Memorial Freeway." Similarly, the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority renamed the toll portion to "Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway."
Length
Major cities along the route
- Downers Grove, Illinois
- Naperville, Illinois
- Aurora, Illinois
- DeKalb, Illinois
- Dixon, Illinois
Intersections with other Interstates
- Interstate 80 near Moline, Illinois
- Interstate 39 in Rochelle, Illinois
Spur routes
None
88 west
88
Illinois
Illinois (pronounced or "ill-i-NOY") was the 21st state to join the United States, located in the former Northwest Territory. Its name was given by the state's French explorers after the indigenous Illiniwek people, a consortium of Algonquin tribes that thrived in the area. The word Illiniwek means simply "the people."
The capital of Illinois is Springfield, while its largest city is Chicago. The U.S. postal abbreviation for the state is IL.
The USS Illinois was named in honor of this state.
History
Cahokia, the urban center of the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. That civilization vanished circa 1400–1500 for unknown reasons. The next major power in the region was the Illiniwek Confederation, a political alliance among several tribes. The Illiniwek gave Illinois its name. The Illini suffered in the seventeenth century as Iroquois expansion forced them to compete with several tribes for land. The Illini were replaced in Illinois by the Potawatomi, Miami, Sauk, and other tribes.
European exploration
French explorers Jacques Marquette, S.J., and Louis Joliet explored the Illinois River in 1673. As a result of their exploration, Illinois was part of the French empire until 1763, when it passed to the British. George Rogers Clark claimed the Illinois Country for the Commonwealth of Virginia during his military campaigns there in 1778. The area was ceded to the new United States in 1783 and became part of the Northwest Territory.
The 1800s
The Illinois-Wabash Company was an early claimant to much of Illinois. The Illinois Territory was created on February 3, 1809. In 1818, Illinois became the 21st U.S. state. Early U.S. settlement began in the south part of the state and quickly spread northward, driving out the native residents. With the 1832 Black Hawk War, the last native tribes were driven out of northern Illinois.
The winter of 1830-1831 is called the "Winter of the Deep Snow". A sudden, deep snowfall blanketed the State, making travel impossible for the rest of the winter. Travelers lucky enough to find shelter had to stay where they were. Many others perished. Several severe winters followed, including the "Winter of the Sudden Freeze". On December 20, 1836, a fast-moving cold front passed through, freezing puddles in minutes, killing many travelers who could not reach shelter. The adverse weather resulted in crop failures in the northern part of the State. The resulting exodus toward the southern part of the State contributed to its name: "Egypt".
As early as 1840, Illinois was called the "Sucker State". There are at least three stories behind this name. The first is that, because much of the early population of the State bought land, site unseen, from East Coast land speculators, the population was a bunch of "suckers". One problem with this version is whether the term "sucker" had this meaning as early as 1840. The second story is that, in order to survive on the prairie, early settlers had to obtain water by sucking it through a hollow reed out of a crawdad hole. This also seems unlikely. For one thing, there is no documentation that people actually engaged in this disgusting practice. The early settlers avoided the prairie, and settled along creeks. Moreover, water was plentiful on the Prairie.
A third version of the "Sucker Story" is that some of the earliest American settlers worked the mines in Galena, Illinois, on the Mississippi River, in the far northwest corner of the State. At first mining was a seasonal occupation, the miners traveling north on the River in the Spring, and returning in the Fall. The migration of the miners corresponded with the seasonal migration of "suckers", a type of fish. The problem with this version is that the fish today known as a "sucker" does not make this migration. Furthermore, nobody has identified any other fish that made such a migration.
Illinois is known as the "Land of Lincoln" because it is here that the 16th President spent most of his life, practicing law and living in Springfield.
Chicago gained prominence as a canal port after 1848, and as a rail hub soon afterward. By 1857, Chicago was Illinois' largest city.
The Civil War
During the Civil War, over 250,000 Illinois men served in the Union Army, more than any other northern state except New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Beginning with President Lincoln's first call for troops and continuing throughout the war, Illinois mustered 150 infantry regiments, which were numbered from the 7th IL to the 156th IL. Seventeen cavalry regiments were also gathered, as well as two light artillery regiments.
Government
1848 introduced in 2001.]]
The state government of Illinois is modeled after the federal government with adaptations originating from traditions cultivated during the state's frontier era. As codified in the state constitution, there are three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. The executive branch is led by the Governor of Illinois. Legislative functions are given to the Illinois General Assembly, composed of the 118-member Illinois State House of Representatives and the 59-member Illinois State Senate. The judiciary is comprised of the state supreme court, which oversees the lower appellate courts and circuit courts.
- The Governor of Illinois is Rod Blagojevich (Democrat)
- The Lieutenant Governor of Illinois is Pat Quinn (Democrat)
- The Attorney General of Illinois is Lisa Madigan (Democrat)
- The Secretary of State of Illinois is Jesse White (Democrat)
- The Comptroller of Illinois is Daniel Hynes (Democrat)
- The Treasurer of Illinois is Judy Baar Topinka (Republican)
- The Senior United States Senator is Richard J. Durbin (Democrat)
- The Junior United States Senator is Barack Obama (Democrat)
As the birthplace of the Republican Party, the GOP was long dominant in Illinois. This has changed and the state has supported Democratic presidential candidates in the last four elections. John Kerry easily won the state's 21 electoral votes in 2004 by a margin of 11 percentage points with 54.8% of the vote. It is the most liberal of the Midwestern states. Traditionally Chicago, East Saint Louis, and the Quad Cities tend to vote heavily Democratic, along with the Central Illinois population centers of Peoria, Champaign-Urbana, Springfield and Decatur. Rural districts tend to vote more heavily Republican, but some, particularly in the southern part of the state, have voted Democratic as well. It should also be noted that the suburban areas surrounding Chicago vote heavily Republican, although this trend has started to go the other direction in the past 10 years.
Geography
Illinois is in the north-central U.S. and borders on Lake Michigan. Surrounding states are Wisconsin to the north, Iowa and Missouri to the west, Kentucky to the south, and Indiana to the east. Illinois also borders Michigan, but only via a water boundary in Lake Michigan.
Illinois has three major geographical divisions. The first is Chicagoland, including the city of Chicago, its suburbs, and the adjoining exurban area into which the metropolis is expanding. This region includes a few counties in Indiana and Wisconsin and stretches across much of northern Illinois toward the Iowa border, generally along Interstates 80 and 90. This region is cosmopolitan, densely populated, industrialized, and settled by a variety of ethnic groups.
Southward and westward, the second major division is central Illinois, an area of mostly flat prairie. Known as the Land of Lincoln or the Heart of Illinois, it is characterized by small towns and mid-sized cities. Agriculture, particularly corn and soybeans, figures prominently. Major cities include famously average Peoria, Springfield (the state capital), and Champaign-Urbana (home of the University of Illinois).
The third division is southern Illinois, comprising the area south of U.S. Route 50, and including Egypt (sometimes erroneously called Little Egypt), near the juncture of the Mississippi River and Ohio River. This region can be distinguished from the other two by its warmer climate, different mix of crops (including some cotton farming in the past), more rugged topography (unglaciated and older, Illinoian Age, glaciated), as well as small-scale oil deposits and coal mining. The area is a little more populated than the central part of the state with the population centered in two areas: the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan Area (the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis are known as "The Metro-East") and the Carbondale, Marion, West Frankfort, Herrin, Murphysboro, Carterville, Johnston City area which is home to a little over 180,000 residents.
Collectively, all of Illinois outside the Chicago Metropolitan area is called "downstate Illinois" (even though a portion is slighter north of Chicago)
McLean County is the largest county in terms of land area, at 1,184 sq mi., while Cook County is the largest county in terms of population, at 5,327,777 (both figures are as of 2004).
In extreme northwestern Illinois the Driftless Zone, a region of unglaciated and therefore higher and more rugged topography, occupies a small part of the state. Charles Mound, located in this region, is the state's highest elevation above sea level.
The floodplain on the Mississippi River from Alton to the Kaskaskia River is the American Bottom, and is the site of the ancient city of Cahokia, and was a region of early French settlement, as well as the site of the first state capital, at Kaskaskia.
Economy
Kaskaskia
The 2004 total gross state product for Illinois was $528 billion, placing it 5th in the nation. The 2003 per capita income was $32,965.
Illinois' agricultural outputs are corn, soybeans, hogs, cattle, dairy products, and wheat. Its industrial outputs are machinery, food processing, electrical equipment, chemical products, publishing, fabricated metal products, transportation equipment, petroleum and coal.
Demographics
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2004 the population of Illinois was 12,713,634. This includes 1,682,900 foreign-born (13.3%).
At the northern edge of the state on Lake Michigan lies Chicago, the nation's third largest city. In 2000, 23.3% of the population lived in the city of Chicago, 43.3% in Cook County and 65.6% in Illinois's part of Chicagoland, the leading industrial and transportation center in the region, which includes Will, DuPage, and Lake Counties as well as Cook County. The rest of the population lives in the smaller cities and in the rural areas that dot the state's plains.
The racial makeup of the state is as follows:
- 67.8% White
- 15.1% Black
- 12.3% Hispanic
- 3.4% Asian
- 0.2% Native American
- 1.9% Mixed Race
The top five ancestry groups in Illinois are: German (19.6%), African American (15.1%), Irish (12.2%), Mexican (9.2%), Polish (7.5%), and Filipino (1.2%) .
Nearly three in ten whites in Illinois claimed at least partial German ancestry on the Census, making the Germans the largest ancestry group in the state. Blacks are present in large numbers in the city of Chicago, East St. Louis, and the southern tip of the state. Residents of American and British ancestry are especially concentrated in the southeastern part of the state. Metropolitan Chicago has the greatest numbers of people of Irish, Mexican, and Polish ancestry.
7.1% of Illinois' population were reported as under 5, 26.1% under 18, and 12.1% were 65 or older. Females made up approximately 51% of the population.
Religion
Protestants are the largest religious group in Illinois, however unlike the other Midwestern states, Illinois is not overwhelmingly Protestant (less than half of the people identify themselves as Protestants). Roman Catholics, who are heavily concentrated in and around Chicago, account for 30% of the population.
The religious affiliations of the people of Illinois are:
- Christian – 80%
- Protestant – 49%
- Baptist – 12%
- Lutheran – 7%
- Methodist – 7%
- Presbyterian – 3%
- Other Protestant or general Protestant – 20%
- Roman Catholic – 30%
- Other Christian – 1%
- Other Religions – 4%
- Non-Religious – 16%
Important cities and towns
Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic
Counties of Illinois
Education
Illinois State Board of Education
The Illinois State Board of Education or ISBE, autonomous of the governor and the state legislature, administers public education in the state. Local municipalities and their respective school districts operate individual public schools but the ISBE audits performance of public schools with an annual school report card. The ISBE also makes recommendations to state leaders concerning education spending and policies.
There is current debate as to the role of the ISBE and whether or not its autonomous relationship with the governor and the state legislature is appropriate. In 2002, the Office of the Governor proposed the creation of a monolithic statewide department of education to replace the ISBE. However, direct control of the new department would fall under the state governor's jurisdiction. The structure would mimic the system employed by the Hawaii State Department of Education, which has no local school districts. Opponents to the proposal argue that local communities would lose control over what their children would learn in public schools and the means by which those public schools operate.
Primary and secondary schools
Education is compulsory from kindergarten through the twelfth grade in Illinois, commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. District territories are often complex in structure. In some cases, elementary, middle and junior high schools of a single district feed into high schools in another district.
Colleges and universities
While many students enter the military or join the workforce directly from high school, students have the option of applying to colleges and universities in Illinois. Notable Illinois institutions of higher education include Loyola University Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Chicago and the several branches of the University of Illinois. Illinois is also home to 49 colleges in the Illinois community college system.
List of colleges and universities
Professional sports teams
Favorite sons
- Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President, is buried in Springfield, Illinois
- Adlai Stevenson II, governor, Presidential candidate, United Nations ambassador, is buried in Bloomington, Illinois
- Ronald Reagan, the 40th President, was born in Tampico, Illinois.
Rogues gallery
- William Stratton, Governor, charged with tax evasion, acquitted
- Orville Hodge, State Auditor, imprisoned for embezzlement
- Otto Kerner, Governor, federal judge, imprisoned for bribery.
- Paul Powell, Secretary of State, died with shoeboxes full of money (but never indicted)
- Daniel Walker, Governor, imprisoned for financial fraud
- Dan Rostenkowski, U.S. Congressman, imprisoned for mail fraud
- George Ryan, Secretary of State, Governor, on trial (2005) for corruption
State symbols
George Ryan
- State animal: White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
- State bird: Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)
- State capital: Springfield
- State dance: Square dance
- State fish: Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus)
- State flower: Purple violet (Viola sororia)
- State fossil: Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium)
- State insect: Monarch butterfly
- State mineral: Fluorite
- State motto: "State sovereignty, national union"
- State prairie grass: Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii)
- State slogan: "Land of Lincoln"
- State snack: Popcorn
- State soil: Drummer Silty Clay Loam
- State song: "Illinois"
- State tree: White oak (Quercus alba)
See also
- Little Egypt
- Fort Sheridan, Illinois
- List of ZIP Codes in Illinois
- U.S. presidential election, 2004, in Illinois
External links
- [http://www.illinois.gov State of Illinois Web Site]
:
- [http://www.illinois.gov/facts/symbols.cfm Illinois State Symbols]
- [http://www.HavenWorks.com/illinois Illinois News]
- [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/17000.html U.S. Census Bureau]
- [http://www.illinoisdata.com/index.htm Illinois Data ]
- [http://www.genealogybuff.com/il/ GenealogyBuff.com - Illinois Library Data Files]
- [http://obit.obitlinkspage.com/il.htm Illinois Obituary Links]
- [http://www.usnewspapers.org/state/illinois Illinois Newspapers]
- [http://dir.webring.com/rw?d=Regional/U_S__States/Illinois Category at Webring]
- [http://www.countymapsofillinois.com/ County Maps of Illinois] Full color maps. List of cities, towns and county seats
- [http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilcumber/ilctybnd/index.htm/ Illinois County Boundaries 1790 to Present]
Scholarly Secondary Sources
- Adams, Jane. The Transformation of Rural Life: Southern Illinois, 1890-1990 (1994) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94852725 online at Questia]
- Biles, Roger. Illinois: A History Of The Land And Its People (2005).
- Buck, Solon J. Illinois in 1818 (1917)
- Cole, Arthur Charles. The Era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 (1919)
- Davis, James E. Frontier Illinois (1998).
- Gove, Samuel K. and James D. Nowlan. Illinois Politics & Government: The Expanding Metropolitan Frontier (1996) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=79398589 online at Questia]
- Hallwas, John E. ed., Illinois Literature: The Nineteenth Century (1986)
- Hicken, Victor. Illinois in the Civil War (1966).
- Hoffmann, John. A Guide to the History of Illinois. (1991), highly detailed annotated bibliography. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=71151873 online at Questia]
- Horsley, A. Doyne. Illinois: A Geography (1986)
- Howard, Robert P. Illinois: A History of the Prairie State (1972).
- Jensen, Richard. Illinois: A History (2001).
- Keiser, John H. Building for the Centuries: Illinois 1865-1898 (1977)
- Meyer, Douglas K. Making the Heartland Quilt: A Geographical History of Settlement and Migration in Early-Nineteenth-Century Illinois (2000) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=65659204 online at Questia]
- Pease, Theodore Calvin. The Frontier State, 1818-1848 (1918).
- Peck, J. M. A Gazetteer of Illinois (1837), [http://history.alliancelibrarysystem.com/IllinoisAlive/files/bp/htm7/bp000182.cfm a primary source online]
- Sutton, Robert P. ed. The Prairie State: A Documentary History of Illinois (1977).
- WPA. Illinois: A Descriptive and Historical Guide (1939) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=59301214 online at Questia]
Popular Accounts
Tails and Trails of Illinois, Stu Fliege, University of Illinois Press, 2002.
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Category:States of the United States
ko:일리노이 주
ja:イリノイ州
th:มลรัฐอิลลินอยส์
Moline, IllinoisMoline is a city located in Rock Island County, Illinois. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 43,768.
Moline is one of the Quad Cities, along with neighboring Rock Island and the Iowa cities of Davenport and Bettendorf. The corporate headquarters of Deere & Company and the Quad City International Airport are located in Moline, as well as the Quad Cities campus of Western Illinois University. Moline is a retail hub for the Illinois Quad Cities, as Southpark Mall and numerous big box stores are located in the city. In the mid 1990s, a project known as John Deere Commons led to the revitalization of Moline's central business district.
The name Moline comes from the French Moulin meaning Mill Town.
Due to its historical connections to inventor and industrialist John Deere--who relocated to Moline in 1848 to mass produce his steel plow there--and the company he founded, Moline is known as the "farm implement capital of the world." Because of its location on the Mississippi River and the economies of scale for large-scale farm implement production that quickly developed around Deere & Company, Moline was a major center for the industry from the late nineteenth century through the 1980s.
The Quad City Steamwheelers af2 arena football team calls Moline home.
Geography
Moline is located at 41°29'27" North, 90°30'7" West (41.490966, -90.502006).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 41.0 km² (15.8 mi²). 40.4 km² (15.6 mi²) of it is land and 0.6 km² (0.2 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 1.39% water.
Moline is situated on a peninsula formed by the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Rock River.
The flood plain along the Mississippi to the north quickly rises up the bluff to a broad highland before dropping back down to the Rock river flood plain to the south.
The highland is cut across by many deep ravines that break the city up into many natural neighborhoods.
Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there are 43,768 people, 18,492 households, and 11,594 families residing in the city. The population density is 1,083.3/km² (2,805.7/mi²). There are 19,487 housing units at an average density of 482.3/km² (1,249.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the city is 88.38% White, 3.09% African American, 0.20% Native American, 1.39% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 5.08% from other races, and 1.85% from two or more races. 11.91% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There are 18,492 households out of which 28.8% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.8% are married couples living together, 10.4% have a female householder with no husband present, and 37.3% are non-families. 31.9% of all households are made up of individuals and 12.6% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.35 and the average family size is 2.97.
In the city the population is spread out with 24.0% under the age of 18, 9.2% from 18 to 24, 27.8% from 25 to 44, 23.6% from 45 to 64, and 15.4% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 38 years. For every 100 females there are 91.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 88.9 males.
The median income for a household in the city is $39,363, and the median income for a family is $48,207. Males have a median income of $36,586 versus $24,711 for females. The per capita income for the city is $21,557. 9.5% of the population and 7.1% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 14.1% of those under the age of 18 and 5.1% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
External links
Category:Cities in Illinois
Category:Rock Island County, Illinois
Category:Cities on the Mississippi River
Interstate 294
Interstate 294 is one part of an interstate tollway (also known as the Tri-State Tollway) in Illinois. It goes from Deerfield at Interstate 94 to South Holland at Interstates 80 and 94, and Illinois State Route 394 near the Illinois/Indiana state line. The tollway used to be regarded as an alternate route to avoid downtown Chicago and its associated traffic, but over the last few decades it has been used more by commuters traveling from suburb to suburb. Interstate 294 is 53 miles (85 km) long.
For more information about the larger Tri-State Tollway, see Tri-State Tollway.
Interstate 294 has 3 of the Tri-State Tollway's 4 mainline barriers. These are located at:
- 163rd Street
- 22nd Street (Cermak Avenue)
- Irving Park Road (Illinois State Route 19)
The fourth is on I-94 by Waukegan.
Interstate 294 is generally 6 lanes wide between I-94 at Deerfield and I-90 by O'Hare. From O'Hare to U.S. 12/U.S. 20 (95th Street), the road is 8 lanes wide. As of 2005, the remainder of the tollway is 6 lanes wide, being expanded to 8 by 2008.
History
In 1998, the authority removed the entire multilane Deerfield Toll Plaza on the Tri-State, then considered one of the worst snags on the tollway system.
The state of Indiana wanted to extend Interstate 294 east on the current Borman Expressway to Indiana State Route 912, before having it turn north at that point, west at U.S. Highway 12, and then back to I-94, most likely somewhere on the Bishop Ford Expressway. The request was denied.
Intersections with other Interstates
- Interstate 94 in Deerfield, Illinois
- Interstate 90 in Rosemont, Illinois
- Interstate 190 near O'Hare International Airport
- Interstate 290 in Hinsdale, Illinois
- Interstate 88 in Hinsdale, Illinois
- Interstate 55 in Hodgkins, Illinois
- Interstate 80 in Markham, Illinois
- Interstate 94 In South Holland, Illinois
Notes
- Interstate 294 has no interchange on Interstate 57, although one is being considered. Plans for the interchange are currently at PE 1, or preliminary engineering.
- Interstate 294 was built largely before the growth and maturation of the suburbs which run along Interstate 294. As a result, the vast majority of the interchanges are partial, or are configured to have exit ramps facing away from O'Hare International Airport, and entrance ramps facing towards the airport — similar to the Northwest Tollway's configuration east of Elgin. As a result, "gaps" between exit ramps are common, the 9.5 mile (15.3 kilometer) gap between Cicero Avenue (Illinois 50/83) and 95th Street (U.S. 12/20) being one of the more notable gaps. Other partial interchanges are located at Roosevelt Road (Illinois 38) (southbound exit, northbound entrance), Irving Park Road (Illinois 19) (southbound exit, northbound entrance), Golf Road (Illinois 58) (southbound exit, northbound entrance) and Dempster Street (U.S. 14) (northbound exit, southbound entrance).
Elgin
External Resources
- [http://www.kurumi.com/roads/3di/i294.html Kurumi's 3di page: Interstate 294]
94-2
94-2
Category:Toll roads in Illinois
Category:Chicago area expressways
Hillside, IllinoisHillside is a village located in Cook County, Illinois. As of the 2000 census, the village had a total population of 8,155.
Geography
Hillside is located at 41°52'29" North, 87°54'1" West (41.874797, -87.900372).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 5.6 km² (2.2 mi²). 5.6 km² (2.2 mi²) of it is land and none of it is covered by water.
Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there are 8,155 people, 2,998 households, and 2,035 families residing in the village. The population density is 1,464.5/km² (3,797.4/mi²). There are 3,107 housing units at an average density of 558.0/km² (1,446.8/mi²). The racial makeup of the village is 49.29% White, 36.89% African American, 0.17% Native American, 5.13% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 5.79% from other races, and 2.67% from two or more races. 13.10% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There are 2,998 households out of which 32.3% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.3% are married couples living together, 14.7% have a female householder with no husband present, and 32.1% are non-families. 27.5% of all households are made up of individuals and 9.1% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.64 and the average family size is 3.25.
In the village the population is spread out with 24.7% under the age of 18, 8.5% from 18 to 24, 31.8% from 25 to 44, 19.4% from 45 to 64, and 15.6% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 36 years. For every 100 females there are 93.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 89.5 males.
The median income for a household in the village is $50,776, and the median income for a family is $59,375. Males have a median income of $37,321 versus $32,051 for females. The per capita income for the village is $21,638. 6.3% of the population and 4.9% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 6.1% of those under the age of 18 and 3.8% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
External links
Category:Cook County, Illinois
Category:Villages in Illinois
Illinois
Illinois (pronounced or "ill-i-NOY") was the 21st state to join the United States, located in the former Northwest Territory. Its name was given by the state's French explorers after the indigenous Illiniwek people, a consortium of Algonquin tribes that thrived in the area. The word Illiniwek means simply "the people."
The capital of Illinois is Springfield, while its largest city is Chicago. The U.S. postal abbreviation for the state is IL.
The USS Illinois was named in honor of this state.
History
Cahokia, the urban center of the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. That civilization vanished circa 1400–1500 for unknown reasons. The next major power in the region was the Illiniwek Confederation, a political alliance among several tribes. The Illiniwek gave Illinois its name. The Illini suffered in the seventeenth century as Iroquois expansion forced them to compete with several tribes for land. The Illini were replaced in Illinois by the Potawatomi, Miami, Sauk, and other tribes.
European exploration
French explorers Jacques Marquette, S.J., and Louis Joliet explored the Illinois River in 1673. As a result of their exploration, Illinois was part of the French empire until 1763, when it passed to the British. George Rogers Clark claimed the Illinois Country for the Commonwealth of Virginia during his military campaigns there in 1778. The area was ceded to the new United States in 1783 and became part of the Northwest Territory.
The 1800s
The Illinois-Wabash Company was an early claimant to much of Illinois. The Illinois Territory was created on February 3, 1809. In 1818, Illinois became the 21st U.S. state. Early U.S. settlement began in the south part of the state and quickly spread northward, driving out the native residents. With the 1832 Black Hawk War, the last native tribes were driven out of northern Illinois.
The winter of 1830-1831 is called the "Winter of the Deep Snow". A sudden, deep snowfall blanketed the State, making travel impossible for the rest of the winter. Travelers lucky enough to find shelter had to stay where they were. Many others perished. Several severe winters followed, including the "Winter of the Sudden Freeze". On December 20, 1836, a fast-moving cold front passed through, freezing puddles in minutes, killing many travelers who could not reach shelter. The adverse weather resulted in crop failures in the northern part of the State. The resulting exodus toward the southern part of the State contributed to its name: "Egypt".
As early as 1840, Illinois was called the "Sucker State". There are at least three stories behind this name. The first is that, because much of the early population of the State bought land, site unseen, from East Coast land speculators, the population was a bunch of "suckers". One problem with this version is whether the term "sucker" had this meaning as early as 1840. The second story is that, in order to survive on the prairie, early settlers had to obtain water by sucking it through a hollow reed out of a crawdad hole. This also seems unlikely. For one thing, there is no documentation that people actually engaged in this disgusting practice. The early settlers avoided the prairie, and settled along creeks. Moreover, water was plentiful on the Prairie.
A third version of the "Sucker Story" is that some of the earliest American settlers worked the mines in Galena, Illinois, on the Mississippi River, in the far northwest corner of the State. At first mining was a seasonal occupation, the miners traveling north on the River in the Spring, and returning in the Fall. The migration of the miners corresponded with the seasonal migration of "suckers", a type of fish. The problem with this version is that the fish today known as a "sucker" does not make this migration. Furthermore, nobody has identified any other fish that made such a migration.
Illinois is known as the "Land of Lincoln" because it is here that the 16th President spent most of his life, practicing law and living in Springfield.
Chicago gained prominence as a canal port after 1848, and as a rail hub soon afterward. By 1857, Chicago was Illinois' largest city.
The Civil War
During the Civil War, over 250,000 Illinois men served in the Union Army, more than any other northern state except New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Beginning with President Lincoln's first call for troops and continuing throughout the war, Illinois mustered 150 infantry regiments, which were numbered from the 7th IL to the 156th IL. Seventeen cavalry regiments were also gathered, as well as two light artillery regiments.
Government
1848 introduced in 2001.]]
The state government of Illinois is modeled after the federal government with adaptations originating from traditions cultivated during the state's frontier era. As codified in the state constitution, there are three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. The executive branch is led by the Governor of Illinois. Legislative functions are given to the Illinois General Assembly, composed of the 118-member Illinois State House of Representatives and the 59-member Illinois State Senate. The judiciary is comprised of the state supreme court, which oversees the lower appellate courts and circuit courts.
- The Governor of Illinois is Rod Blagojevich (Democrat)
- The Lieutenant Governor of Illinois is Pat Quinn (Democrat)
- The Attorney General of Illinois is Lisa Madigan (Democrat)
- The Secretary of State of Illinois is Jesse White (Democrat)
- The Comptroller of Illinois is Daniel Hynes (Democrat)
- The Treasurer of Illinois is Judy Baar Topinka (Republican)
- The Senior United States Senator is Richard J. Durbin (Democrat)
- The Junior United States Senator is Barack Obama (Democrat)
As the birthplace of the Republican Party, the GOP was long dominant in Illinois. This has changed and the state has supported Democratic presidential candidates in the last four elections. John Kerry easily won the state's 21 electoral votes in 2004 by a margin of 11 percentage points with 54.8% of the vote. It is the most liberal of the Midwestern states. Traditionally Chicago, East Saint Louis, and the Quad Cities tend to vote heavily Democratic, along with the Central Illinois population centers of Peoria, Champaign-Urbana, Springfield and Decatur. Rural districts tend to vote more heavily Republican, but some, particularly in the southern part of the state, have voted Democratic as well. It should also be noted that the suburban areas surrounding Chicago vote heavily Republican, although this trend has started to go the other direction in the past 10 years.
Geography
Illinois is in the north-central U.S. and borders on Lake Michigan. Surrounding states are Wisconsin to the north, Iowa and Missouri to the west, Kentucky to the south, and Indiana to the east. Illinois also borders Michigan, but only via a water boundary in Lake Michigan.
Illinois has three major geographical divisions. The first is Chicagoland, including the city of Chicago, its suburbs, and the adjoining exurban area into which the metropolis is expanding. This region includes a few counties in Indiana and Wisconsin and stretches across much of northern Illinois toward the Iowa border, generally along Interstates 80 and 90. This region is cosmopolitan, densely populated, industrialized, and settled by a variety of ethnic groups.
Southward and westward, the second major division is central Illinois, an area of mostly flat prairie. Known as the Land of Lincoln or the Heart of Illinois, it is characterized by small towns and mid-sized cities. Agriculture, particularly corn and soybeans, figures prominently. Major cities include famously average Peoria, Springfield (the state capital), and Champaign-Urbana (home of the University of Illinois).
The third division is southern Illinois, comprising the area south of U.S. Route 50, and including Egypt (sometimes erroneously called Little Egypt), near the juncture of the Mississippi River and Ohio River. This region can be distinguished from the other two by its warmer climate, different mix of crops (including some cotton farming in the past), more rugged topography (unglaciated and older, Illinoian Age, glaciated), as well as small-scale oil deposits and coal mining. The area is a little more populated than the central part of the state with the population centered in two areas: the Greater St. Louis Metropolitan Area (the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis are known as "The Metro-East") and the Carbondale, Marion, West Frankfort, Herrin, Murphysboro, Carterville, Johnston City area which is home to a little over 180,000 residents.
Collectively, all of Illinois outside the Chicago Metropolitan area is called "downstate Illinois" (even though a portion is slighter north of Chicago)
McLean County is the largest county in terms of land area, at 1,184 sq mi., while Cook County is the largest county in terms of population, at 5,327,777 (both figures are as of 2004).
In extreme northwestern Illinois the Driftless Zone, a region of unglaciated and therefore higher and more rugged topography, occupies a small part of the state. Charles Mound, located in this region, is the state's highest elevation above sea level.
The floodplain on the Mississippi River from Alton to the Kaskaskia River is the American Bottom, and is the site of the ancient city of Cahokia, and was a region of early French settlement, as well as the site of the first state capital, at Kaskaskia.
Economy
Kaskaskia
The 2004 total gross state product for Illinois was $528 billion, placing it 5th in the nation. The 2003 per capita income was $32,965.
Illinois' agricultural outputs are corn, soybeans, hogs, cattle, dairy products, and wheat. Its industrial outputs are machinery, food processing, electrical equipment, chemical products, publishing, fabricated metal products, transportation equipment, petroleum and coal.
Demographics
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2004 the population of Illinois was 12,713,634. This includes 1,682,900 foreign-born (13.3%).
At the northern edge of the state on Lake Michigan lies Chicago, the nation's third largest city. In 2000, 23.3% of the population lived in the city of Chicago, 43.3% in Cook County and 65.6% in Illinois's part of Chicagoland, the leading industrial and transportation center in the region, which includes Will, DuPage, and Lake Counties as well as Cook County. The rest of the population lives in the smaller cities and in the rural areas that dot the state's plains.
The racial makeup of the state is as follows:
- 67.8% White
- 15.1% Black
- 12.3% Hispanic
- 3.4% Asian
- 0.2% Native American
- 1.9% Mixed Race
The top five ancestry groups in Illinois are: German (19.6%), African American (15.1%), Irish (12.2%), Mexican (9.2%), Polish (7.5%), and Filipino (1.2%) .
Nearly three in ten whites in Illinois claimed at least partial German ancestry on the Census, making the Germans the largest ancestry group in the state. Blacks are present in large numbers in the city of Chicago, East St. Louis, and the southern tip of the state. Residents of American and British ancestry are especially concentrated in the southeastern part of the state. Metropolitan Chicago has the greatest numbers of people of Irish, Mexican, and Polish ancestry.
7.1% of Illinois' population were reported as under 5, 26.1% under 18, and 12.1% were 65 or older. Females made up approximately 51% of the population.
Religion
Protestants are the largest religious group in Illinois, however unlike the other Midwestern states, Illinois is not overwhelmingly Protestant (less than half of the people identify themselves as Protestants). Roman Catholics, who are heavily concentrated in and around Chicago, account for 30% of the population.
The religious affiliations of the people of Illinois are:
- Christian – 80%
- Protestant – 49%
- Baptist – 12%
- Lutheran – 7%
- Methodist – 7%
- Presbyterian – 3%
- Other Protestant or general Protestant – 20%
- Roman Catholic – 30%
- Other Christian – 1%
- Other Religions – 4%
- Non-Religious – 16%
Important cities and towns
Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic
Counties of Illinois
Education
Illinois State Board of Education
The Illinois State Board of Education or ISBE, autonomous of the governor and the state legislature, administers public education in the state. Local municipalities and their respective school districts operate individual public schools but the ISBE audits performance of public schools with an annual school report card. The ISBE also makes recommendations to state leaders concerning education spending and policies.
There is current debate as to the role of the ISBE and whether or not its autonomous relationship with the governor and the state legislature is appropriate. In 2002, the Office of the Governor proposed the creation of a monolithic statewide department of education to replace the ISBE. However, direct control of the new department would fall under the state governor's jurisdiction. The structure would mimic the system employed by the Hawaii State Department of Education, which has no local school districts. Opponents to the proposal argue that local communities would lose control over what their children would learn in public schools and the means by which those public schools operate.
Primary and secondary schools
Education is compulsory from kindergarten through the twelfth grade in Illinois, commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. District territories are often complex in structure. In some cases, elementary, middle and junior high schools of a single district feed into high schools in another district.
Colleges and universities
While many students enter the military or join the workforce directly from high school, students have the option of applying to colleges and universities in Illinois. Notable Illinois institutions of higher education include Loyola University Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Chicago and the several branches of the University of Illinois. Illinois is also home to 49 colleges in the Illinois community college system.
List of colleges and universities
Professional sports teams
Favorite sons
- Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President, is buried in Springfield, Illinois
- Adlai Stevenson II, governor, Presidential candidate, United Nations ambassador, is buried in Bloomington, Illinois
- Ronald Reagan, the 40th President, was born in Tampico, Illinois.
Rogues gallery
- William Stratton, Governor, charged with tax evasion, acquitted
- Orville Hodge, State Auditor, imprisoned for embezzlement
- Otto Kerner, Governor, federal judge, imprisoned for bribery.
- Paul Powell, Secretary of State, died with shoeboxes full of money (but never indicted)
- Daniel Walker, Governor, imprisoned for financial fraud
- Dan Rostenkowski, U.S. Congressman, imprisoned for mail fraud
- George Ryan, Secretary of State, Governor, on trial (2005) for corruption
State symbols
George Ryan
- State animal: White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
- State bird: Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)
- State capital: Springfield
- State dance: Square dance
- State fish: Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus)
- State flower: Purple violet (Viola sororia)
- State fossil: Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium)
- State insect: Monarch butterfly
- State mineral: Fluorite
- State motto: "State sovereignty, national union"
- State prairie grass: Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii)
- State slogan: "Land of Lincoln"
- State snack: Popcorn
- State soil: Drummer Silty Clay Loam
- State song: "Illinois"
- State tree: White oak (Quercus alba)
See also
- Little Egypt
- Fort Sheridan, Illinois
- List of ZIP Codes in Illinois
- U.S. presidential election, 2004, in Illinois
External links
- [http://www.illinois.gov State of Illinois Web Site]
:
- [http://www.illinois.gov/facts/symbols.cfm Illinois State Symbols]
- [http://www.HavenWorks.com/illinois Illinois News]
- [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/17000.html U.S. Census Bureau]
- [http://www.illinoisdata.com/index.htm Illinois Data ]
- [http://www.genealogybuff.com/il/ GenealogyBuff.com - Illinois Library Data Files]
- [http://obit.obitlinkspage.com/il.htm Illinois Obituary Links]
- [http://www.usnewspapers.org/state/illinois Illinois Newspapers]
- [http://dir.webring.com/rw?d=Regional/U_S__States/Illinois Category at Webring]
- [http://www.countymapsofillinois.com/ County Maps of Illinois] Full color maps. List of cities, towns and county seats
- [http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilcumber/ilctybnd/index.htm/ Illinois County Boundaries 1790 to Present]
Scholarly Secondary Sources
- Adams, Jane. The Transformation of Rural Life: Southern Illinois, 1890-1990 (1994) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94852725 online at Questia]
- Biles, Roger. Illinois: A History Of The Land And Its People (2005).
- Buck, Solon J. Illinois in 1818 (1917)
- Cole, Arthur Charles. The Era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 (1919)
- Davis, James E. Frontier Illinois (1998).
- Gove, Samuel K. and James D. Nowlan. Illinois Politics & Government: The Expanding Metropolitan Frontier (1996) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=79398589 online at Questia]
- Hallwas, John E. ed., Illinois Literature: The Nineteenth Century (1986)
- Hicken, Victor. Illinois in the Civil War (1966).
- Hoffmann, John. A Guide to the History of Illinois. (1991), highly detailed annotated bibliography. [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=71151873 online at Questia]
- Horsley, A. Doyne. Illinois: A Geography (1986)
- Howard, Robert P. Illinois: A History of the Prairie State (1972).
- Jensen, Richard. Illinois: A History (2001).
- Keiser, John H. Building for the Centuries: Illinois 1865-1898 (1977)
- Meyer, Douglas K. Making the Heartland Quilt: A Geographical History of Settlement and Migration in Early-Nineteenth-Century Illinois (2000) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=65659204 online at Questia]
- Pease, Theodore Calvin. The Frontier State, 1818-1848 (1918).
- Peck, J. M. A Gazetteer of Illinois (1837), [http://history.alliancelibrarysystem.com/IllinoisAlive/files/bp/htm7/bp000182.cfm a primary source online]
- Sutton, Robert P. ed. The Prairie State: A Documentary History of Illinois (1977).
- WPA. Illinois: A Descriptive and Historical Guide (1939) [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=59301214 online at Questia]
Popular Accounts
Tails and Trails of Illinois, Stu Fliege, University of Illinois Press, 2002.
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Category:States of the United States
ko:일리노이 주
ja:イリノイ州
th:มลรัฐอิลลินอยส์
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). Before entering politics, Reagan was also a broadcaster, film actor, and head of the Screen Actors Guild. After his death, Reagan was voted the Greatest American on the Discovery Channel.
Reagan's presidency is regarded as a turning point for the United States Republican Party and the American conservative movement and he has been dubbed The Greatest Communicator by many who knew him well. His presidency was marked by new economic policies, dubbed Reaganomics and a confrontational foreign policy towards the Soviet Union and Socialist movements around the world.
Reagan defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter to win election in a 1980 electoral college landslide, the start of the so-called "Reagan Revolution" that marked a major shift in American electoral politics and brought a 12-seat change in the United States Senate, giving the Republican Party a majority for the first time in 28 years. Upon his election, Reagan became the oldest president to enter office, at the age of 69. He was the first Republican to defeat an incumbent Democratic president since 1888, and the first from any party to defeat an incumbent elected president since 1932. Reagan was reelected in a landslide in the 1984 presidential election, defeating Carter's Vice President Walter Mondale by winning 49 of 50 states and receiving nearly 60 percent of the popular vote.
He died at his home in Bel-Air, California in 2004 at the age of 93 , after a decade suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
Early life and career
Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, the second of two sons to Catholic, Irish-American democrat John "Jack" Reagan and Nelle Wilson, who was of Scottish and English descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Michael Reagan, immigrated to the United States from Ballyporeen, County Tipperary, Ireland in the 1860s. Prior to his immigration, the family name was spelled Regan. His maternal great-grandfather, John Wilson, immigrated to the United States from Paisley, Scotland in the early 1800s.
In 1920, after years of moving from town to town, the family settled in Dixon, Illinois. In 1921, at the age of 10, Reagan was baptized in his mother's Disciples of Christ church in Dixon (although his brother, Neil, became a Roman Catholic, like their father, Jack), and in 1924 Ronald Reagan began attending Dixon's Northside High School. Reagan always considered Dixon to be his hometown.
1924)]]
In 1927, at age 16, Reagan took a summer job as a lifeguard in Lowell Park, two miles away from Dixon on the nearby Rock River. He continued to work as a lifeguard for the next seven years, reportedly saving 77 people from drowning. Reagan would later joke that none of them ever thanked him. In future years, he would point to that achievement proudly showing visitors a picture of Rock River in the Oval Office.
In 1928, Reagan entered Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois, majoring in economics and sociology, and graduating in 1932. In 1929 Reagan joined the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity which he later recalled during numerous interviews and conversations as one of the greatest experiences he had during his college years. Though earning mediocre grades, he made many lasting friendships. Reagan developed an early gift for storytelling and acting. He was a radio announcer as an affiliate of the Chicago Cubs baseball games, getting only the bare outlines of the game from a ticker and relying on his imagination and storytelling gifts to flesh out the game. Once in 1934, during the ninth inning of a Cubs-St. Louis Cardinals game, the wire went dead. Reagan smoothly improvised a fictional play-by-play (in which hitters on both teams fouled off pitches) until the wire was restored.
Hollywood
In 1937, when in California to cover spring training for the Chicago Cubs as a Headline radio announcer, Reagan took a screen test that led to a seven-year contract with the Warner Brothers studio. Reagan's clear voice and athletic physique made him popular with some audiences; the majority of his screen roles were as the leading man in B movies. His first screen credit was the starring role in the 1937 movie Love Is On the Air. By the end of 1939, he had appeared in 19 films. In 1940 he played the role of George "The Gipper" Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All American. From this role he acquired the nickname the Gipper, which he retained the rest of his life. Reagan considered his best acting work to have been in Kings Row (1942). He played the part of a young man whose legs were amputated. He used a line he spoke in this film, "Where's the rest of me?", as the title for his autobiography. Other notable Reagan films include Hellcats of the Navy, This Is the Army, and Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan was kidded widely about the last named film because his co-star was a chimpanzee. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6374 Hollywood Boulevard.
Hollywood Walk of Fame
Reagan was commissioned as a reserve cavalry officer in the U.S. Army in 1935. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was activated and assigned, partially due to his poor eyesight, to the First Motion Picture Unit in the United States Army Air Forces, which made training and education films. He remained in Hollywood for the duration of the war, attaining the rank of captain. Reagan tried repeatedly to go overseas for combat duty, but was turned down because of his astigmatism.
Reagan later married actress Jane Wyman in 1940. They had a daughter, Maureen in 1941 and adopted a son, Michael in 1945. Their second daughter, Christine Reagan , was born four months prematurely on June 26, 1947 and lived only one day. They divorced in 1948, later making Reagan the first American President to have been divorced. Reagan remarried in 1952 to actress Nancy Davis. Their daughter Patti was born on October 21 of the same year. On 20 May 1958 they had a second child, Ron.
As Reagan's film roles became fewer in the late 1950s, he moved into television as a host and frequent performer for General Electric Theater. Reagan appeared in many live television plays and often co-starred with Nancy. Reagan served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1947 until 1952, and again from 1959 to 1960. In 1952, a Hollywood scandal raged over his granting of a SAG blanket waiver to MCA, which allowed it to both represent and employ talent for its burgeoning TV franchises. He went from host and program supervisor of General Electric Theater to producing and claiming an equity stake in the TV show itself. At one point in the late 1950s, Reagan was earning approximately $125,000 per year. His final regular acting job was as host and performer on Death Valley Days. Reagan's final big-screen appearance came in the 1964 film The Killers, in which, uncharacteristically, he played a mob chieftain. This film was a remake of an earlier version, based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Reagan's co-stars were John Cassavetes and Lee Marvin.
Early political career
Reagan began his political life as a Democrat, supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. He gradually became a staunch social and fiscal conservative, and, in 1976, said "fascism was really the basis of the New Deal." He embarked upon the path that led him to a career in politics during his tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild. In this position, he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee on Communist influence in Hollywood. He also kept tabs on actors he considered disloyal and informed on them to the FBI under the code name "Agent T-10," but he would not denounce them publicly. He supported the practice of blacklisting in Hollywood. Believing that the Republican Party was better able to combat communism, Reagan gradually abandoned his left-of-center political views, supporting the presidential candidacies of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 and Richard Nixon in 1960—all while Reagan was still a Democrat.
His employment by the General Electric company further enhanced his political image; he travelled widely as a GE spokesman, and was noted for his anti-Communist speeches. By the 1964 election, Reagan was an outspoken supporter of conservative Republican Barry Goldwater. His nationally televised speech "A Time for Choosing" electrified conservatives; soon after, several top Republican contributors visited Reagan at his home in Pacific Palisades, California, urging him to seek the governorship in 1966. Though these requests were initially "laughed off" by Reagan, he says in his autobiography, he eventually gave in, after countless sleepless nights.
Party Affiliation: From Democrat to Republican
Ronald Reagan was a well-known Democrat before becoming a Republican. Growing up, his father was a staunch Democrat. Reagan remembered that his father had refused to take him to the movie "Birth of a Nation", because of its racial stereotypes. He bragged about his father's not wanting to stay in a certain hotel because they did not accept Jews; his only alternative was to sleep in his car. Ronald Reagan himself had supported FDR and gave speeches for Harry S Truman. Reagan’s change in party affiliation came about at a time when the country seemed to be making a different turn. In the 60's Reagan became a Republican due to the party's hard-line stance against communism. He began to campaign for Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Governorship
In 1966, he was elected the 33rd Governor of California, defeating two-term incumbent Pat Brown; he was reelected in 1970, defeating Jesse Unruh, but chose not to seek a third term. During the People's Park protests, he sent 2,200 National Guard troops onto the Berkeley campus of the University of California. Reagan made it clear that the policies of his administration would not be influenced by student agitation, saying "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with, no more appeasement." When left-wing SLA terrorists kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley and gave a list of demands that included free distribution of food to the poor, Reagan suggested that it would be a good time for an outbreak of botulism. After the media caught wind of the comment, he apologized.
In his first term, he froze government hiring, but also approved tax hikes to balance the budget. He worked with Democrat Assembly Speaker, Bob Moretti, to reform welfare in 1971. Reagan also opposed the construction of a large federal dam, the Dos Rios, which would have flooded a valley of Indian ranches. Later, Reagan and his family took a summer backpack trip into the high Sierra to a place where a proposed trans-Sierra highway would be built. Once there, he declared it would not be built. One of Reagan's greatest frustrations in office concerned capital punishment. He had campaigned as a strong supporter; however, his efforts to enforce the state's laws in this area were thwarted when the Supreme Court of California issued its People v. Anderson decision, which invalidated all death sentences passed in California prior to 1972, although the decision was quickly overturned by a constitutional amendment. Although he was a supporter of death penalty; in capital cases which arrived his office, Reagan granted two clemencies and a temporary repreive. As of December 2005; no other clemency has been granted to a condemned man in California. The only execution during Reagan's governership was on April 12, 1967, when Aaron Mitchell's life ended in San Quentin's gas chamber. There would not be another execution in California until 1992.
Reagan promoted the dismantling of the public psychiatric hospital system, proposing that community-based housing and treatment replace involuntary hospitalization, which he saw as a violation of civil liberties issue. According to some Reagan critics, the community replacement facilities were never adequately funded, either by Reagan or by his successors.
Presidential campaigns
Reagan's first attempt to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 was unsuccessful. He tried again in 1976 against incumbent Gerald Ford, but was narrowly defeated at the Republican National Convention.
The 1976 campaign was a critical moment for Ronald Reagan's political development. Gerald Ford was largely a symbol of the "old guard" of the Republican party. Reagan's success was remarkable considering Ford's status as an incumbent President. At the convention in 1976, Reagan gave a stirring speech in which he discussed the dangers of nuclear war and the moral threat of the Soviet Union. After that speech, to many at the convention, they felt like "they had voted for the wrong man."
In 1980, Ronald Reagan finally succeeded in gaining the Republican nomination for president. During the convention, Reagan discussed the possibility of choosing former President Gerald Ford as his running mate, but he ultimately selected George H. W. Bush. As an opponent of Reagan's during the presidential primaries, Bush had declared he would never be Reagan's Vice-President. Bush was many things Reagan was not--a lifelong Republican, a combat veteran and an internationalist with UN, CIA and China experience. Bush's economic and political philosophies were decidedly more moderate than Reagan's. Bush had, in fact, referred to Reagan's supply-side influenced proposal for a 30% across-the-board tax cut as "voodoo economics."
After the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan gave a campaign speech at an annual county fair outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the Mississippi Civil Rights Workers Murders of 1964.
During the speech, Reagan stated "I believe in states' rights" and "I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment." He went on to promise to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them." [http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=134]
Mississippi Civil Rights Workers Murders
The campaign, led by William J. Casey, was conducted in the shadow of the Iran hostage crisis; some analysts believe President Jimmy Carter's inability to solve the hostage crisis played a large role in Reagan's victory against him in the 1980 election. On the other hand, Carter's inability to deal with double-digit inflation and unemployment, lackluster economic growth, instability in the petroleum market leading to long gas lines, and the perceived weakness of the U.S. national defense may have had a greater impact on the electorate. With respect to the economy, Reagan famously said, "A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his."
Reagan's showing in the televised debates boosted his campaign. He seemed more at ease, deflecting President Carter's criticisms with remarks like "There you go again." Perhaps his most influential remark was a closing question to the audience, during a time of skyrocketing global oil prices and highly unpopular Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"
Carter's eventual ouster was accompanied by a 12-seat change in the Senate from Democratic to Republican hands, giving the Republicans a majority in the Senate for the first time in 28 years. Upon his election, Reagan became the oldest president to enter office, at the age of 69.
12-seat change
In the 1984 presidential election, he was reelected in a landslide over Carter's Vice President Walter Mondale, winning 49 of 50 states and receiving nearly 60 percent of the popular vote. At the Democratic National Convention, Mondale accepted the party nomination with a speech that is believed to have constituted a self-inflicted mortal wound. In it he remarked "Mr. Reagan will raise your taxes, I will raise your taxes. He won't tell you this, I just did."[http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/conventions/chicago/facts/famous.speeches/mondale.84.shtml] Reagan accepted the Republican nomination in Dallas, Texas, on a wave of good feeling bolstered by the recovering economy and the dominating performance by the U.S. athletes at the Los Angeles Olympics that summer.
The campaign of 1984 also featured one of Reagan's most famous gaffes -- The infamous quotation "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes", spoken as a sound check prior to a radio address. Spoken during a time of great tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, it left many (particularly outside the United States) questioning Reagan's understanding of some of the realities of his foreign policy and of international affairs in general. Samples of the recording of the quotation were later turned into the dance record "Five Minutes" by Jerry Harrison and Bootsy Collins.
Despite a weak performance in the first debate, Reagan recovered in the second and was considerably ahead of Mondale in polls taken throughout much of the race. Reagan's landslide win in the 1984 presidential election is often attributed by political commentators to be a result of his conversion of the "Reagan Democrats," the traditionally Democratic voters who voted for Reagan in that election.
Presidency
Domestic record
Reagan Democrat.]]
Reagan portrayed himself as being economically libertarian, in favor of tax cuts, smaller government, and deregulation. He also took a strong "tough-on-crime" stance.
The high point of the Reagan presidency's first 100 days was the end of the Iran hostage crisis after the American hostages were freed within minutes of his inauguration. Reagan's first official act upon entering office was to terminate oil price controls, a policy designed to boost America's domestic production and exploration of oil. [http://cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-261.html]
Iran hostage crisis
In the summer of 1981 Reagan fired a majority of federal air traffic controllers when they went on an illegal strike. Since this union was one of only two unions to support Reagan in the prior election, this action proved to be a political coup. This set limits for public employee unions, and also signaled that it was acceptable for businesses to play hardball with unions.
A major focus of Reagan's first term was reviving the economy his administration inherited, which was plagued by a new phenomenon known as stagflation (a stagnant economy combined with high inflation). His administration fought double-digit inflation by supporting Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker's decision to tighten the money supply by dramatically hiking interest rates (Paul Volcker was appointed by President Carter in 1979). While successfully lowering inflation, this policy caused a short term recession from 1981-1982, which temporarily lowered Reagan's public support. Others commended him for taking a tough strategy. Nobel economist Milton Friedman praises him for "being willing to take a severe recession to end inflation" and said in 2004: "In my opinion, no other post-war president would have been willing to back the Volcker Fed in its tough stance in 1981–82. I can testify from personal knowledge that Reagan knew what he was doing. He understood that there was no way of ending inflation without monetary restraint and a temporary recession. As in every area, he stuck to his principles and looked at the long term" ([http://www.hooverdigest.org/043/friedman.html Freedom's Friend]).
Reagan pursued a strategy of combining this tight-money policy with across-the-board tax cuts designed to boost business investment (in Reagan's words: "Chicago school economics, supply-side economics, call it what you will — I noticed that it was even known as Reaganomics at one point until it started working..."). [http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1987/071087a.htm] While ridiculed by opponents as "voodoo," "trickle-down," and "Reaganomics," he managed to push across-the-board tax cuts through congress in 1981. At the same time, the administration also slowed the growth of welfare and other social programs, eliciting protests from Democrats.
Following the recession of 1981-82, the economy staged a dramatic recovery beginning in 1983. The Reagan administration claimed the tax cuts helped revive the economy and create jobs, which led to the increase of federal income tax revenues during the 1980's from $517 billion to over $1 trillion per annum.
Despite this, increases in the military budget stemming from the administration's new cold war strategy led to the federal deficit reaching record highs. The U.S. House of Representatives, with a Democrat majority, opposed slowing the growth of social welfare spending. To cover the deficit, the administration borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, and by the end of Reagan's second term the national debt had increased from 32.6% to 53.1% of annual GDP.
During the Reagan presidency, the inflation rate dropped from 13.6% in 1980 (President Carter's final year in office) to 4.1% by 1988, the economy added 16,753,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell from 7.5% to 5.3%.
While Reagan's opponents charged that his economic policies created an increase in the gap between the rich and the poor, it should be noted that during the Reagan presidency, all economic groups saw their income rise in real terms, including the bottom quintile, which rose 6% (Bureau of the Census, Income Statistics Branch, Current Population Reports, Series P60, 1996).
A renewal of the "war on drugs" was also declared during his presidency, spearheaded by Nancy Reagan's high-profile "Just Say No" series of messages.
President Reagan was criticized by the gay rights movement and others for the perception that his administration and others did not respond quickly enough to the HIV-AIDS situation. The first official mention of the disease in the White House was on October 15, 1982 when Reagan's press secretary Larry Speakes, in response to a reporter's inquiry about "the gay plague," said "I don't have it, do you?" to general laughter. (Note that the term AIDS was not yet widely used, hence the reporter calling it "the gay plague," and that HIV was not identified until 1984.) Reagan himself first publicly discussed the federal government's role in fighting the disease at a press conference in 1985.
Despite the criticism, under Reagan $5.7 billion was spent on AIDS and HIV, with large amounts going to the National Institutes of Health. The resources for research increased by 450% in 1983, 134% in 1984, 99% the next year, and 148% the year after. In September of 1985, Reagan said: "Including what we have in the budget for '86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS, in addition to what I'm sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it'll be $126 million next year. So this is a top priority with us. Yes, there's no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer." By 1986 Reagan had endorsed a large prevention and research effort and declared in his budget message that AIDS "remains the highest public health priority of the Department of Health and Human Services."
Reagan's policies in regard to AIDS and gay rights became a subject of controversy after his death. Liberals and libertarians pointed out that he had gone on record as supporting sodomy laws, opposing anti-discrimination laws including sexual preference, and the conservative United States Supreme Court Justices that he appointed would help produce the majority opinion in the 1986 case of Bowers v. Hardwick. Yet, after his death, family members and homosexual Republicans (known as Log Cabin Republicans) pointed out that he opposed the 1978 California anti-gay Briggs Initiative. In 1984 he had the first openly homosexual couple spend the night in the White House. He is also said to have taught his children that homosexuality was a normal state of being for some people and was a longtime friend of Rock Hudson. In a rare public pronouncement on the topic of AIDS, Reagan stated his belief that morality and science conflate to make abstinence the best method to prevent the disease.
Reagan made the abolition of communism and the implementation of supply-side economics the primary focuses of his presidency, but he also took a strong stand against abortion. He published the book Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation, which decried what Reagan saw as a disrespect for life, promoted by the practice of abortion. Many conservative activists refer to Reagan as the most pro-life president in history. (However, two of the three Supreme Court justices he selected, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, voted to uphold Roe v. Wade, to Reagan's disappointment).
Although Reagan's second term was mostly noteworthy for matters related to foreign affairs, his administration supported significant pieces of legislation on domestic matters. In 1982, Reagan signed legislation reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for another 25 years. This extension added protections for blind, disabled, and illiterate voters.[http://www.aclu.org/VotingRights/VotingRights.cfm?ID=17621&c=32]
Other significant legislation included the overhaul of the Internal Revenue Code in 1986, as well as the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which compensated victims of the Japanese American Internment during World War II. Reagan also signed legislation authorizing the death penalty for offenses involving murder in the context of large-scale drug trafficking; wholesale reinstatement of the federal death penalty would not occur until the presidency of Bill Clinton.
Milton Friedman, has pointed to the number of pages added to the Federal Register each year as evidence of the anti-regulatory nature of Reagan's presidency (the Register records the rules and regulations that federal agencies issue per year). [http://www.hooverdigest.org/043/friedman.html] The number of pages added to the Register each year declined sharply at the start of the Ronald Reagan presidency breaking a steady and sharp increase since 1960. The increase in the number of pages added per year resumed an upward, though less steep, trend after Reagan left office. In contrast, the number of pages being added each year increased under Ford, Carter, H.W. Bush, Clinton, and others.
Foreign policy and interventions
Federal Register to 1991.]] Reagan forcefully confronted the Soviet Union, marking a sharp departure from the détente observed by his predecessors Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. Under the assumption that the Soviet Union could not then outspend the US government in a renewed arms race, he strove to make the Cold War economically and rhetorically hot.
The administration oversaw a massive military build-up that represented a policy called "peace through strength." The Reagan administration set a new policy toward the Soviet Union with the goal to win the Cold War through a three-pronged strategy outlined in NSDD-32 (National Security Decisions Directive). The directive outlined Reagan's plan to confront the Soviet Union on three fronts: economic - | | |
