Travel Tips

Oakwoods cemetery is the resting place of many prominent black politicians including Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington. Oakwoods also has a large section of Jewish graves. But what led us here was the monument to the civil war confederate soldiers shown in the picture, estimates of the confederate dead buried here range from 4,000 to 7,000, the monument estimates 6,000.

For those of you that don't know Civil War history, Illinois was on the Union side during the Civil War, the Confederate dead came from Camp Douglas, a POW camp near 35th St.

Oakwoods is located on the southside of Chicago, a visit here can be combined with a visit to Hyde Park-Robie House, University of Chicago, Museum of Science and Industry. If you are driving, take the Lake Shore Drive-47th St.-Woodlawn-67th St. route, Woodlawn has many impressive mansions on the stretch between 47th and 67th.

We toured with a guide as part of the Great Places and Spaces weekend, there is a visitor center at the cemetery and you can also find more information at:

http://www.graveyards.com/oakwoods/

This is a monument to the soldiers of Illinois who fought in the Civil War. I suppose it's a little odd that the Confederate soldiers have a much grander monument that the Union soldiers, our guide didn't even take us past this monument so I didn't get a chance to ask.

This monument is to the 15 firefighters that died on July 10, 1893 putting out the fire at the cold storage warehouse fire at the Columbian Exposition that was held in nearby Jackson Park.

I thought this was one of the most interesting monuments, it was to a man who saved the lives of many in a train crash that resulted in his death.

The monument features many railroad items-rails, smokestack and a wheel. The spokes on the wheel are broken, broken objects symbolizing death are commonly used on gravestones.

We saw graves for a couple of Chicago mobsters at Oakwoods, Colosimo is linked with mobsters Al Capone and Johnny Torrio and also with legendary Chicago figures "Hinky Dink" Kenna and "Bathhouse" John Coughlin.

Colosimo was found shot to death in 1920, it is believed that Torrio was the one responsible.

This is the grave of Adrian Anson who played for the Chicago White Stockings (which became the Chicago Cubs in 1907) and was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1939.

Mr. Anson has a dark side as well, apparently he was responsible for barring Negro players from the major leagues.

Jesse Owens was an Olympic champion in track and field, perhaps best known because he participated in the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin. At the time when Hitler was declaring Aryan supremacy, a black man won 4 gold medals in the Olympics.

Jesse Owens was from Alabama, I assume he is buried in Chicago because he moved here in 1949.

Now onto the bizarrest monument we saw on our tour, compare the modest monument for Jesse Owens to....

I was really flabbergasted when I saw this monument to Roland Burris-first of all Roland Burris is still alive, second of all it is perhaps the most egotistical monument I have ever seen. I know people buy plots ahead of time and I know people write their own epitaphs but to have it placed before you die is just weird.

The middle and side sections are filled with his "accomplishments", the greatest of which at this point is that he was the first black Illinois attorney general although it appears that a space has been left at the top just in case he becomes governor.

The accomplishments read like a resume, the funniest one listed is that he was the first black SIU exchange student to the University of Hamburg!