- Bob Rubel
- Lenny Bruce was arrested at the Gate of Horn nightclub in 1962 for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
This Sunday marks the start of Banned Books Week, an event usually confined to schools and libraries where celebrants curse the philistines who have had the temerity to ban Judy Blume and Harry Potter. This is important and entirely necessary, but what is often forgotten is that books for grown-ups get banned, too. And also songs and movies and comedians.
Not everything that was banned in Chicago was in the service of protecting the city’s young people from influences that would encourage licentious behavior—although that was the Archdiocese’s rationale for banning the Everly Brothers’ hit “Wake Up Little Susie” in 1958, the Chicago Police Department’s for arresting Lenny Bruce and George Carlin at the Gate of Horn nightclub in 1962, and the first Mayor Daley’s for not-so-politely requesting that young Chicagoans not listen to the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” on the eve of the 1968 Democratic convention, and also the reason Emma Goldman could not find a space to lecture on anarchism in 1908. (She was speaking in support of Lazarus Averbuch, a Russian immigrant who was shot and killed by the Chicago chief of police, who suspected him of being an anarchist assassin.)
- courtesy Amie Sell
- “3335 W. Diversey” by Amie Sell
“The thing that will intrigue people most,” Durica says, “is that what is considered offensive or charged is so history-specific. Works that are now considered innocuous and silly were once controversial. The program sheds light on these stories. You’ll never listen to ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ the same way ever again.”
