Today in Chicago History: Bernie Sanders, then a University of Chicago student, arrested during South Side protest

[Donkees]

1963: University of Chicago student Bernie Sanders, then 21, was charged with resisting arrest during an Aug. 12, 1963 demonstration in Englewood — along with comedian Dick Gregory and 54 others — against the use of mobile classrooms in the city’s public schools.

Chicago Public Schools Superintendent Benjamin Willis refused to allow Black children to be bused from their crowded neighborhood schools to those in white areas with more resources. That’s why the portable classroom trailers were nicknamed “Willis wagons” and became symbolic of the city’s long struggle over segregated education.

Demonstrations against Willis wagons were a precursor to a more sweeping Civil Rights Movement in Chicago that drew the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to the city in 1966 — the same year Willis resigned.

Mobile classrooms began to be phased out of Chicago schools in the 1970s, but photographic proof of Sanders’ participation in the 1963 Englewood protest wouldn’t be discovered in the Tribune archives until decades later — when he was a Democratic presidential hopeful.





https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/08/12/chicago-history-august-12/

[Hassin Bin Sober]

1. We should have listened to Bernie. We wouldn't be in this mess.

He’s out there fighting the fight - not tweeting from some suburban wine cave.

[malaise]

2. Consistent and authentic

Go Bernie!