Commie Plots

Forest Home Cemetery, part of which is the old German cemetery Waldheim, is gorgeous in fall. This is what it looked like on Wednesday at about noon.

It's also the location of the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument by sculptor Albert Weinert, which I mentioned recently. I last visited in 2002, despite the fact that I drive by the cemetery periodically on the Eisenhower Expressway, along with thousands of other motorists.

I didn't have a lot of time for yesterday's visit, but I did want to find a few permanent residents that I'd missed before, such as that all-purpose early 20th-century radical, Emma Goldman. I don't know how I missed her memorial when I first visited the Haymarket monument, since it's only a few feet away. A stone's throw, if you're in a reactionary mood. Anyway, this is her memorial.

And a close up of the bas-relief of her by sculptor Jo Davidson, who did a lot of portraiture -- quite a list.

Next to Emma Goldman are a cluster of plain, rectangular stones, marking the final resting places of other, lesser-known radicals. Most of the stones included fitting epitaphs. Among others, there was:

Elizabeth G. Flynn "The Rebel Girl" • Fighter For Working Class Emancipation

William Z. Foster Working Class Leader • Tireless Fighter for Socialism

Eugene Dennis Communist Leader • Fighter for Working Class Internationalism

Jack Johnstone A Life Dedicated to Human Freedom

Sylvia Woods Heroine in the Struggle

Wish I could have stayed longer. Sometime I want to hunt up Billy Sunday and Samuel Gompers, and spend a little more time looking at the funerary art.