Harold Washington

No strangers to winter’s tempestuousness, Chicagoans were nonetheless caught unprepared for the blizzard that blanketed the city with nearly two feet of snow over two days beginning Saturday, January 13, 1979 — pelting the prairie with flakes so big and white they seemed a hallucination.

On Thursday, December 4, 1969, at about 4:30 AM, three unmarked Chicago police cars and a panel truck left the 26th Street office of the Cook County state’s attorney and headed west. The lakefront air was bitterly cold, and the vehicles moved deliberately past the empty lots, gutted warehouses, and walk-ups that dotted the city’s west side like rows of rotting teeth.