Since the first Monday of March is celebrated in honor of Casimir Pulaski, here are 10 things from the Tribune’s archives to know about the Polish-born American hero.
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1. Pulaski is known as the father of the American cavalry.
Pulaski met Benjamin Franklin in Paris in 1776, where the Polish military veteran offered his services to the American Revolution. He fought at the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania in September 1777, where he led an attack against the British that helped save the retreating American Army.
After Brandywine, George Washington made Pulaski a general and appointed him as the first leader of the U.S. cavalry. He led Pulaski’s Legion, a brigade of German Hessians, French and Poles that prevented Charleston, South Carolina, from being overtaken by the British in 1779. That battle helped turn the tide in the Americans’ favor in the South.
2. But Pulaski is not the only Polish hero of the American Revolutionary War. There’s also Tadeusz (Thaddeus) Kosciuszko.
Kosciuszko is a symbol of more than Polish pride and heroism. He opposed the oppression of Jews and peasants in Poland and slavery in America. He was an early leader for universal human rights.
There is a statue of Kosciuszko opposite the Shedd Aquarium on Solidarity Drive.
3. Pulaski lived in the U.S. for only two years.
Offering his services to the American Revolution, Pulaski famously wrote Washington: “I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it.”
Pulaski arrived in the U.S. in July 1777. He was shot during a cavalry charge during the the Siege of Savannah and died Oct. 11, 1779. He was most likely 34 years old.
4. Pulaski had been forced out of Poland.
Before he came to the United States, Pulaski was a military leader in his native Poland. He was born March 6, 1745, in Warka (though some sources say 1747). Pulaski became a general who tried to “liberate his country from Russian invaders,” according to George Otto of the Polish American Congress.
When the Polish military was overwhelmed by Russia during regular battles, he and his fellow cavalry members turned instead to guerrilla raids on horseback. Eventually he realized that the raids “were not going any place against superior forces” and fled to France.
5. Pulaski Day was first celebrated in Illinois — officially — in 1986.
Though Chicagoans had held parties and parades in Pulaski’s honor for decades, the state didn’t honor him until more than two centuries after Pulaski’s death.
Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson signed a bill creating the state holiday on March 2 — the day before it was first celebrated. The holiday took Illinois “by surprise” at first, according to a Tribune story from 1986.
Chicago-area lawmakers had been trying to pass the bill for some time but always ran into opposition downstate, “where they’ve never heard of Pulaski,” Lucyna Migala, a native Pole and a radio station operator, told the Tribune at the time. Migala’s brother, George, said city workers who got the day off asked him who Pulaski was.
6. Lawmakers have been trying to kill the holiday since day one.
The same day it was first celebrated, state Rep. John Countryman, of DeKalb, told the Tribune he was pushing to repeal the law in the Illinois General Assembly. Countryman said Pulaski’s birthday should be honored in a commemorative way, like St. Patrick’s Day, not with a legal holiday.
While the holiday originally required a day off for all school districts in Illinois, state legislators passed a bill in 1995 that allowed school districts to skip the holiday.
Some lawmakers continued to push for Pulaski Day — and Columbus Day — to be abolished as state holidays. However, it never succeeded, and advocates for Pulaski Day credited the movement with increasing awareness of the general.
“Controversy attracts attention. People who probably never heard of Pulaski before are becoming interested,” Edward Dykel, president of the Roman Catholic Union of America, told the Tribune in 1995. “They have heard so much about him on TV and the radio that they are asking, ‘Who is this guy?’”
7. Pulaski Road has been around longer than the holiday, but was still controversial.
It was originally called Crawford Avenue, after Peter Crawford, a Scotland-born pioneer who helped organize the township of Cicero. The road was named for Crawford in 1883; the Chicago City Council voted to change the name for Pulaski 50 years later and it officially changed in 1934.
Merchants along the street protested, fearing their businesses would suffer as a result of the change, according to a Tribune article from 1985 recapping the 50-year-old drama. A spokesman for the City Club, Lester H. Forbes, said the change would do a “grievous wrong to the thousands of Crawford Avenue residents and (would) completely fail in its object of honoring Count Pulaski.”
But Cook County Judge John Prystalski accused those opposing the change of bigotry, asserting that “some might object to living on a street (with a name) ending with ski. We might as well be frank. People with those names are just as good as anyone else. We are living in an age of change.”
The merchants sued after the change, making it to the Illinois Supreme Court twice (and losing both times).
The Crawford Avenue name lives on in the near north and south suburbs.
8. March 3 is not the only Pulaski Day.
Wisconsin schools celebrate Pulaski Day every year on March 4, but kids still have to go to class if it falls on a weekday. Instead it’s known as a public school observance day, where teachers are asked to teach children about “elements of tradition that preserve U.S. society and foster an awareness of our cultural heritage.”
There’s also a federal day — Gen. Pulaski Memorial Day — celebrated Oct. 11 to commemorate Pulaski’s death. It was approved by Congress in 1929.
9. Pulaski has been an honorary U.S. citizen since 2009.
Congress passed a bill in 2009 making Pulaski an honorary citizen of the United States that was signed into law on Nov. 6, 2009, by President Barack Obama. The bill originally was introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
At the time, Pulaski was only the seventh foreigner given the distinction. He joined William Penn, a founder of the Pennsylvania colony, and his wife, Hannah; the Marquis de Lafayette, a Frenchman who supported the American Revolution; British Prime Minister Winston Churchill; Swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg, who rescued Jews during the Holocaust; and Mother Teresa.
10. Pulaski may have been intersex.
A Smithsonian Channel documentary that premiered in April 2019 makes the case that Pulaski may have been intersex, or with a body that doesn’t fit neatly into standard definitions of male and female.
In “The General Was Female?” scientists used skeletal remains and DNA testing to make a case that a skeleton with female features was Pulaski’s. The debate over whether the skeleton is really his has been raging since as far back as 1854, when his remains were moved to a monument in Savannah, Georgia.
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