Exploring the City

Genio Lambertson, John Fitzgerald, James Malone, and John Sheedy were representatives of larger cultural and political groups in Lincoln that by 1890 were at odds with each other over how to run the city.

The rising social and political tensions in town reflected the emergence of different class and ethical cultures in the 1880s that by the early 1890s were poised to take increasingly aggressive action to reform American society and culture. Each of these separate cultures had developed as distinctive urban milieus or subcultures.

To understand these tensions and why the murder of John Sheedy in January 1891 was interpreted the way it was and why it had such an impact on the city's life, one should try to place it in its historical context. John Sheedy wasn't just another gambler or businessman. He was a prominent and active participant within one of the subcultures within the city who had been engaged in a long standing struggle with other boosters over the fate of the city's culture.

Roughly speaking: two social classes had established distinctive cultures in Lincoln and most cities of the time: the working class and the middle class.

Cutting across these larger social groups were subcultures based on gender, race, and ethnicity: the male subculture, women's culture, African-American and ethnic cultures.

In public life people from each of the larger groups and the subcultures operated in two general public urban cultures of the time: the booster ethos and the demimonde. Neither were class specific though, in general, middle-class people were associated with the former, and the working-class people and African-Americans the latter. Men and women prevailed in each culture, though, in general, urban public life was generally more amenable to men than women.

So too, the booster ethos, middle-class and working-class cultures contained several subcultures based on occupation, economic activity, or civic operations: these were manufacturing, government, law and order, bench and bar, railroad, press, entrepreneur/small business, theater and entertainment, and education and vocational training.

The underlying forces—economic, social and cultural, and political—that fostered and advanced the development of separate groups of urban actors with very different attitudes of how to run the city and city life—are explored within each tour of each subculture.

So too, the efforts by members of different groups within the various subcultures to try to control Lincoln are explored further in booster ethos and/or the demimonde. This story particularly focuses on some of the issues raised in our introductions—the growing discord between reform and laissez faire or traditionalist boosters— the two sides represented respectively by John Sheedy and John Fitzgerald.

Each of these are worth exploring. You can come back to these to fill in the background at any time. Any city is a convergence of stories. Understanding those stories helps one understand what is going on there and who is trying to shape urban life. Thus understanding some of the stories in Lincoln that emerged through the 1880s and 1890s will help one understand the furor around the MURDER OF JOHN SHEEDY on the evening of January 11, 1891.

People:
Fitzgerald, John [Narrative] [Brief Biography]
Lambertson, Genio M. [Narrative] [Brief Biography]
Malone, James [Narrative] [Brief Biography]