Women's History Month: Marian Byrnes
American Woodcock. Big Marsh Park, 6/16/18. Photo by Walter Marcisz.
This March, COS celebrates women in the region who have led the way for conservation and environmental justice.
words by Kris Hansen
The southside park named for Marian Byrnes has quickly developed a reputation as a great location to seek American Woodcocks and a wide variety of migrants. Without Byrnes, it would be a CTA barn.
A lifelong activist with causes ranging from environmental issues and animal welfare to labor and civil rights, Byrnes became a hero to local conservationists for her persistence and success in protecting the shores of Lake Calumet and prairies on the southeast side of Chicago.
Born Marian Richardson, she grew up an only child on a farm in Indiana. She won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 1938. As a student attending Indiana University, she organized one of the first university chapters of the NAACP. After earning a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, she became a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools. She married Bruce Byrnes Jr. in 1966 and had four children.
In 1979, Byrnes learned that the Chicago Transit Authority planned to build a bus barn on what was then Van Vlissingen Prairie, located behind her home in Jeffrey Manor. Byrnes organized the Committee to Protect the Prairie and rallied neighbors and activists to block those plans. In honor of her work, the space was renamed the Marian R. Byrnes Natural Area.
But Byrnes was just getting started. She founded Citizens United to Reclaim the Environment, and then became the head of the Southeast Environmental Task Force before becoming a legislative aide to then-state representative Clem Balanoff.
"She lived with the understanding that if she didn't want something in her backyard, she didn't want it in anyone else's backyard," Balanoff told the Chicago Tribune.
Byrne led opposition to paving what was called an industrial wasteland next to Lake Calumet, which was a precursor to creating a proposed airport on the Southeast Side. Byrnes also was at the center of the drive to shutter a hazardous waste incinerator owned by Chemical Waste Management.
"She believed strongly in giving of herself for the benefit of others, be they animals or people," her son Alan Byrnes told the Chicago Tribune. Byrnes died in 2010 at the age of 84.
Marian Byrnes Park is located at 2200 E 103rd St. in Chicago.