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Cicero (originally known as Hawthorne) is a suburb of Chicago and an incorporated town in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 83,891 at the 2010 census. As of 2013, the town had a total population of 84,103, making it the 11th largest municipality in Illinois. The town of Cicero is named after Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman statesman and orator.

History

Originally, Cicero Township occupied six times its current territory. Weak political leadership and town services resulted in cities such as Oak Park and Berwyn voting to split off from Cicero, and other portions such as Austin were annexed into the city of Chicago.

By 1911, an aerodrome called the Cicero Flying Field had been established as the town's first aircraft facility of any type, located on a roughly square plot of land about 800 meters (1/2-mile) per side, on then-open ground at 41°51′19.03″N 87°44′56.5″W by the Aero Club of Illinois, founded on February 10, 1910. Famous pilots like Hans-Joachim Buddecke, Lincoln Beachey, Chance M. Vought and others flew from there at various times during the "pioneer era" of aviation in the United States shortly before the nation's involvement in World War I, before the field closed in mid-April 1916.

Al Capone built his criminal empire in Chicago before moving to Cicero to escape the reach of Chicago police.

On July 11–12, 1951, a race riot erupted in Cicero when a mob of around 4,000 attacked and burned an apartment building at 6139 W. 19th Street that housed the African-American family of Harvey Clark Jr., a Chicago Transit Authority bus driver who had relocated to the then-all-white city. Governor Adlai E. Stevenson was forced to call out the Illinois National Guard. The Clarks moved away, and the building had to be boarded up. The Cicero riot received worldwide condemnation.

Cicero was taken up and abandoned several times as site for a civil rights march in the mid-1960s.