An attempted coup by the Tonton Macoute, a paramilitary force under former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, was thwarted in Haiti. The first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was sworn in. He was ousted on September 30 and later reinstated in 1994. In response to the coup, the USA expanded trade sanctions on Haiti to include all goods except food and medicine. Yugoslavia dissolved in 1991 into Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia with some serious battles. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution opening the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia. The Republic of Macedonia became independent, beginning a name dispute with Greece. The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) was formed in The Hague, the Netherlands. The Acid Rain Treaty of 1991 was signed between the American and Canadian governments. Édith Cresson became France’s first female prime minister. Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the USA Congress during a 13-day royal visit in Washington, D.C. Somaliland seceded from Somalia. The governments of Mauritania and Senegal signed a treaty ending the Mauritania–Senegal Border War, which has been fought since April 1989. USA President Bush and Soviet President Gorbachev signed START I in Moscow. Israel released 51 Arab prisoners and the bodies of nine guerrillas, paving the way for the release of the last western hostages in Lebanon. The Soviet Union announced plans to withdraw military and economic aid to Cuba. North Korea, South Korea, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia joined the UN. Representatives of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front reached an agreement with the President of El Salvador, Alfredo Cristiani, setting the stage for the end of the war. USA President George Bush announced unilateral reductions in short-range nuclear weapons and called off 24-hour alerts for long-range bombers. The Soviet Union responded with similar unilateral reductions. Speaker of the USA House of Representatives Tom Foley announced the closure of the House Bank by the end of the year after revelations that House members misused it. Clarence Thomas was confirmed as the new USA Supreme Court Justice following Thurgood Marshall’s retirement. The Soviet Union restored its diplomatic relations with Israel, which had been suspended since the 1967 Six-Day War. China and Vietnam restored diplomatic relations after a 13-year rift which followed the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. The North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NAC-C) met for the first time. The UN Security Council recommended Egypt’s deputy prime minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali to be the next Secretary-General of the UN. What do you think is the most important thing that happened in 1991?
The final end of the USSR in 1991
The official end of the USSR came in 1991. Various smaller countries dropped out of the Soviet Union so that the only country left was Russia. The Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia voted for independence in early 1991. Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian SFSR in July. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was put under house arrest while vacationing in Crimea during an attempted coup. Gorbachev returned to Moscow three days later, and arrested the coup leaders. The Russian KGB was replaced by the SVR, with the KGB officially ending operations on November 6. In August, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Belarus, and Armenia declared their independence. In October and December, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan followed suit. In September, Tajikistan became independent and Leningrad returned to its former name, St. Petersburg. The Congress of the People’s Deputies of the Soviet Union self-dissolved in December. In the Białowieża Forest Nature Reserve in Belarus, the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine signed an agreement officially ending the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place. In December, Russian SFSR President Boris Yeltsin sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, declaring that Russia will be the succeeding country to the collapsing Soviet Union in the United Nations. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union, from which most republics had already seceded, anticipating the dissolving of the 69-year-old state. The Russian SFSR officially renamed itself the Russian Federation. The Supreme Soviet met for the last time, formally dissolved the Soviet Union, and adjourned sine die, ending the Cold War. All remaining Soviet institutions eventually ceased operation on December 31, 1991. By the end of 1991, there no longer was a Soviet Union. There was Russia with some Commonwealth independent states. Was the dissolution of the Soviet Union a good idea?
The ending of apartheid in South Africa
In South Africa, Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress was released from jail in February, 1991. The talks between Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party agreed to end violence between the two. The South African Parliament voted to repeal laws banning Black ownership of land. The European Economic Community lifted its economic sanctions on South Africa. The South African parliament repealed the Population Registration Act, which had required racial classification of all South Africans at birth. The International Olympic Committee readmitted South Africa to the Olympics. The following day, USA President Bush terminated the 1986-enacted USA sanctions on South Africa. The African National Congress led a general strike, demanding representation in the government and an end to the value-added tax. The apartheid system in South Africa was ended through a series of bilateral and multi-party negotiations between 1990 and 1993. The negotiations culminated in the passage of a new interim Constitution in 1993, a precursor to the Constitution of 1996. The process accelerated in 1990, when the government of F. W. de Klerk took a number of unilateral steps towards reform, including releasing Nelson Mandela from prison and unbanning the ANC and other political organizations. In 1990–91, bilateral “talks about talks” between the ANC and the government established the pre-conditions for substantive negotiations, codified in the Groote Schuur Minutes and Pretoria Minutes. The first multi-party agreement on the desirability of a negotiated settlement was the 1991 National Peace Accord, consolidated later that year by the establishment of the multi-party Convention for a Democratic South Africa. Apartheid was a system of racial discrimination and segregation by the South African government. It was formalized in 1948, forming a framework for political and economic dominance by the white population and severely restricting the political rights of the black majority. Between 1960 and 1990, the African National Congress and other mainly black opposition political organizations were banned. However, increasing local and international pressure on the government, as well as the realization that apartheid could neither be maintained by force forever nor overthrown by the opposition without considerable suffering, eventually led both sides to the negotiating table. The Tripartite Accord, which brought an end to the South African Border War in neighboring Angola and Namibia, created a window of opportunity to create the enabling conditions for a negotiated settlement. The Pretoria Minutes was followed in February 1991 by the D. F. Malan Accord. Finally, there was the National Peace Accord in September 1991 and the 1994 South African general election. In 1995, the government passed legislation mandating the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a restorative justice tribunal which over the next three years investigated human rights violations under apartheid. The final Constitution was negotiated by the Constitutional Assembly, working from principles contained in the interim Constitution, and was provisionally adopted in May 1996. Do you remember anything about apartheid?
Joy left for college in the fall of 1991
It was a bittersweet moment when my only daughter Joy went off to college. Margaret and I would be empty nesters for the next thirty some years. She still was our daughter, but we shared her with the world. That day we loaded up the car and its roof. We were off to Champaign, a couple of hours south on I-57. We were not worried since Joy would be rooming with her good friend Katie Fote. They were worried about their friend Peggy Lanigan, who was rooming with Korey Marocki, who they thought was a middle eastern Arab. However, she was from downstate Illinois, Taylorville, near Springfield. We helped Joy and Katie set up their dorm room. It was a lovely day. However, there was that time when it came to say good-bye. This good-bye was more symbolic than real. The separation was for a couple of months. If things went bad, we could always take her home. She was among friends, what could go wrong? I think it was harder on Margaret, my wife. Joy was her daughter, and now we were saying goodbye. The next time we might see her would be November for Thanksgiving. Even I felt a tinge of sadness as we got in the car, waved goodbye and set out for I-57. I still remember the Orientation that they had for the students and their parents. One parent wanted to know if they would enforce no alcohol drinking. The advisor said no, and this parent got very angry. It would be up to his child to decide whether to use alcohol or not. That struck me that she would be more independent that I thought. Anyway, we got home. We thought that all was well. Then a few days later, we got a phone call from Joy and she was crying. I asked what was wrong. She did not get into the sorority that she wanted. Instead, she got another sorority Alpha Delta Pi, ADP. I never realized that this sorority stuff was so serious. We calmed her and said give this group a chance, since they actually want you. It turned out to be a great experience, as she has become an ADP for life. She really enjoyed her time there more than she expected. Life has a way of giving us something we were not expecting. Anyway, that was her first crisis of college life. After that, it was smooth sailing that first semester. Do you remember your first semester at college?
Joy graduated from High School in 1991
The big event of 1991 was the graduation of our daughter Joy from Marian Catholic High School. They wanted the graduation outside, so that we were in the football stadium. Then it started to rain. They had to move everything inside, so that slowed it down. Finally, we were inside and seated in the gym. The graduation went on without any other problems. Joy had her golden honor ribbon, as they sang the Rod Stewart song, “Forever Young.” Upon reflection, I thought that it was a great choice. I even thought that it was a good idea, to try to stay forever young, not think old. For the graduating seniors, it also was a reminder to remember their ideals. I looked to see who some of the notable classmates of Joy were. Colin Egglesfield became a professional actor, best known for playing Joshua Madden on the soap opera “All My Children.” Rodney Harrison, a former NFL defensive back who played for the San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII and XXXIX, is now a Sunday night NBC TV football commentator. Brian Timpone has become a conservative businessman and former CBS television journalist turned Internet news entrepreneur. John Hollecek, from the previous year of 1990, was a former NFL linebacker who played eight seasons for the Buffalo Bills, San Diego Chargers, and Atlanta Falcons and many years as the Head High School football coach at Loyola Academy. It was a great day, graduation day. Everyone was full of dreams for the future. We had a small gathering in our back yard with the family friends who also had a graduate that day. The end of high school meant leaving your local community to engage in the world of higher education with different results. Joy was a seventeen-year-old high school graduate. She worked part time at a Lincoln Mall store. She had a lot of freedom, since there were no more band practices. I told her she should look for a job. Later that day, she had a job as a dental assistant that lasted all summer. I could not believe it. She seemed like she could do whatever she wanted to do. Do you remember your child’s graduation?
The University of Illinois at Champaign
The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is a public land-grant research university that was established in 1867, as the founding campus and flagship institution of the University of Illinois System. With over 59,000 students, the University of Illinois is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the USA. The university contains 16 schools and colleges and offers more than 150 undergraduate and over 100 graduate programs of study. The university has 651 buildings on 6,370 acres and its annual operating budget is over $2 billion. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign also operates a research park, home to innovation centers for over 90 start-up companies and multinational corporations. The U of I is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity.” The campus library system possesses the fourth-largest university library in the USA by holdings. This university also hosts the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The alumni, faculty members, or researchers of the university include 24 Nobel laureates, 27 Pulitzer Prize winners, 2 Fields medalists, and 2 Turing Award winners. Illinois athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are collectively known as the Fighting Illini. They are members of the Big Ten Conference and have won the second-most conference titles. Illinois Fighting Illini football won the Rose Bowl Game in 1947, 1952, 1964 and a total of five national championships. Illinois athletes have won 29 medals in Olympic events. The University of Illinois, was originally named “Illinois Industrial University”, one of the 37 universities created under the first Morrill Land-Grant Act, which provided public land for the creation of agricultural and industrial colleges, and universities across the USA. Among several cities, Urbana was selected in 1867 as the site for the new school. From the beginning, President John Milton Gregory’s desire to establish an institution firmly grounded in the liberal arts tradition was at odds with many state residents and lawmakers who wanted the university to offer classes based solely around “industrial education.” The university opened for classes on March 2, 1868, and had two faculty members and 77 students. The library, which opened with the school in 1868, started with 1,039 volumes. In 1885, the Illinois Industrial University officially changed its name to the “University of Illinois”, reflecting its agricultural, mechanical, and liberal arts curriculum. After World War II, the university experienced rapid growth. The enrollment doubled and the academic standing improved. By 1967, the University of Illinois system consisted of a main campus in Champaign-Urbana and two Chicago campuses, Chicago Circle (UICC) and Medical Center (UIMC), and people began using “Urbana-Champaign” or the reverse to refer to the main campus specifically. The university name officially changed to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by 1977. As of 2024, 87% of students graduate within 8 years of entering, compared to the national median of 58% for all 4-year universities nationwide. The U of I tied for 15th among public universities, with its undergraduate engineering program tied for 6th in the USA. Internationally, Illinois engineering was ranked 13th in the world in 2016. The makeup of the students is White 39%, Asian 22%, Hispanic 14%, Foreign national 14%, and Black 6%, with the largest foreign groups being Chinese. Have you ever been to the U of I campus in Champaign?
Joy decided to attend the University of Illinois at Champaign
It finally came down to a process of elimination. In-state tuition was a big incentive to look at the University of Illinois at Champaign. At first, I thought it would be too big of a school for her, with over 50,000 students, not like her high school of 1,400 students. We finally went for a visit, as we met the daughter of one of the teachers at Lawrence O’Toole. We walked down the street with her, and at least five students said hello to her. I had forgotten that there are many smaller enclaves within a large institution. The next thing was what was she going to study? She wanted to study business. I suggested finance and accounting, but not marketing. I started comparing various colleges and the U of I was ranked in ether the top 5 or 10 in the country. That sold me. This was a serious program. Why pay more for programs that were not in state and not as good? Besides that, it was close by, less than two hours from our home in Matteson. Joy also had several of her high school friends who were going there. This reminded me of the movie Risky Business, where the high school student blew his interview with Harvard, and then said, I guess I am going to the U of I. Everyone seemed happy. U of I was the first choice for excellence and monetary value. Do you know anyone who went to the University of Illinois at Champaign?
Joy looked at places to go to college in 1990 and 1991
I realized what a crazy world of how high school students pick their college. I had my own ideas. My daughter’s college had to be safe, demanding, worthwhile, and within my means. It all started out with taking an ACT or SAT test. Depending on the results, you will start to get a lot of brochures and letters from colleges and universities you have never heard of, while you are a junior in high school. Each high school has its own counselors, who kind of know what the colleges are looking for. However, then there was the visiting of colleges, indicating a higher level of interest. Joy, my daughter was in the top 5-10% of her class and had good grades. Everybody starts talking about scholarships, but then it comes down to am I good enough to get in? Besides that, the high school student should know what they want to study, since some colleges are better than others. Finally, there is the question of money. High school students often talk about fit, how you fit in, but that is hard to do. You only know it when it does not fit. At first, I wanted her to save all the brochures to show her how many places wanted here to go to their college. After a while, it got out of hand. They became part of the ubiquitous junk mail. Next were the letters and telephone calls. I got a phone call one day from a Purdue professor. Professors can’t be spending much time calling perspective students. Joy must have done well in some test. Another letter was from the President of UAB, who remined high school students not to waste their senior year. I thought that was pretty good advice. However, the fun part of deciding where to go to college was the trip to a campus. They treat you like a king or queen, until after you have made your decision. We visited, the University of Iowa, at beautiful Iowa City. Most colleges have very nice campuses. Then we visited Mount Senario, in Ladysmith, where Margaret graduated from, and where I taught for one summer. I showed her Loyola on the north shore of Chicago. DePaul was really an urban school spread out on Chicago’s near north side. However, there was a recruiter who promised Joy and her friend Katie a $10,000 scholarship. That seemed impressive until I found out that the full tuition for Illinois Wesleyan was $20,000 a year. We went to their campus in Bloomington, Il. They had a huge campus with many buildings but with few students, a little over 1,500, so that it was barely bigger than her high school. Besides, it was a Methodist private college, with a big tuition. Joy wanted a bigger school. As she entered her senior year, she had not decided where to go. She had decided not to study music or be in a marching band. Have you ever had a high school student make up their mind about going to college?
The Chicago Bulls dynasty began with Michael Jordan
On June 12, 1991, the Chicago Bulls won the NBA championship, 4 games to 1 over the Los Angeles Lakers to earn the franchise’s first championship, starting a run of six titles in eight seasons. Michael Jordan was named the NBA MVP. The 1991 NBA Finals was the first NBA Finals broadcast by NBC after 17 years with CBS. The Eastern Conference champion Chicago Bulls took on the Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers for the title, with Chicago having home court advantage. It was Michael Jordan’s first NBA Finals appearance, and the last for Magic Johnson. The Bulls won the series, as Jordan averaged 31.2 points on 56% shooting, 11.4 assists, 6.6 rebounds, 2.8 steals and 1.4 blocks. This series marked the end of the Lakers Showtime era, and the beginning of the Bulls’ dynasty in the 1990s. After winning five championships in eight finals appearances in the 1980s, the Lakers would struggle for the rest of the 1990s, before winning five championships between the 2000 and 2010 seasons. The 1991 Lakers were led by Magic Johnson, who was 31 and playing in what would be his last full season, as well as fellow All-Star teammate James Worthy. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had retired two seasons earlier. The Bulls, led by Jordan and small forward Scottie Pippen, would win five more championships after 1991 in a seven-year span, cementing their status as a dynasty. Jordan became only the fourth player in NBA history, after Joe Fulks, George Mikan, and Abdul-Jabbar, to capture the scoring title and a championship in the same season. The 1990–91 season marked the Bulls’ 25th in franchise history. The year before, the Bulls lost a grueling seven-game series to the Detroit Pistons in the 1990 Eastern Conference finals. In the six years since Michael Jordan joined the Bulls, they were showing signs of improvement. They managed to put it all together in 1990-1991, winning a then-franchise record 61 games. Jordan won the scoring title for a fifth consecutive season, but the team was no longer a one-man show of years past. Instead, Jordan distributed the ball with regularity, thanks in large part to the triangle offense instituted by head coach Phil Jackson and assistant Tex Winter. This gave the Bulls additional offensive weapons to choose from, ranging from wingman Scottie Pippen and post players Horace Grant and Bill Cartwright to shooters such as John Paxson and B. J. Armstrong. Jordan’s improved all-around play earned him his second MVP award. In the playoffs, the Bulls lost only once in the first three rounds. They swept the New York Knicks in the first round, then eliminated the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round. Their much-awaited rematch with the Detroit Pistons in the Conference finals showcased the maturity and poise that the Bulls displayed all season, as they swept the Pistons. In a last show of defiance, most of the Pistons walked off the court with :08 left on the clock in a blowout loss at home so as not to congratulate the new Eastern Conference champions, though Joe Dumars, Vinnie Johnson, and John Salley did remain to shake the Bulls’ hands. Scottie Pippen led the Bulls with 32 points and collected 13 rebounds. Jordan, who was named the Finals MVP, added 30 points and 10 assists in the final clencher. The Bulls Dynasty of the 1990s had begun. Did you ever see the Bulls and Michael Jordan play?
The first war with Iraq – Desert Storm
On January 12, 1991, the USA Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of military force to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The UN deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expired, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm, that began on January 16, 1991, with air strikes against Iraq. Iraq then fired eight Scud missiles into Israel. On January 22, the British Army SAS patrol, Bravo Two Zero, was deployed in Iraq. The ground engagement of the war, the Battle of Khafji, began and lasted until February 1. On February 13, two laser-guided “smart bombs” destroyed an underground bunker in Baghdad, killing hundreds of Iraqis. USA military intelligence claimed it was a military facility while Iraqi officials identified it as a bomb shelter. By February 22, Iraq accepted a Soviet-proposed cease fire agreement. The USA rejected the agreement, instead saying that retreating Iraqi forces would not be attacked if they left Kuwait within 24 hours. The ground war began on February 24, 4 AM local time, as ground troops crossed the Saudi Arabian border and entered Kuwait. The next day, part of an Iraqi Scud missile hit an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 29 USA soldiers and injuring 99 more. It was the single-most devastating attack on USA forces during the war. On February 26, on Baghdad radio, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein announced the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait. Iraqi soldiers set fire to Kuwait oil fields as they retreated. The fire lasted until November 7, 1991. On February 27, 1991, USA President Bush declared victory over Iraq and ordered a cease-fire, so that the USA troops began to leave the Persian Gulf on March 10, 1991. Emir of Kuwait, Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, returned to Kuwait after seven months of exile in Saudi Arabia on March 14. On April 3, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 687, which called for the destruction or removal of all of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons and a complete ban on ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 km. It also called for an end to Iraq’s support for international terrorism. Iraq accepted this resolution. On April 18, 1991, Iraq declared that it did not have any biological weapons program. In late June, the UN inspection teams attempted to intercept Iraqi vehicles carrying nuclear related equipment. In September, the IAEA inspectors discovered files on Iraq’s hidden nuclear weapons program. Iraqi officials refused to let them leave with the documents, prompting a standoff that continued until the UN Security Council threatened enforcement actions on Iraq. Troubles with UN inspectors made this peace agreement with Iraq shaky. What do you remember about Desert Storm in 1991?
