On April 8, 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive Republican candidate for the 1912 presidential election, visited West Side Park in Champaign to deliver a campaign speech from the park's bandstand.
Running against his former friend and presidential successor, William Taft, President Roosevelt won nine of twelve Republican primaries, beginning with a sweeping victory in Illinois on April 9, 1912. Despite Roosevelt’s popularity in the Republican primaries, the 1912 election was won by Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson.
-Donica M.