"Atmosphere of Magic and Unreality"

In May 1973, students launched a loosely organized countercultural festival with an armadillo for a mascot. It soon became known as Armadillo Day and had a broader influence on the celebrations that within a few years came under the umbrella of Mayfest. Although students have held onto the basic structure, much of the formality of Northwestern’s earlier May celebrations started to fall away – like the first two syllables before Dillo Day.

A poster for the 1979 Armadillo Festival.

Now organized by Mayfest Productions as the largest student-run music festival in the country, Dillo Day started out as a loosely organized, participatory celebration.

From 1971 onwards, with the first Spring Thing featuring acts such as Sly and the Family Stone, May Week incorporated concerts and festivals meant for the whole campus. Spring Thing combined the previous Freshman Carnival and Greek Day. In this context, though, more independent parties and festivals started to pop up around the end of the school year. That may be why the event that came to be known as Armadillo Day has had competing stories told about its origins.

A map from the back of the 1994 issue of The Underground Armadillo.

The most consistent story places the first event in 1973, when Texas-born students Don Stout and George Krause organized the “The First Annual ‘I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore’ Festival and Fair.” Stout and Krause operated as Armadillo Productions, named both for the animal and an Austin venue that featured folk, blues, rock, and country music. Identifying as “leftist hippie types,” the Texans organized an expression of counterculture. In invitations that year, they announced they were “aiming for an atmosphere of magic and unreality.” Booths were available for sponsorship by living units or individuals to stage whatever kind of homemade entertainment they wanted: anything from contests to tarot card readings.

Flyer seeking participants for the 1980 Armadillo Day.

The Underground Armadillo, the freeform Armadillo Day paper published annually in most years between 1983 and 2007, looked back on the first festival in 1992. Stout and Krause had both been independent of the Greek system and felt that the school did not provide enough social activities for the rest of the campus. Inspired by an Elizabethan fair with carnival booths and music at Rice University earlier that spring, they decided to plan something similar. Stout said that in Texas, the armadillo was considered a “folk emblem” and hippies “attached a mystique to the funny-looking animal.” “In our festival we wanted people to be transported to a different world, kind of like Dorothy and the tornado,” Krause said. The “I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore” event offered an escape during the Vietnam War and the peak of the Watergate scandal.

By 1980, Armadillo Day was described as “the annual celebration of the coming of Spring.” It expanded in the 1980s to include multiple concert stages and features like a playground, a stage with interpretative, theatre, dance, and puppet performances, food booths, creative activities, and action games.

In its first issue on Armadillo Day’s tenth anniversary in 1983, The Underground Armadillo called the event “a symbol for the potential unity of Northwestern students.” Since then, the paper has often printed elaborate fake histories of the festival’s origins. In one case, the 1999 issue, that account was printed over “The Underground Armadillo Manifesto,” which among a long list was dedicated to “anybody who believes in disrupting the status quo.” Although it might seem just as fanciful, the 1993 issue featured an interview with the very real “Jalapeño Sam” Lewis, who spent much of his career raising and racing armadillos.

Flyer for the 1977 May Jamboree.

While Armadillo Day became an annual feature, May Week in the 1970s otherwise struggled with its role and identity. In a May 1976 article in the Daily (courtesy of The Daily Northwestern), the May Week organizers noted that while it was an old tradition, it had been hampered in recent years because “nobody knows what it is.” They tried to combat this by “planning a big week-long celebration to involve the whole campus and make people aware of the events.” And they felt that May Week could be helped if it were moved to coincide with Women’s Week and the Spring Festival so people could have “one long week of fun.”

That was essentially what they did the following year with the new May Jamboree, combining Greek Week, May Week, Armadillo Day, A&O’s Spring Festival, and other traditional events such as the May Sing and court. The steering committee said that it would “begin with an open, all-campus party and continue with everything from wandering minstrels to Honors Day.”

The armadillo had quickly become the popular shorthand for student May celebrations generally. While the cover of a 1980 Mayfest coloring book declared the event was “more than an armadillo,” the contents were all based around armadillo cartoons.

Promotional Mayfest 1980 coloring book.

Folding pamphlet for Mayfest 1981 with a concert schedule.

Armadillo Day was generally seen as one of the most prominent events, but the 1980 Mayfest included various parties, picnics, contests, sales, balls, performances, games, benefit carnivals such as for multiple sclerosis, and a major concert. Coordination involved student organizations, alumni, businesses, the Evanston Chamber of Commerce, and academic and administrative offices.

Over the years, Armadillo Day came to serve as a weekend combining several elements of Mayfest. The first free Armadillo Day concert was held in 1981, with headliners Robert Gordon and Muddy Waters, and immediately turned into a popular annual event. The Daily described Dillo Day in 1986 as “the safety-valve from the Northwestern pressure cooker.”

In 1982, the Mayfest co-chairmen reached out to administrators, faculty, and staff, inviting them to participate, aware that in past years there had not been enough events effectively bringing them all and students together. The organizers made a conscious effort to plan events that could appeal to broader Northwestern community members and their families, including the Last Lecture (where students chose a professor to speak as if it were the last lecture of their career), a carnival, Armadillo Day, and a classical concert on the Lakefill.

May Court and May Sing

The May Sing and naming of the May Court continued in much the same way during this period. As they said in the 1976 Daily article, the organizers continued to place emphasis on the selection of a May King and Queen as honoring juniors who had displayed outstanding leadership or made significant contributions to the university. The winners were announced at the May Sing and honored at the Honors Day sponsored by Mortar Board and the Order of Omega, a Greek honorary society.

The May Sing, previously organized for fraternity and sorority groups, was opened in the 1970s to entry by any organization, group of students, or soloist.

By the late 1980s, the May Court was organized to honor two students each in the areas of campus involvement, community involvement, leadership, scholarship, and athletics. This continued through the 1990s, sometimes also recognizing other areas such as achievement in the arts.

Armadillo Sightings

2009 poster from the “Play It Smart” Dillo Day campaign.

A postcard (with armadillo drawing) for a celebration of 150 years of Northwestern.

Mayfest and related events have often made use of the image of the armadillo over the years. The organizers’ marketing campaigns in the 2000s about keeping Dillo Day and Mayfest safe, for instance, made use of the creature experiencing various mishaps. The armadillo has even made appearances in unrelated contexts around Northwestern, serving as something of an unofficial mascot.

By the 1990s, former student Matt Crawford told The Daily Northwestern in 2022, Dillo Day was in full swing as a weekend-long celebration.

For the 50th Dillo Day in 2022, the campus celebrated the return to an in-person festival for the first time since 2019 by calling back to the tradition’s origins with a “Return of the Rodeo” theme.

These pages draw on archival collections and other resources from Northwestern University Libraries, in addition to some external publications. Visit the Resources page for more information about these sources. Certain library resources may only be accessible online to those with Northwestern University credentials. All library resources are accessible for on-site research at the McCormick Library of Special Collections & University Archives. For assistance with access or reference questions, please contact specialcollections@northwestern.edu.