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Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black
216Overview
Timuel Black is an acclaimed historian, activist, and storyteller. Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black chronicles the life and times of this Chicago legend.
Sacred Ground opens in 1919, during the summer of the Chicago race riot, when infant Black and his family arrive in Chicago from Birmingham, Alabama, as part of the first Great Migration. He recounts in vivid detail his childhood and education in the Black Metropolis of Bronzeville and South Side neighborhoods that make up his "sacred ground."
Revealing a priceless trove of experiences, memories, ideas, and opinions, Black describes how it felt to belong to this place, even when stationed in Europe during World War II. He relates how African American soldiers experienced challenges and conflicts during the war, illuminating how these struggles foreshadowed the civil rights movement. A labor organizer, educator, and activist, Black captures fascinating anecdotes and vignettes of meeting with famous figures of the times, such as Duke Ellington and Martin Luther King Jr., but also with unheralded people whose lives convey lessons about striving, uplift, and personal integrity.
Rounding out this memoir, Black reflects on the legacy of his friend and mentee, Barack Obama, as well as on his public works and enduring relationships with students, community workers, and some very influential figures in Chicago and the world.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810139244 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/15/2019 |
| Pages: | 216 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
TIMUEL D. BLACK JR. has spent his life furthering the cause of social justice, and his two volumes of oral histories, Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration and Bridges of Memory: Chicago's Second Generation of Black Migration, published by Northwestern University Press, chronicle black Chicago history from the 1920s to the present.
SUSAN KLONSKY is an educator, writer, and community activist. She and her husband, Mike Klonsky, are the authors of Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society.
BART SCHULTZ is a senior lecturer in humanities and director of the Civic Knowledge Project at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many works, including Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
You Come from People
"You come from people." That is what Mama would remind me. People who had been through slavery.
We had a history, as a people and as a family, and the ancestors were always a presence in our lives, in our home. Often when Mama or Daddy got upset or depressed, they would go off, sometimes to another room, to talk aloud to the ancestors. I grew up hearing them talking to the elders, often enough the elders who were no longer among the living.
But I never knew much about my family history before my grandfather on my daddy's side. They — his family — were split into two divisions. You took the slave master's name, and so we were both Blacks and Forneys. They were situated in Jacksonville, Alabama, and I guess the plantation must have been near there. My father did sharecropping near there, and they'd come pick him up to work their fields. These were people who I remember. I still have contact with their children, who still live in Birmingham. They didn't leave. I assume they were pretty well-off and chose to stay down south. Maybe they didn't want to deal with cold weather. Maybe they feared the breakdown of relationships in the North.
My daddy knew his father was from West Africa (Senegal, I later found out) and had arrived in this country through somewhere in North Carolina. After Emancipation, the slaves began to look for their family members and found many of them. My grandfather was a proud, tough man. After Emancipation, he was a farmer, and he had his own land. My daddy told me that Grandfather was walking down the street in Jacksonville, Alabama, with a cigar in his mouth, when he suddenly dropped dead in the street. He wore a suit and spats to go into town.
Now, William Lafayette Black, who owned the Black plantation, had been the owner of both my paternal grandfather and my paternal grand- mother. His son, Hugo Black, who went on to become a U.S. senator and a justice of the Supreme Court, became a friend and a protector to my father. Hugo and Daddy grew up near each other on the plantation and remained in touch throughout their lives. These are facts. I'm not proud of it, but I can't throw these facts away. It was known around the Black plantation and in the area that my daddy was under Hugo Black's protection. My daddy could go vote, because he was under Hugo Black's protection. Hugo Black had been a member of the Klan when he was young, and when he joined the Supreme Court in 1937, I said to my daddy, "Did you hear they just put an ex-Klansman, Hugo Black, on the Supreme Court?" My daddy took a puff on his cigar and replied, "He'll be all right." I thought my daddy had lost his mind. He was a Garveyite, a follower of black nationalist Marcus Garvey, and he would not even allow a white person to come through our front door, and here he was saying that someone from the Klan would be all right. But Hugo Black went on to become one of the most progressive members of the court; he delivered the majority decision in the Hansberry v. Lee case, which challenged restrictive covenants, the agreements home owners and real estate companies used to enforce segregation in housing.
So the slave system not only made you take the name of the family who was using you to do the work, it could also create such conflicted feelings of loyalty. The American conundrum, I call it. But my grandparents were married, and this was a point of pride among us. The slave system could not break this family unit that they forged.
On Mama's side, McConner was their name — she became Mattie McConner Black — and the name was presumed to mean there were Scottish or Irish slave owners in their history. It was also inferred that we had some Scottish blood in our veins, courtesy of some master a few generations back, and perhaps from the Black side, my daddy's side, too. Mama also had some Native American ancestors.
My older sister, Charlotte, was not my blood sister. My father had been married before, to another woman in Birmingham. This first wife came into the marriage pregnant and then had my sister. She then betrayed my father and abandoned the family. This was before my father and mother met. So my father was raising this little baby girl on his own. When he married Mama, she raised Charlotte exactly as her own flesh-and-blood daughter. One day, when Charlotte was a teenager, she got into trouble. She stayed out all night. My mother met her at the door and said, "We've been up all night worrying about you." Charlotte yelled at Mama, "You're not my mother!" Suddenly, my daddy slapped Charlotte. Hard. At the time I had no idea what it was all about. He yelled at her, "She's all the mother you've ever had!"
Daddy's family ties in Alabama continued after we moved north. He kept in touch with the Caldwells and the Forneys in Birmingham, to whom he was fondly known as Uncle Dixie. My uncles Tom and Willie would come up to visit and bring their kids, who were a little younger than me. They would visit, but they would not stay for long. Conversely, we rarely went down south, other than for family funerals. My father was no longer comfortable there.
In 1918, before he moved his young family to Chicago, my father explored New York, but he found it too expensive and difficult to navigate. It was too sophisticated for him, and I think he knew it. I think Chicago was more comfortable for him. Perhaps he was attracted to the ample green spaces, wide midways, and expansive parks of Chicago's South Side. In those days, sheep actually grazed on the meadow at Washington Park. You could squint and pretend for a moment that you were back in the Alabama countryside. With in-laws and other relatives already having established households in Woodlawn, the South Side became the natural choice.
Anyway, my family, like so many, heard Robert Abbott's call to "Come North, young men." Again, Abbott was the publisher of the famous black newspaper the Chicago Defender, and he sent that paper, and that message, all over the South through the Pullman porters. My father and mother had migrated twice already: first from tenant farms where they chopped cotton to the market town of Florence, Alabama, and then on from there to the city of Birmingham. But the lure of a real, modern, northern metropolis was powerful. My daddy worked for Bessemer Steel in Birmingham, Alabama, and he could go work in the steel mills in Chicago, which he did, at U.S. Steel, before working in the stockyards. But like thousands of others leaving the South, Daddy was seeking not only economic opportunity; he also sought to remove his family from harm's way, from Klan terror. He was accustomed to carrying a pistol at all times, but he didn't want his children to grow up in that atmosphere. And my mama prized learning and culture above all; she wanted the best of schooling for her family. Those were the main reasons why blacks came up to Chicago — to be able fight back against white attackers, to get better jobs and be able to vote, and to get a better education for their children. Of course, the white businesses in the North wanted the blacks from the South for other reasons — to replace white workers going to fight in the war or going on strike.
My mama's mother had already settled in Chicago, along with an older sister. Between them, Chicago was the obvious choice. My aunt Lucille and uncle Henry had moved there first. But Henry proved to be an abusive husband. So Lucille, in need of an ally, brought her mother up to Chicago in 1915 or 1916, to assist and perhaps to mediate the domestic conflict, which ultimately ended in divorce.
Then there was Uncle Billy, one of my mama's brothers, who had left his Alabama home at the age of sixteen, hitchhiking north to Chicago. There he found a bar that offered cutting-edge jazz. Seated there as a newcomer to town, he found himself elbow-to-elbow with a familiar-looking gentleman. It was none other than his own older brother, Uncle Walter. They had not set eyes upon each other in years, since Billy was a youngster when Uncle Walter took off. Their almost genetic attraction to jazz had brought them to the same spot at the same moment in time, and once their eyes met, they took some moments to recognize themselves as brothers.
Uncle Billy loved that neighborhood so much he settled into a Black Belt apartment at Thirty-First and State, in the center of the jazz district and at the height of the Jazz Age. Uncle Billy was drawn to the music, the energetic nightlife, and the ambience of relative freedom and creativity that flowed through that neighborhood. (It is little known today, when a different part of Bronzeville, a couple of miles farther south, is marketed as the jazz district. But the real hub of jazz was just south of the Loop.)
With no formal training as a chef, Uncle Billy managed to snare a job on the railroad, rising from a cleaner to a cook. He became a well-known chef, and the big shots on the railroads would request Billy Thomas to cook for them. Thomas was of course the name of his parents' owners. Uncle Billy prepared feasts for our whole family every time he was home on leave. He married a white girl who was university educated and the daughter of an Episcopalian bishop. Aunt Bertha fit right in to the family — she loved people, music, and ideas.
Uncle Billy opened one of the first outstanding BBQ stands in the city. People used to come from all over to Thomas's Barbecue on the fiftieth block of Grand Boulevard. Thomas's was the predecessor of modern chain restaurants. He invested in modern equipment, rotisseries and the like. Billy was a great success. He and Bertha had one child, my cousin Alice, and they all ended up living in the Douglas–Grand Boulevard area. I happily recall that on Sundays he'd take us riding in his car.
Uncle Walter McConner, another of my mama's brothers, and Daddy both resorted to strikebreaking when, in desperation, they were forced to take jobs in the steel mills while the all-white labor force was out on strike. Unfortunately, black strikebreakers were easily spotted. One night, Uncle Walter was riding home from that job on the streetcar when he was attacked by a group of whites who were looking for some blacks on whom to vent their rage. Walter fought them off, and managed to shove one with such force that the attacker fell out of the streetcar, striking his head on the pavement. Uncle Walter was charged with his murder. He was defended by the brilliant black lawyer Ferdinand Lee Barnett. Mr. Barnett was, incidentally, the husband of the journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who campaigned against lynchings. Uncle Walter's case went all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court, where he was eventually acquitted of murder. But once the trial ended, he had to leave Chicago, for he was by then a marked man. Moving to Detroit, he worked in the Ford plant, became a union organizer, and was among the first in our family to own a car. His son, my cousin Walter Junior, was a nationally known track star from Cass Tech, the premier black high school in Detroit. Walter and his brother became entertainers during World War II. They were part of a special unit which provided diversion for the troops through athletic and acrobatic feats. And Walter went on to become a famous social worker; he devoted his life to helping troubled young people and eventually became the head of Children and Family Services in Chicago.
It may have been the labor issues, or the economy, or the racism that my daddy had to confront when going to work at U.S. Steel that eventually took him from the steel mills to the stockyards. I was never sure. He would leave home every morning dressed up in a suit and tie, whether he was going to the steel mills or the stockyards, and then change clothes at work. This was a way — not always effective — to avoid being harassed. He worked very hard to support us, whatever it took. I think I real- ized this at an early age. I remember one time, when I was six or seven years old, some of my friends were out with their fathers, who were tak- ing everyone to this place or that, and they said to me, "Where's your daddy?" They were insinuating that my daddy didn't do such things with me. I felt angry at first, but then I thought about how my daddy would always take us out, to Washington Park or other places, whenever he did not have to work. And I thought to myself, "There's nothin' wrong with my daddy; there's something wrong with God."
Anyway, my daddy made the money, but my mama controlled it — she was the treasurer, and you always gave the money to her. Mama always wanted us to have some nice clothes, and one time she had bought us some things and she said to Daddy, "Dixie, look what I bought the kids." Daddy said, "Mattie, we can't afford that," but Mama said, "This is for the children, you're supposed to go into debt to get whatever they need." Daddy kept it up until finally Mama called him "an old shit ass." That was the only time I ever remember her swearing. Mostly they got along and sacrificed for their children. Mama would say do this, and Daddy would say, "Do what your mama says."
Black Metropolis
When we first moved to Chicago, we moved to the 4900 block of St. Lawrence Avenue. As was typical for those of us coming up from the South, we would move a lot — to 5012 South Calumet, to Forty-Ninth and Vincennes, and when I was in high school, to 5121 South Michigan. Also 5635 Calumet, 5000 Grand Boulevard, and finally 6230 Vernon, where my parents lived until my mama died. I had gone to four different schools by the time I was in second grade. But this was all in the same close community — Bronzeville, the Black Belt.
When we first got there, the area was predominantly white — mostly Bohemian, Estonian, and other white ethnics — but those whites soon ran away. My mother signed my siblings up for what was reputed to be the finest grammar school in the neighborhood. Typically she chose the school based on where the Jewish families sent their kids. As each barrier fell, my aunts would come over and say, "Have you heard? They are renting to colored over on — — Street," and Mama would pack up our household, and we'd move closer to what was believed to be the better school. This was the pattern for lots of families, and from then on it became an expanding black community. The powerful network of mothers moved us along.
In Chicago, people of color were often denied entry to restaurants or stores and could make scarcely any purchases outside of the Black Belt, so people like my relatives began to understand the necessity and the opportunity to develop their own business ventures. We were the original captive-audience marketing opportunity. When the first wave of the Great Migration began — even when it was just a trickle of folks coming from the South to Chicago — those first migrants generally came from mixed relationships. They were racially and socioeconomically mixed, and in most of the households at least one of the adults had gone to school, even to university, to a historically black college. Quite a few of those early, educated migrants passed for white. Their light skin and white features came from the harsh facts of slave history.
Now, even back in the nineteenth century, there were people like John Jones, who in 1871 became the first African American to hold elected office in Illinois. He was a prosperous tailor who owned a lot of land in the southern part of downtown Chicago. He was self-educated and an abolitionist who fought for black voting rights in Illinois, opposing the Black Code that denied blacks in Illinois their rights for much of the nineteenth century. He was an example to those who arrived later, with the first Great Migration. When they had experienced enough rejection and exclusion, they organized their own businesses. We always learned from the elders. You could not get a taxi to pick you up, so Jackie Reynolds and Mr. Bertel Daigre organized taxi and jitney companies. You had to wait to die until you could find a graveyard in which to be buried, so finally some people put together the money to purchase land and establish Burr Oak, the first black cemetery in Chicago and one of the first in the country. (My grandma and others of her generation could only be buried in a segregated section of the old Lincoln Cemetery.) T. K. Gibson, Frank Gillespie, and others brought into being Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, founded in 1919, because before them there was no insurance for people of color. Jesse Binga, who had built the first black-owned bank in Chicago, bought up the land at Thirty-Fifth and State Street, where today the Illinois Institute of Technology stands. Above the Binga Bank he installed a dance hall upstairs where we could go to dance parties.
One of the first black millionaires in Chicago was Anthony Overton. He was a trained chemist, and he felt that black women did not know how to get their skin changed [i.e., lightened] and still look like black women. He created Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company and put a fleet of salesmen on the streets of the Black Belt. He had ladies like my mother selling his products out of their apartments. Neighbors would come over to buy from her. He also started the Chicago Bee, another influential black newspaper like the Defender and the Whip. People would say that the Bee would sting you, the Whip would whip you, and the Defender would defend you. The old Overton and Bee buildings still exist, on State Street, and are among the best of the Bronzeville land-marks. His daughter Eva Overton went to the University of Chicago and married Julian Herman Lewis, the first black to join the faculty there.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Introduction—A Reasonable AssumptionChapter 1—You Come from PeopleChapter 2—Interlude: All That JazzChapter 3—Soldiering OnChapter 4— Life in Teaching and Teaching Chicago Chapter 5—Talking to the EldersChapter 6—The Power and the GloryEpilogue—Looking Forward: The Future Belongs to Those Who Fight for It