his 101 years, “Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black,” was released last year. You were the one who saw Dr. Martin Luther King on TV in December 1955 and as a result asked him to speak at the Hyde Park Unitarian Church, a speech that was moved to Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago in order to accommodate more listeners in April 1956. What did Dr. King say that moved you so much? That he was tired of the inequality, the burden laid on his people. It was a humorous but accurate statement borrowed from Rosa Parks [who started the Montgomery, AL bus boycott in 1955 after she refused to give up her seat to a white man after working all day as a seamstress]. It was not a ‘physically’ tired but a ‘socially and economically’ tired of being treated unequally. “If ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ as it says in the Declaration of Independence, then ‘I am tired of being treated as an unAmerican human being.’ Parks was simply saying ‘I am tired of all this bull’ and Dr. King could use it as an expression humorously but accurately in an America where all human beings were supposed to be equal.” In 1966 Dr. King brought the Civil Rights Movement up from the rural South to Chicago, in a battle to end slums and housing segregation. Why did he choose Chicago over other northern cities like Cleveland or New York? When he was discouraged by some leadership from being in either one of those cities, he was encouraged by similar leadership here because they had already participated in voting and school desegregation protests. Also, he had many friends here, such as the Rev. Abraham Patterson (A.P.) Jackson, minister of Liberty Baptist Church at 49th Street and King Drive, who had been an older schoolmate of Dr. King at Morehouse College in Georgia - and a classmate of mine at DuSable. In addition, Chicago had been an organizing center for many years. If you had difficulty getting into the [white] union local, sometimes you could break segregation by organizing an African-American union local – for steelworkers, autoworkers, even musicians. The parallel institutions would eventually be incorporated into the larger union.
Robert Kozloff photo
Vendor A. Allen shares his stories of integration
When I think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the Legend, the Man and the Dream, I think I how times seem to be the same and how my thinking has changed. Yes, I remember the message of integration between whites and blacks working together. The message was so relevant. At the same time, some people understood and some took it for granted.
From my experience, the Board of Education took the message seriously: it reacted with the Chicago Public Schools busing program of 1970. I was in 6th or 7th grade at John D. Shoop School, 11140 S. Bishop St., and was one of those selected to participate. We were transported to Mount Greenwood School at about 9:30 a.m. everyday and stayed until 3 p.m. It was only about a 10- to 15-minute ride west of us. The program was designed to bring black and white teenagers together for education – not only from teachers but from each other. We were told to be ourselves and the white kids were told the same thing. I think the purpose was so we could learn about each other’s cultures. It was a wonderful experience because in hindsight, it was sort of like being introduced to the other side of the tracks. We couldn’t understand the reason for going to school across the tracks in the Caucasian neighborhood but now I see it as an opportunity to get to know people I would not normally mix with. For me, it was an introduction to the real world. We discussed each other’s slang and felt each other’s hair. We talked about our hobbies and after-school activities. Some people even dated. We had thought we were reserved to our little community, but with the busing program, a whole new world was open to us. We saw our similarities more than our differences. We all wanted to fit in and be accepted by our peers and to excel in education. It was an eye-opening experience and I find it still valuable today. Even though I did not value the lesson then, I do appreciate it today. Because of the busing experience, I’m less afraid to integrate and socialize with people of different colors, ethnic and social backgrounds. It was helpful because I view people in a less judgmental way. I understand a lot of my prejudices stem from my ignorance, of assuming things I had no experience in. So with the busing program, I gained hands on, personal (and even work) experience. www.streetwise.org
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