Black History Month looks less hopeful along 47th Street

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | February 14, 2005 | LAURA WASHINGTON

[Chi-townChief]

I've got a love-hate thang going on with Black History Month. The love comes every February, when the media, corporate interests and other major institutions scramble to "celebrate" black voices in front of the camera and microphone. Our diverse heritage and legacy are showcased and honored. Who doesn't love limelight?

The hate is the reminder that things ain't the way they're supposed to be. Take East 47th Street. In the first half of the 20th century, a black history icon, Archibald Motley Jr., memorialized the area near 47th Street and South Park (now called King Drive), as "The Stroll."

Motley, an acclaimed African-American painter, captured scenes teeming with juicy-hipped women in slinky reds, stepping out with their sharp-suited dudes. In the 1930s and 1940s, 47th Street was ground zero for the city's sizzling black cultural scene, where "Negroes" mingled after a night out or paraded their Sunday hats after church.

In the 1960s, my Aunt Mercedes ran a now-defunct storefront tavern on 47th Street. Dee Dee's Trophy Lounge was a thriving, soulful place where black folks gathered to gossip and kvetch. This pigtailed toddler was beguiled by the bear and antelope heads hanging from the wall. I spent many afternoons watching The Stroll from my perch atop a huge, stuffed turtle displayed in the window.

But things are no longer the way they're supposed to be.

I took my own personal Black History Month stroll down 47th Street the other day. I rolled by blocks upon blocks of empty, boarded-up storefronts and bedraggled and haggard folk lingering at bus stops and in front of liquor stores. One vacant lot did have tenants: two billboards singing the praises of Courvoisier and Crown Royal. It conjured up visions of bombed-out enclaves in Baghdad.

As I rode on, I thought, "Dorothy Tillman, hello?"

Tillman, the longtime alderman and committeeman of the 3rd Ward, is the political boss of 47th Street. And a black history icon. In the 1960s, as a young woman, she was a field organizer for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and was one of the first SCLC activists to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge of Selma, Ala., in the Bloody Sunday conflict. Tillman later toted her hardball organizing tactics to Chicago and was appointed alderman in 1983 by Mayor Harold Washington.

47th Street runs through the heart of Tillman's ward. More than two decades ago, she inherited a shell of a neighborhood blighted by urban renewal, poverty and crime. And while there are some signs of progress, there are also signs of shame.

Tillman and her supporters can rightly point to the long-in-coming Harold Washington Cultural Center and the 47th Street Marketplace, a sparkling new retail complex next to Tillman's ward office that showcases an Afrocentric bookstore and a coffee house.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but you still don't want to kiss it.

Over the years, Tillman has put aldermanic holds on dozens of properties. Many of the vacant lots in her ward lay fallow today because she has chosen to hold up the city-owned land for the proper time. Her cast-iron grip on that land has crippled development that might have blossomed into jobs and hope long ago.

She has made it clear that she is the master of her universe. Her critics have claimed her development decisions are tied to favored developers, especially those who come calling with campaign contributions in hand.

Ironically, her most passionate crusade is rooted in the most excruciating era of black history. Tillman has led a national effort to force the kings of commerce who profited from trading slaves to make reparations to their ancestors.

Just last week she upbraided the Bank of America for failing to acknowledge its past connections to slavery. City law requires such disclosures from firms who want city business. She charges that the bank's predecessor profited from slavery and should be shut out of a lucrative city bond deal.

But history, especially the African-American kind, deserves as much passion from black leaders who get stuff done for those in need in the here and now.

Whether you roll or stroll, today's 47th Street ain't the way it's supposed to be.

A black history footnote: In 1928, Chicagoan Archibald Motley Jr. became the first African-American artist to hold a solo exhibit in New York City. Take that, New York!

[esoxmagnum]

excellent synopsis

[joesnuffy]

The kind the Jimmy Walker's JJ "dyno mite" Evans character painted in the tv series 'Good Times'

Very robusty and well apportioned down souths...

[Anvilhead]

Thanks, its easy when you have the FReeper standard to work with. Nothing makes me work harder then the threat of ridicule by FRiends who are more intelligent.

[DMZFrank]

Another liberal semi-Marxist Democrat tyranically acting as the gatekeeper of her constituent's economic and social prospects. So what else is new? Nothing to see here, let's move on.

[mafree]

I would first find out what she intends to teach and how. What does your child understand about race/racial differences? Many 6 year olds know nothing and it may be a disservice to introduce them to it that young. If he will be taught about certain Black historical figures in ways that his mind/emotions can comprehend that would be OK, IMO. Otherwise, the slavery stuff can wait.

[mafree]

This almost seems like an odd yearning for the segregated past.

I think it's more a yearning for a once-thriving, once close-knit neighborhood that never recovered from LBJ's "Great Society" and its beneficiaries like Ald. Tillman.