Posted on 02/14/2005 10:15:43 AM PST by 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!
Ain't it just like "The Man" to make Black History Month, the shortest month of the year?
Smart blacks got the hell out of the ghettos that liberalism created. Hence the boarded storefronts and drug dealing homies.
To me it sounds like a yearning for black neighborhhods that are free from the self-serving political shenannigans of progressive, so-called "civil rights leaders" who sap black communities of resources, opportunities, freedom and incentives to work.
"Juicy-hipped"?
Yeccch!
Democrats and Liberal Left-Wingers at work keeping Black folks pegged to the bottom of the economic and opportunity totem pole forever. Good news is that Black Americans are waking up to the fact they have been had big time by the Democrat "Slavery" Party. Blacks only need to ask themselves one simple question. How many high paying decent jobs has Bill Clinton brought to Harlem, New York. Answer, Zero. End of story!!!
Needs. Spell-Check. Now.
Freepers--I need quick advice:
My son's first grade teacher (private Christian school, BTW, so no public school rants!) announced Fri she would start teaching "Black History Month" today. I called her and left a message telling her I had some concerns about it I'd like to discuss. She's going to call me back at 3 pm today.
My stomach turns at the thought of my 6-yr old being taught about segregation and slavery in a first grade curriculum that includes NO history.
Please help! How would you address your concerns to this teacher? Thanks.
When society finally turns a blind eye to the celebration of difference it will only be because they are too busy to notice.
I used to live in Hyde Park at the edge of 47th Street. It was a complete ghetto but things are changing slowly with gentrification. I think the areas east of Cottage Grove will be annexed by the university at some point, but west of Stoney will remain ghetto even in the long term. As you walk down 47th St, you will see the effects of socialism all around you. This article talks about the 47th St marketplace? Is it the one where the Hyde Park Co-op used to be? That aint glamorous at all, and furthermore the Co-op there shut down some time ago. Now it has a Citibank, which I hear is also planning to shut down. There is a J&J fish down the street where someone got shot my first year in college. But, it was the only place that was open late.
Ask her to teach about Booker T Washington.
47th Street is not in the pits because people left. The population density is likely greater than ever but 47th has been a disaster for decades because of the crime which is rampant.
There is nothing inherently wrong with teaching about black history especially if the close relationship between the achievement of freedom because of the Republican Party is stressed. And the FACT that slavery was protected by the DemocRAT party which fought against the Union in the Civil War (more accurately the RAT Rebellion), fought against the laws allowing Blacks equal rights, formed and peopled the KKK, etc. ALL those who opposed equal rights were democRATS.
All the great Black leaders were Republicans, the NAACP was formed by Republicans, the first Blacks in political power were Republicans.
People should be taught the TRUTH about Black History though it is not clear how much can be taught 1st graders.
If anyone knows about slave labor it would be teachers in private schools.
Huh? How do they plan to teach six year olds black history?
And most of all, they should know that Carter G. Woodson intended it become part of American history and not as a separate month. How odd.
Oh, I'm sure there were one of two additional prostitutes/call-girls added to the neighborhood.
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