Black Chicago

  Black Chicago

  A Black History of America’s Heartland

  Odie Hawkins

  “In memory of Dr. Margaret Burroughs and Charles”

  So much positive stuff happens in this city every day that its unreal. Black people and white people are not strangling each other on sight, drug crazed gang members are not blazing away with Uzi’s on every corner, the African-Americans here are not being left out of the political process and we are not going to hell this afternoon.

  Sometimes I feel like screaming when I feel that I’m being saturated with all of the negative stuff. It comes from many directions; the media mostly, and from people who buy into the negative and spread it around.

  No, of course, this is not paradise. We do have problems. That’s intrinsic to city life.

  But I refuse to allow the negative blinders to blot the positive picture art. We help each other here, people are ready, willing and able to do what they can to help the other person.

  That’s not an unusual thing, people do it ordinarily. We share. I think the greatest testimonial to the facts that most people in this city have their heads screwed on right is the fact that the city works.

  If we were as messed up as some folks want to make us believe, we’d be up to our necks in shit. I rest my case.

  To brother Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, for creating it.

  To Dr. Margaret Burroughs, for being herself.

  To the memory of Mayor Harold Washington.

  To Martha, David and Heather, for being

  warm and sensitive.

  To Fred and Lynn, who gave me the garden

  when the streets got hot.

  To the brothers and sisters of Chicago,

  especially David Hawkins.

  and

  To Bo’ Felt; a friend, comrade of the night runs and A

  MAN who has shared Aphrodisiacal atmospheres,

  loaned me money, offered superior advice and proven,

  over the years, that you don’t have to have the

  same blood to be a brother …

  Thanks to Elenore Slaughter-Williams for being a

  dynamite copy cat.

  (A special hug to Ralph Carrington for carrying me back

  and forth.) The mistakes are all mine. And finally, to

  Adalisha Safi, for her good vibes and sensitivity.

  Prologue

  Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, a fur trapper and a sharp cookie in the business world, was the founder of Chicago.

  He was born in St. Marc, Saint Domingue (it was renamed Haiti in 1804), the son of a Frenchman and a African born woman who had been enslaved. There are a number of different stories told about his life but the first authentic information comes from Colonel Arrent de Peyster, a British officer who was in command of the region which included what is now Chicago.

  De Peyster wrote; “a handsome Negro, Baptiste Point Du Sable, well educated and settled at Eschikagou, but was much in the interest of the French.”

  Colonel de Peyster suspected that Du Sable was playing hanky-panky with England’s enemies and “detained” him under suspicion of “treasonable intercourse with the enemy.”

  Somehow Du Sable escaped and was arrested again. A charming devil, he made such an impression on the British governor, Patrick Sinclair, that he had him released and placed in charge of a settlement on the St. Clair River, south of Port Huran, where he remained until 1784.

  The profile of a very clever brother begins to emerge. How do you go from being guilty of “treasonable intercourse with the enemy” to working for the people who have accused you?

  During this same time frame he acquired 800 acres of land in Peoria. He returned to his ol’ stomping ground (Eschikagou) in 1784, and lived there for sixteen years, where he sold his property for $1,200.00, a lot of bread for that time.

  He never returned to Chicago and probably lived from 1805 to 1814 around St. Charles, Missouri, according to real estate records. (June, 1813, he transferred a house, lot and other property to his granddaughter, Eulalie Derais.)

  Sadly, he was almost penniless when he died in St. Charles (1818) and was buried in St. Charles’ Borromeo Cemetery.

  Let’s take a deeper look. There’s every possibility that Du Sable, like other free people of color, may have been educated in Paris, which would definitely have given him an edge on the white barbarians who were taking America from the Native Americans.

  Truth or fiction? After a shipwreck he made his way to New Orleans and was given the protection of the French Jesuits as he made his way up the Mississippi to Chicago.

  Why were they obligated to protect him? What was his relationship to that order?

  In any event, substantial evidence exists of the prosperous business he did at his trading post in Eschikagou. In 1790, for example, he sold forty-one pounds of flour, twenty-nine pounds of pork, a supply of baked bread in exchange for thirteen yards of cotton cloth.

  His post included a log house (forty feet by twenty-two), a lake house, a dairy, a smokehouse, poultry house, workshop, stable, barn, horse mill, and perhaps a few other buildings.

  He was a multi-talented man. A linguist, he spoke French, Spanish and several American Indian languages, and was not only a trader but (by 1800) a cooper, a farmer and a miller.

  In 1788, he married Catherine, a Potawatomi Indian (we can’t say that she was a princess or not). They had, of course, lived together prior to the marriage and had a daughter named Suzanne.

  Suzanne was married (1790) to Jean Baptiste Pettetier, a son Jean Baptiste Jr., the son of Jean Baptiste pere and Catherine, settled in St. Charles, Missouri (Seems that Jean Baptiste/John the Baptist, was a popular name back in those days.)

  Eulalie, later Mrs. Michael Derais, was born October 8, 1796. Catherine died sometime after 1800. There in no record of Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable remarrying.

  Little puzzles: after he married Catherine there is evidence of him selling twenty-one to twenty-three specimens of European art. A trader and a trapper collecting European art? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.…

  Later he stood for election as a chief of the Indian tribes around Mackinac (the true story of how much credit is due the Native American for teaching the immigrants democracy has not been told) and lost. His defeat may have been a factor in his decision to sell out and move to St. Charles, Missouri.

  Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable was obviously a very complex man, a mover and a shaker (the Indians in the area stated, “the first white man we knew was Black”) and his contributions to the state of Illinois and Chicago have been understated.

  In 1912 a plaque was placed at the corner of Pine and Kinzie Street in Chicago, indicating it had been the site of the first house erected in Chicago, by Du Sable.

  The usual racists want to try to claim a first with their boy Kinzie, but history denies them that lie.

  Another plaque (northeast approach to the Michigan Ave. bridge) across the Chicago River indicates where his trading post once stood.

  This writer, an alumnus of Du Sable High School, Eschikagou, Illinois, can validate Du Sable’s presence by a painting entitled “The Black,” which used to hang in the first floor corridor. Additionally, he was one of eight Illinoisans selected for the frieze of the Illinois Centennial Building in 1965.

  The specifics have not been fully explored here, or elsewhere and they should be. Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable deserves the worldwide recognition that other men of vision and talent have received.

  However, we can be certain that this will not occur as long as institutional racism is allowed to wipe out the facts.

  Case in point … the catalog card for Shirley Graham’s: Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, Founder of Chicago, carries the notation “fiction.”

  Gimme a break.
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  Black Chicago Odie Hawkins 7/91

  The African sectors of Chicago have peculiar histories, consequently they have peculiar ways of dealing with things.

  The Westside is a lot like southern Senegal, where people have traditionally honored the deeper reasons for persons living or dying. The Southside (maybe because it’s farther away from the train station) has always had the rep’ for a certain kind of cool.

  Like, you went on the Westside for the Blues and came to the Southside for Jazz. It’s still pretty much that way, on the Blues-Jazz circuit, but rap has done an amalgamation because it’s everywhere.

  In Chicago people get deeper into themselves than anywhere on the planet. Or so some people think. It may have something to do with the fact that Black people eat more catfish in Chicago than anywhere else.

  There are alleys in this city that hold thousands of years of history, and have only been in existence for forty or fifty years. That’s not a contradiction, no matter how it sounds.

  The alley that runs parallel (east to west) to Roosevelt Road is a good example; there was a time (recently) when tons of garbage stank up the alley in the summer, giving sustenance to generations of rats, and giving adventurous garbageologists more than their share of goodies.

  The alley contained more dirt than the secret activities of the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, and Bush eras combined. This alley had more shit in it than Kissinger had secrets. And it’s still there! Where is Kissinger?

  During the Daley Era (the first one), Chicago was an African-American torture chamber, a southern apartheid system transplanted North. The thing about it was that so many people had been chased or fled from conditions in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia that were so much worse, they thought they had made it to a better place.

  And then it snowed on their asses, and kept on snowing. And its still doing it. It’s gonna do it this winter. Bet on it.

  Fortunately, with the persistence and courage that African people are well known for all over the planet, the apartheid system was dismantled and replaced by the plantation system.

  The plantation system allows the Africans in Chicago to leave their Bantustans every morning, but there is a subtle agreement going on; they must return to the Bantustan every evening. They must return or run the risk of incarceration.

  Los Angeles, California, was the lead dog for this setup. Problem is, that California, being larger and more segregated (money does it), could pull it off easier. The Africans in Chicago are different, (geography does it).

  The tightness of the city means that its impossible to keep the Lithuanians out of the Estonian sector, or the Poles out of the Mexican section (where the Czechs used to live) or the Africans out of Beverly, which used to be basically Irish.

  The African sectors of Chicago have peculiar histories and there’s no telling what that history is going to be ’til we get there.

  Dr. Antonio Davis

  It was May 6, 1991 and I had just completed a three-day mediational Fetzer Johannesburg Riesling wine sipping Amtrak trip from sunny Los Angeles to a briskly cool evening in Chicago.

  I was in town for the sole purpose of feeding on Chicago, writing a Chicago themed piece that I’ve lusted for, for a long time.

  I was going to be staying in the Michigan Avenue mansion of Charles and Dr. Margaret Burroughs for the spring and summer.

  I had arrived and staying in their home getting acquainted with Dr. Burroughs’ straight to the heart of the matter attitude and Charles Burroughs’ silent fight with throat cancer.

  Dr. Margaret Burroughs, my ex-high school teacher and the sister who gave me the early paper to scribble on, an artistic and political legend in a city of artistic and political legends starting with: Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, Jesse Jackson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Marva Collins, Father Clements, Harold Washington …

  3806 S. Michigan Ave Chicago, Il. 60653

  Before it became the Du Sable Museum of African-American History, it was the home of Charles and Margaret Burroughs, and the assortment of talented people who share the space with them.

  The official segment of the museum was moved to more spacious quarters years ago (a multi-million dollar complex on the edge of Washington Park at Fifty-Sixth and Cottage Grove Avenue), the adventurers who took our story into their own hands still live there.

  Big old mansion, offering reflections of another, grander slice of time. Entering, the unmistakable odor of cat piss floods the senses for a moment, the ammonia clears the sinuses.

  Morning. The Queen moves first, her focused footsteps which sound like Flamenco patterns on the hardwood floors. She is preparing for another busy day.

  Conversations; muted, animated, phoned, skip thru the spacious rooms, talk of art. Important talk. Creative talk. Inspirational talk. This is an “in” place in the “inner city.”

  The Queen sets the pace for the house. She is mercurial, generous, fascinating, warm, cool, patient, spacey, impatient, ethical, sincere, imperialistic, dynamic, very artistic, a leader, quite, civic minded, a poet, an entrepreneur, a traveler, an African-American educator, the mentor of thousands.

  The Queen, like many masters, seems to occupy an elevated plane. She is a Special Person. Unconsciously she talks down to her subjects, or at them. Or she pontificates. And it is absorbed by the conscious and the sensitive, they understand.

  The Queen probably hasn’t had an authentic dialogue in years because the person she used to talk with has lost his voice.

  The King is slowly dying with immense dignity and sandunga. His rich grained, cigarette and wine stained voice is gone but his Presence echoes thru the halls.

  They might appear to be an unlikely couple to some people, but obviously they have used the years between them wisely, to sort out how they were going to be with each other.

  He has always given the impression of being the Consort, Not in any whimpish-stroll-behind-the-Queen sort of way, but as a real Consort.

  They are both quite individualistic and its difficult for the outsider to understand how they’ve been able to pull it off, so well, so long.

  More morning. The artists who live upstairs and downstairs congregate in the Olympic-sized kitchen, to sip juice, coffee, or simply to seek inspiration from the smiles and frowns on each others’ faces.

  They are famous, some of them, near-famous, infamous, proud and driven men. Only men?

  Perhaps the Queen will not tolerate a potential rival.

  She is gone suddenly, returns later, absently feeds herself and one of the lovely cats from the same plate, impulsively begins to sort thru a box of what turns out to be letters, notes, scraps of paper, requests for help, pleas for understanding, attempts to do something for a reason.

  A radar scan pulls her close to the real, keeps her safe for a moment. The moments expand, drift past, tie themselves into knots, unravel, create sections of life that could never be duplicated anywhere else.

  The house is quiet at noon, only the rushing motors of cars and buses passing disturb us.

  On each floor, a silent artist mulls his next painting, his next word, his next attitude, and the energy of a hot evening hasn’t happened yet.

  An African energy, an African-American energy-halo circles the building, grabbing even the most cynical up into the premise of dedication to raising the consciousness of the African people in America, and all others who might be sensitive to the idea of behaving in a civilized way. 3806 S. Michigan Avenue.

  Thunderstorms

  Juicy saliva in the jaws of heaven, warm gobs of raining crackle down, we sit near the windows pretending that we are not afraid.

  One evening, after the drinking had been done, the folktales spooked out again, we sat, mesmerized by the atmospheric changes that smelled like the kind of rain that happens in Chicago.

  The humidity gave way to a kind of pregnant sweat. Conversations melted, none of us felt the urge to lie any more. The truth of how great the forces beyond us were revealed in a distant
flash of zigzagged spear throwing.

  The unwritten fiction, unlike this narrative, is that we would silently pretend not to pray, be bold, keep our hearts from facing as the first clap of thunder ground us to quivering dust.

  It came from four directions …

  Paxton

  It was May 6, 1991; the President had conjured up a unique way to get a little more sympathy from a submissive white nation that had just finished off a Middle Eastern surgery (“Desert Storm”), an operation promoted, paid for and won by the oil interests in the USA.

  The so called “war” had been a piece ’o cake. The United States Marines and their allies (the British, the French, the Egyptians, the Dutch, the Syrians, the Saudis, and whomever else they had been able to round up (the Israelis were asked to stay out of it) had simply bombed the shit out of Baghdad and walked into Kuwait on the heels of the Iraqi retreators and took the oil wells back (burning to be sure).

  No one, evidently, had counted on a Kurdish situation developing. Or that Saddam Hussein would still be the ruler of Iraq after he had gotten his ass kicked by American technology.

  Bush’s heart was discovered to be beating out of tempo. Who knows? It might have been the truth, but to the politically hip it seemed terribly opportune.

  Just as the breath of scandle about a couple of his top guys was (“frivolous plane riding”) beginning to wedge between headlines that no longer battle cried (“free Kuwait”), the President’s ticker began to race itself.

  It clearly gave all of the country’s newspaper readers a change to experience the thrill of knowing that Dan Quayle was, indeed only a heartbeat from the Oval Office.

  May 6, 1991, in Chicago and a late playing baseball had held up the evening news, the last Daley was being inaugurated and no one in the Burroughs Mansion was overjoyed.

  In any event, none of it mattered to Dr. Antonio Davis, the eleven-year-old man who rang Dr. Burroughs’ bell to ask if he could do some yard work, earn a couple ’o bucks for candy and hot dogs, food.