In one fundamental way, Dr. Timuel Black, Jr. was similar to the fictional character of Forrest Gump and that was he seemed to be involved in virtually every major cultural and political event of his time. If someone was famous, Black knew him or her. If there was a movement for justice, Black was front and center. But while Gump accidentally stumbled through the lives of the famous and notably was “slow,” Black consciously strove to work for the betterment of humanity, and in particular the Black community of Chicago. Dr. Black was a bon vivant, a man of taste and character. A lunch with him could last six hours and you would simply want to hear even more stories. His wit, intellect, capacity for wonder, genuine concern for humanity, and infectious personality made him beloved in Chicago.
Like the masses that he later wrote about, Timuel Dixon Black, Jr. was a product of the Great Migration. He was born on December 7, 1918, shortly after the end of World War I in Birmingham, Alabama. Black’s ancestry was that of slavery; both his great-grandparents and grandparents had been slaves. Black’s mother had told him, “You come from people.” This powerful and succinct statement alluded to the fact that his family had suffered and strived; his parents were sharecroppers before they decided to partake in the common patterns of the Migration – first off of the cotton plantation to Birmingham and then to the city of Chicago. Influenced by Robert Abbott’s call in the Chicago Defender to “Come North, young men,” Black’s family did just that. His family settled in the Bronzeville neighborhood. “Settled” might be the incorrect word choice because like many newly transplanted families from the South, the Blacks moved frequently, from the 4900 block of St. Lawrence Avenue to 5012 South Calumet to 49th and Vincennes, 5635 Calumet, 5000 Grand Boulevard, and 6320 Vernon. All of this moving gave Black one of the traits he was known for – the ability to strike up a conversation with anyone and make friends anywhere he went. Black was a product of the segregated educational system in Chicago before World War II, attending Burke Elementary School, Englewood High School, Wendell Phillips Academy High School and what he described as “our school” – DuSable High School in June, 1937.
Black served in the Army during World War II. Landing on Utah Beach, four days after the invasion of Normandy, Black distinguished himself during the war, receiving four Battle Stars, the Croix de Guerre, and the Legion of Honour. Black was profoundly impacted by the inhumanity of the war and the deeply racist system of segregation that existed in the military. He wrote in his autobiography Sacred Ground, “I had come home with the determination to fight on the home front.”And that he did. When Black returned home from the war, he received his college education, training with St. Clair Drake at Roosevelt University and going to graduate school at the University of Chicago. He had to support his family, so he taught at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana and then DuSable High School until 1959. It was during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that Black’s activism really took off. He played a key role in organizing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s visit to Chicago in 1963, which built momentum for the broader civil rights movement within the city. Black had helped arrange a visit for King to come to Chicago as early as 1956 after hearing his “I’m Tired” sermon. He kept a long relationship with him until his death in 1968. Black was also a leader in the Chicago Freedom Movement that addressed employment discrimination, housing, and education in the city. He was active in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, helping to organize Black voters in the segregated South during the Civil Rights era.
In 1975, Black took a position to teach history, sociology and anthropology at Loop College, which is now Harold Washington College. While at the City Colleges he mentored generations of students and activists. He emphasized the importance of preserving and teaching African American history, particularly within the city of Chicago. This would lead to his landmark two-volume set Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s First Wave of Black Migration (2003) and Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s Second Generation of Great Migration (2008). Both books were published prior to Isabel Wilkerson’s landmark The Warmth of Other Suns.Composed of interviews with migrants, historian John Hope Franklin argued in the introduction of the first volume that “they all have their stories, all worth telling because they add mightily to our understanding of the central themes of Chicago’s history.” Studs Terkel wrote that “it is a revelatory work, exploring . . . uncharted territory: an oral history from unexpected sources.” In 2019, towards the end of his life, Black published (along with Susan Klonsky) his autobiography, Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black. One was likely to cry while reading his final book because it is written exactly in the way that Black told a story – meandering, enchanting, warm – and one is dumbstruck when one realizes that this one man knew Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama, Richard Wright, Harold Washington, Duke Ellington, and A. Phillip Randolph, among many others. Dr. Black was also a man of courage – political courage. In 1963, he took on Claude Holman, the 4th Ward alderman of Chicago who was aligned with Mayor Richard J. Daley, and protector of the segregated Chicago Public Schools, Superintendent Benjamin Willis. Holman was a member of the “Silent Six,” – six Black aldermen who would not push Daley on civil rights action. It was a nasty election that Black eventually lost, but the political acumen he had gained in that fight was extremely useful in his organizing the support for Harold Washington, the first Black mayor elected to the city of Chicago in 1983 and his mentorship of future president Barack Obama, among countless other politicians and activists.
To know Dr. Timuel D. Black, Jr. was to know greatness. Not the bombastic, look at me, grandiose masquerade of greatness that we witness too much in our culture today. But the greatness of deep empathy, love for his children, love for the people of Chicago, documenter of the ordinary – the greatness of a man who lived well, challenged the systems of injustice, and chronicled the rich history of Black Chicago.
— Gerald R. Butters, Jr.
