February is Tyrone Haymore’s month. For 29 days, he can almost forget the crumbling buildings, maybe even the more than a third of Robbins’ 6,600 residents who live in poverty and the unemployment rate that is nearly double the national average.
But the community is rich in African-American history. Robbins was home to the country’s first African-American airport and boasts former residents such as cosmetics millionaire S.B. Fuller and Nichelle Nichols, who shot to fame as Lt. Uhura in the “Star Trek” TV series.
So Haymore, Robbins’ historian, is busy in February, Black History Month. He shuttles between libraries, nursing homes and rec centers, proudly giving 50-minute presentations on all that is remarkable about Robbins–once advertised as “the first community in the North to be governed by people of color.”
Haymore, 57, has another reason to get Robbins’ word out: He’s trying to raise money to erect a Robbins Historical Museum and Cultural Center. It’s been slow going. He is negotiating with the village for a land donation, but early estimates for the building came in at $3 million. So far, his funds total $700. But that economic gulf hasn’t slowed him.
“We’re left with nothing but our history,” Haymore said. “If we don’t do anything with that, they may take that away, too.”
Haymore, a retired CTA worker and former village clerk, offers his free historical spiel year-round, but is giving it 14 times this month, nearly half his yearly total. At a Park Forest nursing home recently, he showed photos to 16 elderly residents. He talked about Thomas J. Kellar, the town’s founder and first mayor, as well as Col. John Robinson Jr., who helped start the all-black airport in 1931 before becoming the personal pilot for the emperor of Ethiopia.
After the lecture, Haymore thanked his audience and set up a donations jar. A few residents pulled dollars from pockets and purses. Total raised: $3.50.
“Every drop counts,” Haymore said. “This is what I chose to do with my retirement. I’m going to save Robbins’ history.”
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It’s a history that began in 1892 when the first African-American settlers, many of whom were freed slaves migrating north from southern plantations, began trickling into the area. In 1910, developer Henry Robbins, the village’s namesake, bought and sold subdivisions to more blacks.
By 1917, the village was incorporated and led by Kellar, first in a string of African-American mayors. Today, much as when it was founded, Robbins is 95 percent black.
Haymore grew up during the 1940s and ’50s in a Robbins still lined with apple orchards and fields, he said. His father, T.H. Haymore, a former sharecropper from Lexington, Miss., moved the family from Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood to Robbins, where word was “you could live real nice and eat beans and greens,” Haymore said.
Their apartment had no running water or bathroom, and the family huddled around a potbelly stove in winter. His father worked seasonal odd jobs while his mother cleaned septic tanks for the village Sanitation Department. Life was poor but good.
“I don’t ever remember being hungry or not having clothes,” he said.
Haymore’s interest in history was piqued in high school. His history teacher, Charles Evers, brother of civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, padded lessons with personal stories of Ku Klux Klan rallies and public lynchings in his home state of Mississippi. During class one day in 1963, Evers learned his brother had been gunned down in Mississippi. The teacher quietly closed his briefcase, left and never returned, Haymore said.
After graduating from Thornton Junior College (now South Suburban College), Haymore met Eddie Lou Allen, a school cafeteria cook and daughter of one of Robbins’ founders. Allen told Haymore about Robbins’ airport, which opened in 1931 and was knocked out two years later by a violent windstorm.
“I couldn’t believe my ears,” Haymore said. “I had never heard of it. I thought, `Why aren’t they teaching us this in school?'”
In 1980, Haymore and Allen, along with six other volunteers, started the Robbins Historical Society in Allen’s living room. Eight years later, Haymore was elected village clerk and found a dusty treasure trove in the town’s vaults: boxes of old documents, deeds and newspaper clippings. He started gathering history.
Today, his living room and much of the rest of his home is stacked with boxes of photocopied documents and artifacts. He’s also gathered donated items. Universal Pictures gave two original Lt. Uhura uniforms. Haymore said he desperately needs a place to store everything.
“We are boosting him along much as we can,” Mayor Irene Brodie said. “It’s a project he really longs to see happen. But you have to crawl before you walk. We don’t want to dampen his dreams, but I don’t know if he’ll get all that money. He may need something more realistic.”
Haymore said he may need to consider starting smaller than the museum/cultural meeting hall he envisions. He’s also studying fundraising and grant writing on the Internet. He’s hoping the Illinois Association of Museums and the American Association of Museums can help land him grants.
Meanwhile, he pounds the pavement. After a recent presentation for a crowd of 30 at First Reformed Church in South Holland, Haymore received an above-average donation. Church officials gave him $100.
“I’m the last one left alive from the original historical society,” Haymore said. “And it scares me to death. It scares me that Robbins’ history will be buried with me.”