More Top Picks Best Document Scanners
player ready...Chicago history buffs are a class above all others. They know the difference between obscure mayors buried at Graceland Cemetery (Benjamin Raymond, Julian Rumsey) and the ones at Rosehill (Augustus Garrett, John Rice). They know the real story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and the year the Chicago River was made to flow backwards.
Somehow lost, however, from this city’s history books is the chapter on the time Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived and marched in Chicago.
We hope that this week’s cover story, “Northern exposure,” by Don Terry, will enlarge our historical collective memory-and remind us of a time when so much seemed at stake-no matter where one witnessed it.
Don looks back to 1966, when King brought his civil rights crusade north, but also grapples with how the city metabolized that experience and evolved.
In his story, Don draws from his childhood in Hyde Park-Kenwood, recalling with admiration a tall, balding neighbor who had something that was the envy of neighborhood kids-a pool table-and invited Don and his buddies to play nine-ball. Don came to realize that his neighbor was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement-a friend of King, foe of Mayor Richard J. Daley.
Don grew up living, more than learning, tolerance. In his neighborhood, those of different races mixed-in the shared yard, or at the pool table. This little neighborhood at 50th and Dorchester was what King envisioned for Chicago when he moved into an apartment on the West Side.
———-