Devin Cain, Claire Hungerford, and Kelsey Gee

[Show as slideshow]

“Gimme just a minute,” Harold Lucas says. “I’m gonna go inside and get one of those hoity-toity cocktails from the gallery.”

Lucas deserves his drink. For the past half-hour he has been guiding a whirlwind tour of historic Bronzeville. He is 68 years old and a recent survivor of a heart attack and double bypass surgery. For most of the tour, he has had to shout to be heard over the roar of his trolley tour bus and the murmurs of its passengers. The air inside the trolley is thick with the scent of perfume and champagne and most of Lucas’s audience consists of people half his age, elegantly dressed, and eager to amend, reject, and praise his version of their neighborhood’s history.

This is only the first of four tours that Lucas will give tonight, but even the challenge of these two hours pales in comparison to the decades that the lifelong Bronzeville resident has spent dedicated to this 1.7-square-mile section of Chicago. As the head of both the Black Metropolis Convention and Tourism Council and the Bronzeville Online Visitor Information Center, Lucas has worked, he says, to ensure that Bronzeville is recognized as the city’s “premiere destination for African-American tourism and cultural life.”

But his is not the only vision of the neighborhood on display Friday night in Bronzeville. Twenty-four-year-old Columbia College graduate Tempestt Hazel joined with Lucas to present “The Future’s Past”—an art exhibit and community retrospective at the Blanc Gallery, which aims to provide an “introductory glimpse into the histories of Chicago’s Black Metropolis.”

Hazel is not a Bronzeville resident, and did not grow up admiring the neighborhood’s long cultural history. She was pulled, instead, by what she calls serendipity. “I don’t drive,” she says, “so I spend a lot time walking and observing different parts of Chicago and their varying types of architecture.”

It’s obvious why Bronzeville would fascinate someone with an eye for design—stately three-story homes, beautiful churches, pristine glassy office buildings and restaurants, and recently flattened empty lots all line Martin Luther King Drive, a boulevard once known as South Parkway.

The project started off as a way to highlight these historic buildings, but later, Hazel decided to try to bring a new perspective to her depiction of the neighborhood. She enlisted the help of four other artists—Stephen Flemister, Krista Franklin, Emmanuel Pratt, and Amanda Williams—and began to construct silhouettes of historic Bronzeville sites to adorn the wall of the Blanc Gallery.  Along with the silhouettes, the artists have begun to collect and display memorabilia that tie in with the neighborhood’s heritage: old playbills, records, posters and scraps representative of an artistic past.

“These are all works in progress,” Hazel says. “Over the next four weeks you’ll be able to watch these pieces evolve. That’s what makes it interesting—the change.”

The ostensible goal of “Future’s Past” as stated in a gallery news release was to bring “today’s residents into visual contact with yesterday’s heroes.” But yesterday’s heroes look remarkably different from the artists and curators that made this reflection possible. These new champions of Bronzeville represent a shift toward a community that can engage with the city at large in a conversation about what makes a neighborhood—and who should belong.

        *         *        *

The art on the gallery walls is only one portion of the exhibit—Harold Lucas’s interactive tour completes and troubles the subjects behind the frame. Outside the Blanc, Lucas leads his trolley bus tour down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive,  stopping at several historic places, including the Supreme Life Building, the Lutrelle Palmer House, and the former sites of the Regal Theatre and the Savoy Ballroom, which have been demolished.  Each of these buildings also features Hazel’s art, which is displayed in the windows and brought to life by the soft halogen-glow of interior lighting.

One patron on Lucas’s tour calls out, “You missed the Ida B Wells house!” Lucas replies, unfazed, “Hold on just a minute, we’ll get to that.” Occasional shouts from the back of the bus remind the rest of the attendees that Bronzeville’s history does not easily fit one uniform interpretation. As Hazel says, “it changes a lot depending on whose telling the story.”

The Future’s Past exhibit is not just art for art’s sake, but it’s not a passive collection of historically significant facts, either. Bronzeville, the neighborhood which was once known across the country as the “Black Metropolis,” a center of African-American culture and entrepreneurial activity, is now often associated with its problems of economic stagnation and crime. Lucas attributes many of these issues to the Chicago Housing Authority, whose large-scale public housing projects, including the infamous Robert Taylor Homes, which isolated the neighborhood from the greater Chicago community and, he says, contributed to the “breakdown of the black family structure and values.” Today, the Robert Taylor Homes no longer stand—the last building was razed in 2007—but in Lucas’s eyes, the damage they inflicted remains.

On top of that, Bronzeville has struggled with forces outside the realm of the political. Natural disaster wreaked havoc on the neighborhood this past year after a fire at the intersection of 47th and King Drive destroyed several treasured Bronzeville institutions. The Blu 47 bar and restaurant, the Jamaican Consulate, and the Spoken Word Café—one of the original hosts of HBO’s Def Jam Poetry series—were all consumed by the blaze.

But in spite of a number of setbacks, multiple projects are currently in the works for the revitalization of Bronzeville.  Jimalita Tillman and her mother, former Alderman Dorothy Tillman hope to re-open the Spoken Word Café in Ald. Tillman’s former political headquarters.

Meanwhile, Eileen Rhodes, a real estate developer and owner of the Blanc Gallery where the “Future’s Past” exhibit is now displayed, has partnered with the chef of the historic Parkway Ballroom, Cliff Rome, to open up a restaurant with broad appeal. Their vegan-friendly, “gourmet on the go” hot dog restaurant, H-Dogs, is located on the site where the Spoken Word Café once stood, and Rhodes hopes that it will attract more of the students from nearby universities to Bronzeville. She believes that more inclusive, colorblind solutions such as creative local businesses and art attractions will reinvigorate the community.

But for some, Bronzeville needs more than just free enterprise, and some community members want to ensure that the new business growth will not come at the expense of the neighborhood’s cultural and ethnic integrity.

*         *        *

But beginning his second tour, Lucas sets out his vision for the future of Bronzeville. He hopes the neighborhood will resist gentrification and retain a population that is at least “60-percent African-American.”

Lucas sees the success of black businesses in Bronzeville as being key not only for the prosperity of its residents, but also for the advancement of other black Chicagoans. “The rise of the black middle class in Bronzeville,” he insists, “will bring about the emancipation of this city’s African-American community.”

The question of neighborhood gentrification doesn’t come with an easy answer. In fact, the issue of racial change in Bronzeville is so charged that few people other than Lucas are willing to speak out publicly.

“Harold takes a hard line and polemical view of neighborhood development,” Rhodes notes cautiously in an e-mail, preferring to take a more apolitical stance.

But even if the other organizers of the event are unwilling to speak out on the issue of race, all those involved with “Future’s Past” seem united in their view of who their audience should be, and who will inherit this cultural legacy.

The project targets community members and challenges them to consider bygone realities and future possibilities for the neighborhood. Its intended audience isn’t just arbitrary. Because “Future’s Past” is aimed at those who are already somewhat familiar with Bronzeville’s past, the organizers are able to delve more deeply into personal histories.

With touching candor, Lucas discusses the Chicago Military Academy. A large, boxy building, the Academy is remarkable primarily in the role it played in his own life—he protested in front of the building while he was homeless, when the city threatened to tear it down. “I prayed almost everyday for those walls,” he says, his voice quavering.

Lucas’s version of Bronzeville history is more idiosyncratic and intimate than what you’ll find in the pages of a textbook. He avoids trite statements about many of the area’s most famous residents and entertainers like Nat King Cole, Richard Wright, Louis Armstrong. Instead, Lucas chooses to champion the underappreciated leaders and social architects, whose thoughts and achievement have blended with Lucas’s own. Chief among these local heroes are Earl B. Dickerson, a prominent attorney and the first African-American member of the Chicago City Council, and John H. Johnson, founder and editor-in-chief of the Negro Press, Ebony, and Jet Magazine, respectively. “These guys are up there with Malcolm, and Dr. King,” he says, “They’re definitely in my top-ten heroes list.”

Though the show was designed for Bronzeville residents, they are not the only ones coming out to catch a glimpse of this piece of Chicago history. “To be perfectly honest” Hazel says, “this show is for the people of this area, but the really interesting part of the show is that it has attracted a very diverse crowd. I’m not going to say that anyone should or shouldn’t come and take part in the neighborhood’s culture.”

Returning to the Blanc Gallery after Lucas’ tour, it’s hard to reconcile the stories and emotions of the tour bus with the scene inside the exhibition space. The interior of the gallery, like that of the new H-Dogs just down the road, is immaculate, white, spacious and brightly lit. The walls are lined with artist installations of old playbills, records, black silhouetted figures and drawn outlines of the old project houses, but it all feels slightly distanced, and less intense than the raw oral history.

The purpose of the exhibit is not only to retell stories of the way things used to be, but also to look forward to the new. In Hazel’s opening speech, she introduced the project with the oft-repeated phrase: “you have no future if you don’t have a past.” In context, she was able to bring out the power hidden in the truism. New projects and entrepreneurial ventures are helping reestablish the link between the Black Metropolis’s historic greatness and the new and evolving community that is taking root today. These are not big steps, but as Lucas says at the end of his tour, quoting his hero John H. Johnson, one needs always to “dream small dreams.”

Maggie Sivit

At the intersection of King and 26th, a fifteen-foot statue waves commuters through the “Gateway to Bronzeville,” a suitcase dangling in his spare hand. The figure is a monument to the early 20th-century Great Migration, a massive resettling that sparked a black cultural renaissance rivaled only by Harlem. Out of the upswing emerged such luminaries as Ida B. Wells, Bessie Coleman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, and Louis Armstrong. While the cultural and intellectual products of the era spread around the world, segregationist zoning regulations strictly defined the boundaries of African-American settlement, and Bronzeville became the heart of Chicago’s “Black Belt.” In 1962, the Chicago Housing Authority constructed the sprawling Robert Taylor Homes along Bronzeville’s western edge, at the time the nation’s largest public housing complex with a peak population of 27,000. Poor design and services contributed to high unemployment and crime rates, which inevitably spilled into the community as a whole. Since the project was demolished (the last home fell in 2007) and the city implemented its controversial plan for mixed-income redevelopment, residents have stepped in to preserve their heritage. New boutiques, restaurants, and hangouts have gradually begun to emerge out of the buildings that once held the thriving Black Metropolis. While the golden days of poets and jazz are gone, today a bold community is committed to keeping its history, independence, and ingenuity alive. These days, there is a renewed sheen to the streets of Bronzeville.

Best Hidden Nightclub
Meyer’s Ace Hardware
Unless you’re in sore need of a garden hoe, hardware stores don’t usually inspire a lot of excitement. Nevertheless, any jazz aficionado setting foot in this Ace should find their heartbeat quickening in tempo. The building opened as the Sunset Café in 1921, drawing headliners such as Carroll Dickerson and a young Louis Armstrong. As the club grew in popularity, Sarah Vaughan, Nat “King” Cole, and Charlie Parker all took the stage. Dale and David Meyers, current owners, are the second generation to manage the hardware store—their father bought the old club from Louis Armstrong’s manager in the ’70s. The Meyers brothers are always happy to show customers their office, a portion of the stage whose accordion-shaped wall still holds its art deco backdrop. If you’re lucky, they’ll pull out a drawer of yellowed photos, menus, and sheet music before showing you around the second floor, which holds more artifacts from the old venue. Walking back through the store, you can faintly hear the syncopated clops of feet jitterbugging to Cab Calloway or faded echoes of Earl “Fatha” Hines working the ivories. 315 E. 35th St. Monday-Saturday, 9am-6pm; Sunday, 11am-2pm. (312)225-5687 (Bonnie Fan)

Best Biscuits
Ms. Biscuits
Former Chicago Mayor Eugene Sawyer was once a regular at Ms. Biscuits’ small storefront along South Chicago Avenue. But after thirty years in business, those doors shut for good in 2002. Six years later, Ms. Biscuits’ nephew Dylan Reeves reopened the diner across from an early 20th-century baked-goods factory near Washington Park. These days, customers get seated on small round tables in a warm interior decorated by still lifes on exposed brick. The wait can be long, attributed to growing popularity (rumor has it that they’re extending their hours while adding Johnny Cakes and fried green tomatoes to their menu), but the wait staff couldn’t be more hardworking. The menu features classic breakfast food, including steaks, turkey, salmon croquette, and pancakes with a greater circumference than that of a fat baby’s waistline. Of course, the buttered griddle biscuits still follow the original and well-guarded Ms. Biscuits recipe. 5431 S. Wabash Ave. Daily, 5am-2pm. (773)268-8088 (Bonnie Fan)

Best Comedian-In-Chief
Brian Babylon
Brian Babylon knows how to please a crowd. In one set, he’ll get the house laughing at his ability to exploit white guilt in order to secure more paid vacation time. In the next, they’ll be reeling from his impersonation of that Jamaican singer on the Green Line. His “Obama” is so dead-on you may have heard his voice on BBC America talking about the South Side in the President’s characteristically clipped baritone. For Babylon, it all started when comedy club Jokes and Notes opened in 2006 on 47th and King. Since his first sets there as the “Prince of Bronzeville,” he has stood onstage everywhere from the Laugh Factory in LA to London’s Jongleurs. Still active at Jokes and Notes, which he considers the best open mic in Chicago, Babylon helps to bring in comics from all over the city. You can hear him on the air during his Morning AMP show with WEBZ-affiliated Vocalo 89.5 FM or as a guest on NPR’s “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.” Of course, it’s best to catch him off-air at one of his “5th Thursdays” shows at Jokes and Notes. Find the Prince online at vocalo.org/blogs/user/brian (Bonnie Fan)

Best Pre-Game Popcorn
Mother Butter’s Popcorn
Step into Mother Butter’s storefront and your nostrils will fill with the warm scent of Tim and Jennifer Donnelly’s little popcorn kitchen, where a bit of New Orleans punctuates both the décor and the corn. Butter blends such as Louisiana Hot or Jerk Seasoning and gourmet popcorn flavors like Bayou and Cajun are available to sample. The store also offers a few Southern-style sweets like “gophers”—caramel pecans covered in chocolate. Taking an old-school “culinary” approach, Mother Butter’s dashes each batch of popcorn—kept small for taste quality control—with a blend of spices that accentuates the different textures of the various corn varieties. For those unable to choose between the sweet homemade caramel and the salty cheddar, score both with the Chicago mix.” Located a stone’s throw away from U.S. Cellular Field, Mother Butter’s can elevate your Sox game fare from tasty to decadent. Plus, bags of the good stuff start at only one buck. 17 W. 35th St. Monday-Friday, 10:30am-8pm; Saturday, 11am-7pm; only open on Sundays when the White Sox play. (773)548-7677 (Bonnie Fan)

Most Heritage on the Walls
South Side Community Arts Center 
One of the few remaining WPA-commissioned art centers, this brownstone building stands as a testimony to the cultural influence of the Bronzeville community. The late Margaret Burroughs, co-founder and renowned artist, described the “mile of dimes” it took to buy the former manor and open the center in 1941. Both artisans and community members—from churchgoers to bootleggers—walked that mile until the doors opened. The center has both catalyzed and weathered social change throughout the civil rights era, remaining a haven for African American culture. Over the years, the center has hosted important showings of work by Charles White, William Carter, Eldzier Cortor, and George Neal. Inside, the original New Bauhaus-style interior maintains the holes that once held the artwork of these legends, now ready to support the neighborhood’s next generation of artists. 3831 S. Michigan Ave. Wednesday-Friday, 12-5pm; Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, 1pm-5pm. (773)373-1026 (Bonnie Fan)

Courtesy of TL Barrett

The Life Center Church of God in Christ sits on the corner of Garfield and Indiana, just east of the honorary two-and-a-half block Rev. T.L. Barrett, Jr. Blvd. The boulevard’s namesake is sitting in a pew close to the pulpit. On the second Sunday morning of the year, he’s just been introduced by Minister Camara to a standing ovation by over a hundred beaming congregants. It is his birthday—or rather, as the bulletin reads, and as Minister Camara reminds everyone—his “earth day”. And this is Pastor Barrett, after all: the man who organized the Life Center Church just west of Washington Park, who twenty-odd years ago was implicated in a pyramid scheme, and who in 1971 recorded a rare gospel record with South Side youth that was rereleased to great acclaim this past year.

The album “Like A Ship…(Without A Sail)” has been described by just about every music review site as a holy grail of gospel. For the 39 years since its small-scale release, collectors and gospel fans have had to search through milk crates of used vinyl to find the recording, which was originally distributed mostly at church functions and neighborhood events. “I think it took about 45 seconds into track one and we were instantly hooked,” said Matt Sullivan, co-owner and founder of Light in the Attic Records. The album was licensed to Light in the Attic by Numero Group, an archival record label based in Little Village that spent four years trying to obtain the license from Barrett. “Like A Ship” was re-released last July with three bonus tracks on LP, CD, and MP3. Eight tracks of funky gospel-soul goodness, “Like A Ship” sounds as though it’s being streamed right out of the sanctuary. And with the 40-person Youth For Christ Choir backing Barrett, there’s an infectiousness to the sound that transcends any objections about the record being “unprofessional,” which it is—Barrett is a self-trained musician leading Washington Park youth, after all.

Born in New York City in 1944, Barrett spent much of his early life in Chicago where he attended public schools on the South Side until his dismissal from Wendell Phillips High School. The dismissal, coupled with the death of his father that same year, prompted him to return to New York in 1960. Home in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, Barrett earned a G.E.D. and went on to graduate from Bethel Bible Institute, where he honed his piano skills. Returning to Chicago in 1967, he became the pastor of the Mt. Zion Baptist Church the following year. It was here at Mt. Zion that he recorded “Like A Ship” and began to gain recognition throughout the city as a community leader and an activist who used music as a means of enriching the lives of youth. His successful ministry at Mt. Zion led him to organize the Life Center Church in 1976. Barrett would eventually grow close to Jesse Jackson and Eugene Sawyer, the second black mayor of Chicago, before being implicated in a pyramid scheme in 1988 and ordered to either pay restitution or face jail time.

Now, on a Sunday in 2011, Barrett’s congregants sing “Happy Birthday” in celebration of his 67th —this is his 68th year, the preacher clarifies; he’s only just fulfilled his 67th. Barrett, funny and charismatic, notes all this on the pulpit, in semi-conversation with one of the congregants standing next to him. Wearing a suit and a round white hat, Barrett looks much older than his “…Without A Sail” self: he has long white sideburns—neatly trimmed—and moves slowly and deliberately, appearing for the first time fifteen minutes into the two-and-a-half-hour service. He is loved by his congregation and by his choir, and after tithes are collected for the church, everyone moves to the center aisle to wish him well, shake his hand, and wish him a happy birthday. A birthday offering is taken up—envelopes are handed out with the church bulletin—and a gift is collected for the Pastor, for the “spiritual leader [who] has always said ‘my church first’” and has, according to another minister, even taken one-third of his regular salary when times were especially hard upon the church. Following the Benediction, a celebratory meal for Pastor Barrett is held in Barrett Hall. “Joyful Noise”—track number six on “Like A Ship”—would have served as an appropriate soundtrack.

So which story of Barrett’s life deserves the headline: the passionate preacher, the accused schemer, or the gospel musician now clapping at the head of his congregation? The youth choir that backs up Barrett on track five sings it best: “Nobody knows…”

“Like a Ship” is available for purchase at lightintheattic.net

(courtesy of Carrie Splitler)

Meeting every Tuesday evening at the King Public Library in Bronzeville, the group is organized by the Neighborhood Writing Alliance, a nonprofit based in Hyde Park. Since 1996, the NWA has held free writing workshops across Chicago, focusing, according to current Executive Director Carrie Spitler, on “areas where there are few opportunities for adults to engage in hands-on artmaking.” It also publishes writing from these workshops in a quarterly magazine, the Journal of Ordinary Thought, which bears the motto, “Every person is a philosopher.” JOT was founded in 1991 by Hal Adams, then a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It began as an outlet for the writing produced by parents at Chicago public schools, but expanded in 1996 when Adams recruited Deborah Epstein and Sunny Fischer to start the NWA with aid from federal grants. Currently, the organization operates between ten to fourteen regular workshops on the South and North sides of the city, but the exact number often changes due to fluctuations in funding. It is run by two to three full time staff members, with the help of volunteer workshop leaders and proofreaders, and a board of directors who bring diverse expertise to the table.

Though the written word brings NWA’s philosophers to the table, teaching is not the organization’s only goal. The workshop leaders introduce writers to different kinds of verse and provide criticism, but according to Jeanette Jordan, who has frequented sessions at the King Library since 2006, “There’s no attendance taken. You don’t have to do homework. You don’t have to do anything. You come and you enjoy each other. Everybody writes differently, and that’s wonderful.” Says Lindsay, an MFA student at Chicago State University and the author of several books, “I come to pass on what I have and also to get the input and the conversation. So it’s a table of equals. Even though I may be the person who may have the more literary skills in terms of information—and that’s very questionable—there are other things I pick up. It’s opened my mind a lot.”

In addition to providing literary lessons, the NWA aims to open minds and dialogues, to build connections between its writers, as well as between individual lives and larger social questions. JOT serves as evidence, says Spitler, that “people can narrate their own story, can be in control of how their own experience is portrayed, can be involved in civic engagement and push for political change.” The workshops are not only a space to write, but also a space for writers to discuss issues that impact their daily lives. A recent issue of JOT devoted to transportation provoked discussions about the Chicago Transit Authority’s budget cuts. Writers are currently being encouraged to think about environmental issues for a future edition of the journal.

The workshops are also perpetuated by this kind of grassroots communication. Jordan tells the story of her own induction into the King Library writers’ circle: “On my journey to work every morning, I would meet this lady, and we would say, ‘Good morning,’ ‘Good evening,’ ‘Have a good weekend,’ that sort of thing. But we never knew each other’s names or anything.” One day, they struck up a deeper conversation, and Jordan learned that this familiar stranger was a published writer who frequented the King Library workshops. “She said, ‘Why don’t you come?’ I said sure. I loved to write, but I really didn’t have structure until this man came into my writing spirit,” she says, gesturing towards Lindsay. “I have writing friends of all ages, sexes, and everything. We share our words, and our inner spirits, and it’s wonderful.”

Of course, one of JOT’s biggest audiences is the writing family that produces it. “We want them to see their work published,” says Spitler, “and they take a lot of pride in seeing their writing in print.” But through JOT, the NWA also hopes to bring an understanding of its writers’ daily lives to a wider public. “In the same way we want to start conversations in our workshops, we’re hoping something in the journals will strike people and start a conversation.” She adds that the organization hopes that readers will “see the creative capital of neighborhoods that might be outside their experience, or that they only read about in newspapers.” Copies of JOT are sent out to various policymakers, with the hopes of, in Spitler’s words, helping them “find out what’s on the minds of their constituents.” She notes, however, that the NWA has received “very little” response from politicians.

Though many of JOT’s writers have stuck with their workshops for years, the NWA looks forward to bringing in new faces and broadening its mission. The workshops record each writer’s name, address, gender, ethnicity, and other information at the beginning of each meeting, and according to Spitler, “the demographics have changed over the last few years. For a time, we had 75 to 80 percent women, mostly older and African-American.” But the workshops have managed to bring in a greater Latino population, and, with the introduction of the St. Leonard House branch, based at the halfway house for released prisoners, an increase in the male population. The NWA also hopes to expand into the online world in the near future, in order to spread its message further and to encourage tech literacy. And of course, each new issue of the Journal of Ordinary Thought brings new writers to touch on new subject matter.

On Wednesday, the evening after the King branch’s meeting, the latest edition of JOT is unveiled to an audience packed into the Harold Washington Library’s Author’s Room. Based on a classic writing prompt, this issue’s theme, “Where I’m From,” asked writers to explore their cultural, spiritual, and geographic origins. The event brings writers from different branches together, offering them a chance to share words and experiences. Jeanette Jordan moderates the reading, opening with the poem “What Is,” specially written for the event. The release of this issue of JOT has special importance for Jordan. Not only are two of her pieces included in the new issue, but it also takes its title, “Whistle Talk,” from a piece by one of her fellow writers at King Library, Phyllis Roker. At the end of the two-hour marathon session of thirty readings, the room erupts into applause, then cools into a crowd of congratulatory hugs and book-signings. The library closes and everyone is shuffled home, but as the evening’s first poem “What Is” had predicted, “The words bloom like flowers/Each having fragrances for hours.”

Check back in a few days to see a short film of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance reading, produced by the Chicago Weekly.

(Sam Feldman)

Last Sunday afternoon, most of Shimer College crowded into a small room to discuss the future of their school. The Assembly—a democratic body in which all students, faculty, staff, and trustees have equal votes—has traditionally been the moral authority of the college, while legal authority rests with the Board of Trustees. In last Sunday’s special session, those two authorities clashed as the Assembly voted on resolutions condemning the Board’s recent actions and the college’s president.

The current conflict that threatens to rip Shimer apart is only the latest tribulation in the history of the tiny school, which bills itself as “Chicago’s Great Books College” and has an enrollment of a little over 100 students. Founded in 1853 in bucolic Mount Carroll in western Illinois, the college faced mounting debts and declining enrollment in the 1970s. In 1978 the Board of Trustees voted to shut down the school, but the faculty and students wouldn’t give up. They moved into a Victorian mansion in Waukegan at the mayor’s invitation and remained there for almost 30 years with a communal government centered around the Assembly. In 2006, the college moved again to its present location in a few buildings on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus in the hope of attracting more students. Until recently it remained tucked away there, largely unnoticed by the outside world.

But then Thomas Lindsay came along. The school’s new president was inaugurated last year and quickly stirred up opposition. “This thing really got going when President Lindsay fired the director of admissions without any internal consultation whatsoever,” says Professor Albert Fernandez, who also serves as a trustee and the Speaker of the Assembly. Lindsay then chose a replacement whom a search committee had twice rejected. In a meeting on November 15, the Assembly passed several resolutions calling on Lindsay and the Board to respect Shimer’s tradition of shared governance. In response, trustee Patrick Parker ’54 wrote a letter to the Assembly informing them that financial donors like himself “expect, in return for our support, that the rest of the community will do its job, i.e. for the teachers to teach, the students to learn, and the managers to manage.”

Parker’s letter was accompanied by very similar ones from five other trustees, all of whom had several things in common. All had been appointed to the Board very recently. All had no previous ties to Shimer. All attacked the school’s history of communal democracy. And almost all were prominent political conservatives, a point that articles in the Tribune and Chicago Reader have fixed on.

The letters caused an uproar among Assembly members, and tensions only rose over the following months. The next battle would be joined over the school’s mission statement, which needed to be reviewed as part of the reaccreditation process. An online petition in support of the current mission statement, posted in December, received 144 signatures—almost one and a half times the size of the student body—but Lindsay made it clear that he wanted a new statement. On February 7, the Assembly voted to retain the current statement. Two days later, the faculty sat down for a meeting with Lindsay in which he informed them that he would be meeting with faculty members individually “to ascertain their commitment to the new mission statement,” according to Professor and Dean of Students Stuart Patterson in an email interview. “To a person, the Faculty felt strongly that President Lindsay was indicating a linkage between commitment to his mission statement and employment at Shimer.”

The faculty’s response was a unanimous letter in support of the current mission statement that was read at the Board meeting on February 19 and 20, but to no effect. The vote, which was conducted by secret ballot for the first time Fernandez can remember, was 18 to 16 in favor of the new mission statement.

The resolution passed by the Assembly last Sunday took issue with the questionable process by which the Board had approved Lindsay’s mission statement. The day before the Board vote, Parker had informed the trustees of an agreement signed three years before with a charitable foundation that he claimed required the school to adopt a new mission statement before the next Board meeting. When the Board’s Executive Committee indicated its unanimous disapproval of the new statement, Lindsay had urged them to resign. In light of all this, the Assembly declared by an almost unanimous vote that it didn’t recognize the “legitimacy or authority” of the new mission statement.

The other scheduled resolution, that the Assembly “has no confidence in the ability of President Thomas Lindsay to lead Shimer College,” was tabled indefinitely after long and heated debate. “This is a very serious vote. It could well spell the death of the school,” said Patterson. “If that’s the will of the Assembly, then it’s the will of the Assembly to strike out on their own as a new college.” Owen Brugh ‘06, who attended the meeting, said that even considering the resolution sent a message to “the hardline Board members.” “I don’t think that they believe that this community is capable of this type of action,” he says. “Are you really sure we’re not capable of that?”

Abundance Bakery spread (Helenmary Sheridan)

Depending on your sugar tolerance, the cupcakes tread the line between sweet perfection and just too much. The thick corn-syrup-based caramel is thick and viscous, poured onto the cake rather than frosted. The soft, fine-crumbed yellow cake is nearly lost under the caramel, which drowns out the cake’s own subtle brown sugar flavor. Though the frosted cakes are perhaps too heavy for some, Abundance redeems itself with its surprisingly light and tasty pineapple upside-down cake. The same soft yellow cake finds its perfect complement in a crunchy brown sugar coating and brushed-on simple syrup, with a caramelized pineapple slice and dot of Maraschino as the literal cherry on top.

Perhaps it’s just as well that Abundance doesn’t specialize in cakes, since in a head-to-head competition, other South Side bakeries like Brown Sugar Bakery in Grand Crossing would come out on top with their more balanced approach to the cake-vs-frosting dynamic. Instead, Abundance prides itself in the oft-neglected but no less delicious world of deep-fried sweets, including handmade donuts and a foot-long apple fritter.

The apple fritter is the bakery’s pride. According to the woman behind the counter, customers from the suburbs make morning pilgrimages to buy fresh fritters still hot from the kitchen. Debates rage in Chicago foodie circles like that on LTHForum.com about whether the best apple fritter belongs to Abundance or Old Fashioned Donuts on 112th Street, but it’s hard to argue that Abundance’s version isn’t impressive. An oblong disk bigger than this author’s head and at least an inch thick, the deep-fried dough is golden brown and glazed with opaque white sugar. It tastes like sugar and fat, and the thumbnail-sized chunks of apple seem small, few, and far between. But they’re tender and sweet without being mushy, and their naturally fruity flavor perks up a dessert that otherwise quickly becomes monotonous and overwhelming. It’s delicious, no doubt, but best shared among friends.

Abundance Bakery does have its weaknesses. The general formula is sugar and lots of it, which is a good place to start. But it’s taken to extremes in the chocolate brownie, a brick of sugar cemented by fat in which chocolate seems like an afterthought. The texture is firmly on the cakey side, not fudgy, and the dry chocolate frosting doesn’t add any moisture to a cake that cries out for coffee.

Luckily, Abundance provides. Along with baked goods and birthday cakes, the bakery sells coffee and a limited selection of food. As advertised in the window, a $3 purchase earns a free hot dog. To be honest, our dog tasted free—but it was free! As a dog with everything, it included the standard onions, mustard, relish, peppers, tomato, and even the rarely-seen cucumber slices. But oddly, the celery salt was replaced by actual chopped celery. The free bean soup, on the other hand, was something worth paying for: pieces of tomato and onion floated with soft beans in a surprisingly rich and spicy broth. Since the small space doesn’t offer seating, we carried our paper bags full of pastries out into the snow. My soup was warming on a winter day, and I appreciated anew Abundance’s generosity.

Abundance Bakery, 105 E. 47th St. Monday-Friday, 6am-6pm; Saturday, 7am-6pm. (773)373-1971.

The art center’s gallery, with works by local artists available for purchase, remained open during the event. Snacks were available amid the pieces, and departing visitors were invited to take stacks of AREA Chicago (bundled at the back of the main room) with them for distribution as they left. Beginning at 2pm, magazine contributors offered their opinions on the subject of “Peripheral Feminism,” leading up to a presentation by performance artist Sebastian Alvarez.

The latter commenced with the appearance of a large gong at the back of the main room. As the audience continued to mingle about, an assistant began to slowly vibrate the gong with a series of large, small, and prong-shaped sticks, creating a low-level hum that grew in intensity throughout the performance. Alvarez selected an AREA Chicago staffer and had him lay down atop a red plastic sheet, then oriented a camera until it was directly aimed at his face. A machine was turned on that projected the man’s face, cast into sharp relief by the red, onto the still-steadily oscillating gong. Next, while the man lay still, Alvarez placed a box over his head, with an opening to allow his face through, and covered it in dirt, leaves, and bits of wood, so that the man’s face seemed to emerge from the ground of a forest. During this, the clamor of the gong increased until it resembled nothing so much as the screaming of a horde of bees, and many audience members—myself included—were forced to cover their ears. For what seemed like a long while, Alvarez stood still next to the gong while his audience writhed. Then, the gong died out, the camera slowly dimmed, and the artists left the room to a group as perplexed as it was enthralled.

best comedy venue
Jokes and Notes
Since opening her comedy destination in January 2006, owner Mary Lindsey has brought both nationally and locally-known performers to her hip venue just blocks away from the Harold Washington Cultural Center. Mo’Nique, Adele Givens, and Michael Colyar have visited the stage. Local comedian Lil’ Rel hosts a weekly open mic, “Wild Card Night,” on Wednesdays, and local radio host Tony Sculfield of WGCI hosts a variety show on Thursday nights. 4641 S. King Dr. (777)373-3390. jokesandnotes.com (Yennie Lee)

best louisiana bistro
Blu 47
Blu 47’s bistro menu brings new flavors to the South Side, integrating Cajun and Creole flavors to French and American cuisine. The dinner menu boasts a fancy offering of steak roulade au poivre, grilled lobster tail, and tiger prawns, with Southern influences in their side dishes of rice and beans and “BLU” coleslaw. Other dinner items include the familiar choices of stuffed chicken, fish, and pasta. Blu 47’s décor and dinnertime entertainment add a nice element to the restaurant, providing a hip atmosphere for Thursday night jazz performances. 4655 S. King Dr. Tuesday, 5pm-10:30pm; Wednesday-Saturday, 3pm-10pm; Sunday, 10am-3pm. (773)536-6000 (Yennie Lee)

best art gallery with a mission
Gallery Guichard
Housed in the Supreme Life Insurance building, founded in 1919 as the first black insurance company in the northern United States, Gallery Guichard brings together a collection of visual art featuring representations and experiences of the African diaspora. Andre Guichard, the gallery’s owner, puts a keen emphasis on promoting the art of the African diaspora as a general theme and genre, and moreover as a message to its surrounding neighborhood. As another effort to revitalize the former proud community, Gallery Guichard provides a venue for art collecting, community building, and perhaps some historical firsts, just as Supreme Life Insurance did in the early 20th century. 3521 S. King Dr. By appointment only. (773)373-8000 (Yennie Lee)

best breakfast-dinner alliance
Chicago’s Home of Chicken and Waffles
Originally a knockoff of Los Angeles-based Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, Chicago’s Home of Chicken and Waffles keeps the fried and syrup-ed in the neighborhood. Originally a popular meal found in New York’s Harlem neighborhood, chicken and waffles first made its debut out west in the 1970s, when enterprising business Herb Hudson sought the opportunity to become a restaurateur. Chicago’s Home of Chicken and Waffles, inspired by Hudson’s original attempt to bring a location to Chicago, remains in the area with its famous menu, including half-fried chicken, chicken livers, giblets, and wings, biscuits and gravy, and fried catfish. Dinner at the restaurants offers a different mood and atmosphere with little change in menu, but proves that breakfast is really meant to be enjoyed at any time of the day. 3947 S. King Dr. Sunday-Thursday, 9am-9pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-11pm. (773)536-3300 (Yennie Lee)

best events calendar
Harold Washington Cultural Center
Located in the heart of Bronzeville, the Harold Washington Cultural Center boasts an impressive calendar of events year-round, contributing to the recent efforts to reenergize the area with new cultural and economic developments. Established with the purpose of providing the South Side with a large venue for both entertainment and education, the HWCC includes a range of concerts, educational workshops, professional seminars, and regular programming such as movie screenings of black independent films. The HWCC also hosts events with notable celebrities, bringing actors, singers, and writers to share their experiences and successes with residents of the South Side. Talib Kweli’s “Edutainment” and Tavis Smiley’s “Building Capacity in the Community” workshops are just a couple examples of what the HWCC has to offer. 4710 S. King Dr. (773)373-1900. hwccchicago.org (Yennie Lee)

Ellis Calvin

As Horberg writes it, her resume reads like an invitation for a challenge: “Catalyst, Artist, Unrepetent [sic] Socialist and Innovator.” Go ahead, try me, I dare you, she seems to say. Since her start as a Chicago-based entrepreneur in the late ‘70s, Horberg has been responsible for the creation of two now-defunct artisan clothing boutiques, Studio V and the Salon of Modalisque, as well as HotHouse, an internationally recognized nightclub and cultural center. After nearly 20 years at HotHouse, Horberg departed from the venue in 2006, a move that fueled her fire to found Porto Luz. With this, her latest enterprise, she pushes forward by laying down a serious plan ahead of time, hoping to disprove previous notions that her talents with HotHouse lay only as proprietor of artistic vision and mission.

In early July of 2006, Horberg was forced to discontinue her work at HotHouse after she and its board of directors had a falling out over a restructuring of executive leadership that took a significant amount of power away from Horberg. Her suspension, the following media coverage and web-board arguments, and the subsequent closing of HotHouse a year afterwards are all behind Horberg now. HotHouse was a revolutionary model for an artistic community space and venue, presenting many emerging artists to the community and its South Loop location from 1998 to 2006. In Horberg’s time with HotHouse, the venue showcased a wide variety of music, but it was known especially for promoting jazz and world music including fado from Portugal, cumbia from Colombia, and Afro-Cuban music. Horberg, then, has much experience in drawing together international dance/pop artists, members of the world music community, and proponents of jazz and creative improvised music, having worked with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Charles Sanders, Hugh Masekala, the Women’s Jazz Festival, the Latin Jazz Festival, the Improv Music Festival and the South African Jazz Festival.

Marguerite Horberg with Studs Terkel; courtesy of Marguerite Horberg

This project has been in the works for years now. Although Horberg explains that it was difficult not to immediately jump back into the scene and fill the void left by HotHouse, she wanted to prepare for this new venture better than she did for HotHouse, as her first time around she was more focused on getting a location and taking it from there. But experience has taught Horberg that much strategic planning and organizational development is required to build a strong foundational business plan. This time around, all the groundwork will be laid down before the group sets foot on location.

However, the location is key. Again, as the goal is to stimulate the economic development of an underserved community, Partisan Arts has a committee devoted to securing the ideal location. Current hopes place Porto Luz within Bronzeville, with plans in motion to secure a location within the year, understanding that the following six months would be required to renovate the site.

And yet, those familiar with Horberg’s work and restless for the old HotHouse life won’t have to wait that long. Even before ground is broken for the renovation of the site in Bronzeville, programming will be available to start building back the old HotHouse base. Porto Luz will be rolling out itinerant events as early as September. Horberg asserts that the public can expect a stronger Porto Luz presence in terms of visibility on the Chicago scene within a month or two. The first project is a big program launch with the 2009 World Music Festival. On October 31, the team will celebrate Day of the Dead with groups flying in from Mexico. Within this production, all elements will have a multi-disciplinary piece—for example, a visual component that will be set up in the memory of those who have passed within the community. This fall, the team also intends to put on a commemorative event for the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. Horberg assures that all events are designed to get the community learning, dancing, and excited for the new space.

New Bronzeville offices of the Chicago Defender; Ellis Calvin

This Second Migration, as Ransom describes it, follows the Chicago Defender’s historical interest in black settlement in the North. This interest began in 1916, when the newspaper’s founder, Robert Sengstacke Abbott, catalyzed the Great Northern Drive, relocating 110,000 black Southerners to Chicago by 1918 and tripling the city’s black population. According to the newspaper, Abbott set the Great Northern Drive into motion by capitalizing on the Chicago Defender’s two-thirds black readership outside of the city, “publish[ing] blazing editorials, articles, and cartoons lauding the benefits of the North, post[ing] job listings and train schedules to facilitate relocation.” Abbott’s investment in promoting the Great Northern Drive was virtuous, liberating people from “the sweat and toil of the boll weevil-stricken South and the paternalistic white overlords to the ‘freer air’ of the North,” as Dr. Metz T. P. Lochard, former Chief Editorial Writer for the Chicago Defender, wrote in “From Robert S. Abbott to John H. Sengstacke” on May 7, 1960, the 44th anniversary of Abbott’s first declaration of the Great Northern Drive. Lochard, in his commemorative article, illustrated the Chicago Defender’s particular “protest action” as “the Negro’s push for self-realization,” setting a political precedent followed by the newspaper’s efforts even today.

The Defender Platform included in every issue of the paper outlines a partisan agenda that calls for securing reparations, inclusion in unions, affordable housing, fair wages, and eliminating racism and police brutality. This platform—introduced in 1905, revised in 1966, and further approved in 2001—shows the continued relevance of Abbott’s original mission for the newspaper.

Today, in fact, the Chicago Defender is renewing its political conviction by relocating its offices back to Bronzeville at 44th Street and King Drive—away from its present location in the Loop, and closer to its readers on the South Side. Ransom, who describes the recent decision to move back to the newspaper’s historic community as an announcement that “we’re back in the community,” claims the move was necessary and apparent to both him and Michael House, president of the Chicago Defender, when they arrived at the publication just two years and one year ago, respectively. Ransom views the process of relocation as almost serendipitous, citing a lucky offer to break the newspaper’s office lease two years before it was up for renegotiation; the opportunity, he says, “aligned like the stars.” House expressed his enthusiasm for the move, saying, “I’m ecstatic that we’re moving. We as a company are very happy. And the people are very happy, as well. It’s a win-win all around.”

The Chicago Defender’s new location is as symbolic as the move itself. Housed in the remodeled 8,500-square-foot Metropolitan Funeral Home, the newspaper will inherit and, in some respects, resurrect a proud South Side ethos the Chicago Defender once had, even at the inception of the publication when Abbott cooked up its first issue in his landlord’s kitchen. Ransom joked, “As long as they take those bodies with them from the basement, we can go on with our business.” But the Bronzeville location does more than present a tangible reality to its readers; it also breaks down the institutionalized casualty of historic prominence. The Chicago Defender’s new offices promise a restoration of accessibility and accountability, Ransom notes, “from the standpoint of news coverage and credibility.” He hopes the newspaper will encourage readers to “walk off the street and tell us a story.” And as House reiterated in an article written by a Defender staff writer announcing the move last month, “They can just come on in and continue building a relationship with us.”

Chicago Defender Executive Editor Lou Ransom

Considered a black Chicago institution, the Chicago Defender seems to have become detached from its original audience, causing its readers to forget that the newspaper is still publishing at all. In fact, Ransom shared that recently a prominent political figure (whose name he declined to share) could not reach the Chicago Defender’s offices directly by phone, and instead needed the assistance of 411 to call. But the hope of the newspaper is that these institutional holes will be repaired: “We are going back to where we belong. It’s the beginning of a new era of the Chicago Defender that reinforces our strong commitment to the African-American community and the communities of greater Chicago,” assures House in an article written April 29.

While the institutional value of moving back to Bronzeville is widely understood and supported, some express the inconvenience of packing up and starting again. Earl Calloway, a writer for the Chicago Defender since 1960, explained that, practically speaking, he was not too excited to move at all. “But it’s alright,” he continued. “It’s gonna be a wonderful move because people are very disgruntled about coming up here. Do what needs to be done.” And as Theresa “Teesee” Fambro-Hooks, another writer for the Chicago Defender since 1961, added, “It’s good for the paper. We’re moving back to the ‘hood.”

In an article from 1915 proclaiming the beginning of Abbott’s Great Northern Drive, the Chicago Defender wrote, “It is the general belief here that it’s God’s plan and hand that through His Providence the Race will be helped,” vindicating the black relocation as a righteous decision. Ransom, discussing his own observations about how news publication is changing, acknowledges the provident measures the Chicago Defender hopes to implement soon. He shares thoughts of expansion in the new Bronzeville location, investment in the newspaper’s website, and involvement with reporting news from adjoining black suburbs outside of the city. Ransom continues, “The Defender hasn’t reached its full potential. It needs to be that much more involved in the lives of the people we write for.” And in many ways, the ethos illustrated nearly a century ago remains in the Chicago Defender’s pursuit of ensuring a “divine” directive. After all, as Ransom shuffles around his desk, motioning to pack some things for the move, he pauses briefly to mention, “It’s not news until it’s in the Defender.”