HR0522LRB102 20936 LAW 29827 r

1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of
3Representatives are saddened to learn of the death of Timuel
4Dixon Black Jr. of Chicago, who passed away on October 13,
52021; and
 
6    WHEREAS, Timuel Black was born to Mattie and Timuel Black
7in Birmingham, Alabama on December 7, 1918; his family moved
8to Chicago in August 1919; he grew up in Bronzeville during the
9first wave of the Great Migration; he attended Burke
10Elementary School; he graduated from DuSable High School in
111935; he served in the 308th Quartermaster Railhead Company of
12the U.S. Army during World War II, and he earned four Battle
13Stars and the French Croix de Guerre for his service; he
14married Norisea Cummings in 1946, and they had two children,
15Ermetra Black-Thomas and Timuel Kerrigan Black, before
16divorcing; he obtained his bachelor's degree in Sociology from
17Roosevelt University in 1952; he earned his master's degree in
18Sociology and History from the University of Chicago in 1954;
19he married his third wife Zenobia Johnson-Black in 1981; and
 
20    WHEREAS, Timuel Black was a revered activist, educator,
21and historian; his first experience with labor organizing
22occurred when he and his coworkers sought better wages by
23forming a chapter of the Retail Clerks Union; he walked his

 

 

HR0522- 2 -LRB102 20936 LAW 29827 r

1first picket line in 1931; he helped establish the Congress of
2Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942 and the United Packinghouse
3Workers of America (UPWA) in 1943; he was among a group from
4Hyde Park's First Unitarian Church to invite Dr. Martin Luther
5King Jr. to his first major Chicago speech at the Rockefeller
6Memorial Chapel of the University of Chicago in 1956, where he
7worked closely with Dr. King and became a trusted adviser
8during the Civil Rights Movement; he helped organize the
9Rainbow Beach "wade-ins" in 1960 that succeeded in integrating
10that public beach a year later; he served as president of the
11Chicago chapter of the Negro American Labor Council and
12spearheaded Chicagoans' participation in the Southern
13Christian Leadership Council's '63 March on Washington for
14Jobs and Freedom, leading two "Freedom Trains" of 3,000
15Chicagoans to D.C.; he was heavily involved in the Chicago
16Freedom Movement; he was influential in the historic one-day
17Chicago Public Schools boycott by approximately 250,000
18students to call attention to segregation in Chicago schools
19on October 22, 1963; and
 
20    WHEREAS, Timuel Black gained national attention for
21coining the phrase "plantation politics" while confronting
22Mayor Richard J. Daley's political machine when he
23unsuccessfully ran for Fourth Ward alderman in 1963; he
24co-chaired the People's Movement for Voter Registration and
25Education in 1982, resulting in the registration of more than

 

 

HR0522- 3 -LRB102 20936 LAW 29827 r

1250,000 voters to get Harold Washington to run against Jane
2Byrne for Chicago mayor; he served as an adviser in the
3campaigns of many of Chicago's Black elected officials,
4including Carol Moseley Braun, who was elected as the first
5African American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate in 1992; he
6later served as counsel to then-Senator Barack Obama when he
7ran for president in 2008, having become friends when Obama
8was a young community organizer in the early 1980s; and
 
9    WHEREAS, Timuel Black worked as a social worker and a
10history teacher at several high schools in Gary, Indiana and
11Chicago, including DuSable, Farragut, and Hyde Park, where he
12fought segregation and discrimination within the school
13system; he helped establish the Teachers Committee for Quality
14Education; he served as a professor of Sociology and
15Anthropology at the City Colleges of Chicago, becoming dean of
16Wright College in 1969; he was promoted to vice president of
17Academic Affairs at Olive Harvey College in 1972; he served as
18head of Communications system wide from 1973 to 1979; he then
19taught Cultural Anthropology at Loop College until his
20retirement in 1989; and
 
21    WHEREAS, Timuel Black became lead plaintiff in the ACLU's
22Black vs. McGuffage lawsuit, which accused Illinois' voting
23system of discriminating against minorities, in the wake of
24the 2000 presidential election; his lawsuit led to the ban of

 

 

HR0522- 4 -LRB102 20936 LAW 29827 r

1punch card ballots and a uniform voting system in Illinois;
2and
 
3    WHEREAS, Timuel Black donated a collection of more than
4250 boxes of personal photographs, correspondence,
5manuscripts, speeches, audiovisuals, clippings, programs, and
6other memorabilia to the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection
7of Afro-American History and Literature at the Carter G.
8Woodson Regional Library in Chicago; his collection was
9unveiled as the Timuel D. Black Jr. Archive in 2012; and
 
10    WHEREAS, Timuel Black was a prolific author; he wrote two
11seminal volumes of oral histories on the subject, which were
12Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Great Migration,
13published in 2003, and Bridges of Memory: Chicago's Second
14Generation of Black Migration, published in 2007; his memoir
15Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black was
16released on January 15, 2019; and
 
17    WHEREAS, Timuel Black remained active in progressive
18politics and also conducted tours of Bronzeville for the
19University of Chicago well into his late 90s; he joined the
20Community Advisory Board led by the University, working to
21bring the Barack Obama Presidential Library to Jackson Park;
22he made the Chicago Sun-Times' list of the 200 most prominent
23Illinoisans in the State's 200-year history in 2018; and
 

 

 

HR0522- 5 -LRB102 20936 LAW 29827 r

1    WHEREAS, Timuel Black left his mark on the City of
2Chicago, on his friends who knew him, and on those who knew of
3him; his legacy will inspire others to make this world a better
4place just as he strove to do; therefore, be it
 
5    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE
6HUNDRED SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
7we mourn the passing of Timuel Dixon Black Jr. and extend our
8sincere condolences to his family, friends, and all who knew
9and loved him; and be it further
 
10    RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
11presented to the family of Timuel Black as an expression of our
12deepest sympathy.