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1
SENATE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened
3to learn of the death of Timuel Dixon Black Jr. of Chicago, who
4passed away on October 13, 2021; and
 
5    WHEREAS, Timuel Black was born to Mattie and Timuel Black
6in Birmingham, Alabama on December 7, 1918; his family moved
7to Chicago in August 1919; he grew up in Bronzeville during the
8first wave of the Great Migration; he attended Burke
9Elementary School; he graduated from DuSable High School in
101935; he served in the 308th Quartermaster Railhead Company of
11the U.S. Army during World War II, and he earned four Battle
12Stars and the French Croix de Guerre for his service; he
13married Norisea Cummings in 1946, and they had two children,
14Ermetra Black-Thomas and Timuel Kerrigan Black, before
15divorcing; he obtained his bachelor's degree in Sociology from
16Roosevelt University in 1952; he earned his master's degree in
17Sociology and History from the University of Chicago in 1954;
18he married his third wife Zenobia Johnson-Black in 1981; and
 
19    WHEREAS, Timuel Black was a revered activist, educator,
20and historian; his first experience with labor organizing
21occurred when he and his coworkers sought better wages by
22forming a chapter of the Retail Clerks Union; he walked his
23first picket line in 1931; he helped establish the Congress of

 

 

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1Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942 and the United Packinghouse
2Workers of America (UPWA) in 1943; he was among a group from
3Hyde Park's First Unitarian Church to invite Dr. Martin Luther
4King Jr. to his first major Chicago speech at the Rockefeller
5Memorial Chapel of the University of Chicago in 1956, where he
6worked closely with Dr. King and became a trusted adviser
7during the Civil Rights Movement; he helped organize the
8Rainbow Beach "wade-ins" in 1960 that succeeded in integrating
9that public beach a year later; he served as president of the
10Chicago chapter of the Negro American Labor Council and
11spearheaded Chicagoans' participation in the Southern
12Christian Leadership Council's '63 March on Washington for
13Jobs and Freedom, leading two "Freedom Trains" of 3,000
14Chicagoans to D.C.; he was heavily involved in the Chicago
15Freedom Movement; he was influential in the historic one-day
16Chicago Public Schools boycott by approximately 250,000
17students to call attention to segregation in Chicago schools
18on October 22, 1963; and
 
19    WHEREAS, Timuel Black gained national attention for
20coining the phrase "plantation politics" while confronting
21Mayor Richard J. Daley's political machine when he
22unsuccessfully ran for Fourth Ward alderman in 1963; he
23co-chaired the People's Movement for Voter Registration and
24Education in 1982, resulting in the registration of more than
25250,000 voters to get Harold Washington to run against Jane

 

 

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1Byrne for Chicago mayor; he served as an adviser in the
2campaigns of many of Chicago's Black elected officials,
3including Carol Moseley Braun, who was elected as the first
4African American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate in 1992; he
5later served as counsel to then-Senator Barack Obama when he
6ran for president in 2008, having become friends when Obama
7was a young community organizer in the early 1980s; and
 
8    WHEREAS, Timuel Black worked as a social worker and a
9history teacher at several high schools in Gary, Indiana and
10Chicago, including DuSable, Farragut, and Hyde Park, where he
11fought segregation and discrimination within the school
12system; he helped establish the Teachers Committee for Quality
13Education; he served as a professor of Sociology and
14Anthropology at the City Colleges of Chicago, becoming dean of
15Wright College in 1969; he was promoted to vice president of
16Academic Affairs at Olive Harvey College in 1972; he served as
17head of Communications system wide from 1973 to 1979; he then
18taught Cultural Anthropology at Loop College until his
19retirement in 1989; and
 
20    WHEREAS, Timuel Black became lead plaintiff in the ACLU's
21Black vs. McGuffage lawsuit, which accused Illinois' voting
22system of discriminating against minorities, in the wake of
23the 2000 presidential election; his lawsuit led to the ban of
24punch card ballots and a uniform voting system in Illinois;

 

 

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1and
 
2    WHEREAS, Timuel Black donated a collection of more than
3250 boxes of personal photographs, correspondence,
4manuscripts, speeches, audiovisuals, clippings, programs, and
5other memorabilia to the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection
6of Afro-American History and Literature at the Carter G.
7Woodson Regional Library in Chicago; his collection was
8unveiled as the Timuel D. Black Jr. Archive in 2012; and
 
9    WHEREAS, Timuel Black was a prolific author; he wrote two
10seminal volumes of oral histories on the subject, which were
11Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Great Migration,
12published in 2003, and Bridges of Memory: Chicago's Second
13Generation of Black Migration, published in 2007; his memoir
14Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black was
15released on January 15, 2019; and
 
16    WHEREAS, Timuel Black remained active in progressive
17politics and also conducted tours of Bronzeville for the
18University of Chicago well into his late 90s; he joined the
19Community Advisory Board led by the University, working to
20bring the Barack Obama Presidential Library to Jackson Park;
21he made the Chicago Sun-Times' list of the 200 most prominent
22Illinoisans in the State's 200-year history in 2018; and
 

 

 

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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 SENATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED SECOND GENERAL
6ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn the passing of
7Timuel Dixon Black Jr. and extend our sincere condolences to
8his family, friends, and all who knew and loved him; and be it
9further
 
10    RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
11presented to the family of Timuel Black as an expression of our
12deepest sympathy.