HR0522 102ND GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0522 LRB102 20936 LAW 29827 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of Representatives are saddened to learn of the death of Timuel Dixon Black Jr. of Chicago, who passed away on October 13, 2021; and

WHEREAS, Timuel Black was born to Mattie and Timuel Black in Birmingham, Alabama on December 7, 1918; his family moved to Chicago in August 1919; he grew up in Bronzeville during the first wave of the Great Migration; he attended Burke Elementary School; he graduated from DuSable High School in 1935; he served in the 308th Quartermaster Railhead Company of the U.S. Army during World War II, and he earned four Battle Stars and the French Croix de Guerre for his service; he married Norisea Cummings in 1946, and they had two children, Ermetra Black-Thomas and Timuel Kerrigan Black, before divorcing; he obtained his bachelor's degree in Sociology from Roosevelt University in 1952; he earned his master's degree in Sociology and History from the University of Chicago in 1954; he married his third wife Zenobia Johnson-Black in 1981; and

WHEREAS, Timuel Black was a revered activist, educator, and historian; his first experience with labor organizing occurred when he and his coworkers sought better wages by forming a chapter of the Retail Clerks Union; he walked his first picket line in 1931; he helped establish the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942 and the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) in 1943; he was among a group from Hyde Park's First Unitarian Church to invite Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to his first major Chicago speech at the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel of the University of Chicago in 1956, where he worked closely with Dr. King and became a trusted adviser during the Civil Rights Movement; he helped organize the Rainbow Beach "wade-ins" in 1960 that succeeded in integrating that public beach a year later; he served as president of the Chicago chapter of the Negro American Labor Council and spearheaded Chicagoans' participation in the Southern Christian Leadership Council's '63 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, leading two "Freedom Trains" of 3,000 Chicagoans to D.C.; he was heavily involved in the Chicago Freedom Movement; he was influential in the historic one-day Chicago Public Schools boycott by approximately 250,000 students to call attention to segregation in Chicago schools on October 22, 1963; and

WHEREAS, Timuel Black gained national attention for coining the phrase "plantation politics" while confronting Mayor Richard J. Daley's political machine when he unsuccessfully ran for Fourth Ward alderman in 1963; he co-chaired the People's Movement for Voter Registration and Education in 1982, resulting in the registration of more than 250,000 voters to get Harold Washington to run against Jane Byrne for Chicago mayor; he served as an adviser in the campaigns of many of Chicago's Black elected officials, including Carol Moseley Braun, who was elected as the first African American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate in 1992; he later served as counsel to then-Senator Barack Obama when he ran for president in 2008, having become friends when Obama was a young community organizer in the early 1980s; and

WHEREAS, Timuel Black worked as a social worker and a history teacher at several high schools in Gary, Indiana and Chicago, including DuSable, Farragut, and Hyde Park, where he fought segregation and discrimination within the school system; he helped establish the Teachers Committee for Quality Education; he served as a professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the City Colleges of Chicago, becoming dean of Wright College in 1969; he was promoted to vice president of Academic Affairs at Olive Harvey College in 1972; he served as head of Communications system wide from 1973 to 1979; he then taught Cultural Anthropology at Loop College until his retirement in 1989; and

WHEREAS, Timuel Black became lead plaintiff in the ACLU's Black vs. McGuffage lawsuit, which accused Illinois' voting system of discriminating against minorities, in the wake of the 2000 presidential election; his lawsuit led to the ban of punch card ballots and a uniform voting system in Illinois; and

WHEREAS, Timuel Black donated a collection of more than 250 boxes of personal photographs, correspondence, manuscripts, speeches, audiovisuals, clippings, programs, and other memorabilia to the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library in Chicago; his collection was unveiled as the Timuel D. Black Jr. Archive in 2012; and

WHEREAS, Timuel Black was a prolific author; he wrote two seminal volumes of oral histories on the subject, which were Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Great Migration, published in 2003, and Bridges of Memory: Chicago's Second Generation of Black Migration, published in 2007; his memoir Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black was released on January 15, 2019; and

WHEREAS, Timuel Black remained active in progressive politics and also conducted tours of Bronzeville for the University of Chicago well into his late 90s; he joined the Community Advisory Board led by the University, working to bring the Barack Obama Presidential Library to Jackson Park; he made the Chicago Sun-Times' list of the 200 most prominent Illinoisans in the State's 200-year history in 2018; and

WHEREAS, Timuel Black left his mark on the City of Chicago, on his friends who knew him, and on those who knew of him; his legacy will inspire others to make this world a better place just as he strove to do; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn the passing of Timuel Dixon Black Jr. and extend our sincere condolences to his family, friends, and all who knew and loved him; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the family of Timuel Black as an expression of our deepest sympathy.