Can You Hear Us Now?

Like many of you, I have been struggling with thoughts and words to address the events that have recently impacted our nation and our great city of Chicago. Some of us may be shocked by the images coming through social media and news footage, but we should not feign surprise. If anything, we should be asking why it took so long to face a reckoning that has been kicked down the long road of history, generation after generation. We have been sitting atop the tinderbox for a very long time, blowing out the matches tossed our way, but now we are — literally — out of breath.

Nothing about this is new to us as Black Americans. Our communities always fare worse, no matter if the affliction is economic, medical, environmental, legal, political or otherwise. In the wise words of Reverend Dr. Otis Moss, Jr., we are now dealing with two pandemics: the pandemic of COVID-19 and the pandemic of 1619. We never effectively treated, much less cured, the original sin of slavery and racism in this nation. Now we’re in the advanced stages of this illness and facing a life or death scenario for our society.

Learn.

Chicago has long been the epicenter of Black leadership and the struggle for positive change, and also the stage for many transformative events in American history. This very history provides perspective on what we are seeing today and why the current events hold such significance in our city:

In July, 1919, a 17-year-old Black boy named Eugene Williams gathered with his friends at the 29th St. beach, and while floating on a makeshift raft, accidentally drifted into the “white” part of the water. He was attacked by white beachgoers who stoned him, and he drowned. Police refused to arrest his attackers. Eugene’s murder set off the Red Summer of 1919, which started in Chicago and spread to multiple cities throughout the United States. White mobs attacked Black homes and businesses in the segregated neighborhoods of Chicago’s south side, destroying properties in large areas, leaving vacant swaths of land, some of which sits fallow to this day because of race-based economic neglect.

In August, 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy from the south side named Emmett Till went to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi. He was accused of whistling at a white woman (his accuser recanted her story more than six decades later). Emmett was dragged from his relatives’ home in the middle of the night, beaten, blinded, shot and dumped into the Tallahatchie River with a cotton gin fan