Blacks in Chicago: city is still a center of Black life and culture - Cities

The Black magic, by almost all accounts, is still working. And Black Chicagoans, who have never had the Second City complex of White Chicagoans, say that you can find more Black multimillionaires per square yard at the annual Urban League dinner than you can find in any other place or event in the world.

There are other distinguishing features of Black Chicago. Today, as of old, as in the days of Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks, Black Chicago is a center of art and culture with great theaters and museums, including the DuSable Museum, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, the Black Ensemble Theatre, the Bronzeville Children's Museum, the only Black children's museum in America, and the Chocolate Chips Theatre Company for children. It goes without saying that the city is still a place of world-class creativity, with resident artists like sculptor Richard Hunt and pianist Ramsey Lewis, and resident ensembles like the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the Chicago Sinfonietta, an integrated group led by Maestro Paul Freeman.

Chicago is also a city of great preachers, great churches and mosques, like the Rev. James Meeks' Salem Baptist Church, the Rev. Johnnie Colemon's Christ Universal Temple, Minister Louis Farrakhan's Mosque Maryam, Bishop Arthur Brazier's Apostolic Church of God, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, and the Rev. David E. Chambers' Good Shepherd Congregational. There are also Black Catholic churches like St. Sabina and Holy Angels, which have charismatic Black and White priests and which offer gospel-influenced Masses that dig deep into the African-American tradition. St. Edmund's Episcopal Church on the South Side features stained-glass windows honoring Black icons, including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., and the sanctuary of Friendship Baptist Church on the West Side is made of Mozambique wood and is reminiscent of an African hut in shape and motif. The oldest Black church in Chicago is Quinn Chapel AME, which has been preaching the gospel of salvation and freedom--it was a major station on the Underground Railroad--since 1847.

Another defining characteristic of Black Chicago is that Blacks with money and power tend to stay in or near the `Hood. Some, of course, succumb to the sirens of the suburbs, but many, more perhaps than in any other city, can be found in the Jackson Park Highlands or on Pill Hill or in Chatham or the regentrified areas near Hyde Park and 35th Street. In fact, Black Chicago may be the only city in America with its own gated community--Dempsey Travis' Chatham Park Place.

If there is money, and a lot of it, at the top in Black Chicago, there is poverty, and a lot of it, at the bottom. In Chicago, as in Memphis, as in Atlanta, as in New York, as in everywhere, the major problems are drugs, housing and unemployment. County President John Stroger, Secretary of State Jesse White, Rep. Danny Davis, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Rep. Bobby Rush, Alderman Dorothy Tillman' almost everybody interviewed for this article expressed anguish and alarm about the deteriorating plight of tens of thousands of Blacks, especially young Black men, who are trapped in a socioeconomic nightmare that is getting worse. James W. Compton, president of the Chicago Urban League, says there are too many "unemployed, underemployed and unemployable workers in Chicago ... Too many African-American men languish in jail cells. Too many families face homelessness because of a tight rental housing market."