1st black route rep for Jays Chips
Clyde Martin Sr. was the first African- American route salesman for Jays Potato Chips, the South Side company with the “Can’t stop eating ’ em” slogan.
When he applied for work in 1956, “He sat there, and he sat there” until he was hired, said his son, Clyde Martin Jr.
As he drove his route near 43rd and Princeton, filling up snack racks at stores, Mr. Martin had a tuber- revelation: He realized sales could be increased if he supplied more of the small, five- cent bags of Jays rather than the big bags.
“He became one of the best salesmen in that company,” his son said. “He built his route up somuch, they had to split it in two.”
By 1967, he was promoted to assistant manager. When he retired from Jay’s around 1996, he was a regional manager with a district that stretched from North Avenue to 119th Street and from Lake Shore Drive to Harlem Avenue.
Mr. Martin, 81, who wore a wristwatch with a Jays logo and whose house “always, always, always had chips,” died Nov. 21, his son said.
That day, he’d undergone a bowel operation. He had been on dialysis for two years. He had diabetes and had survived stomach and rectal cancer. In January, his wife Doretha, who had Alzheimer’s disease, died.
“They were married 62 years,” Clyde Martin Jr. said. “After she passed, ‘ He always told me, ‘ I miss my wife, son. I’m tired.’
“He told them he wanted to have the surgery, knowing therewas a 30 percent chance of survival,” his son said. “He was taking it out of the children’s hands so they wouldn’t have to put him in hospice or pull the plug.”
His family was around him singing “Christ is All” and “Mercy” when he died at Rush University Medical Center.
Clyde was born in the Mississippi Delta to Lee and Ora Martin, who owned a rice farm and pecan orchard near the town of Boyle in Bolivar County.
In high school, his principal asked him to pick up two new school buses. But instead of taking them to their destination — the white school in town — Clyde and his future brother- in- law Leon Halbert drove them to their own school, Cleveland Colored Consolidated High School.
“We parked them in the parking lot at the colored school,” said Halbert. “And we brought the keys on the inside, but, from what we hear, they didn’t want the buses any more.”
“After the bus had been ridden in by black kids,” his son said, “the white school didn’t want them anymore because they thought they’d been contaminated.”
“This is 1950s Mississippi,” his son said, “and his friend was, like, ‘ They’re gonna kill us.’ But my father used to drive for the sheriff’s wife, and she protected him.”
Clyde and Doretha Martin, who was from Sunflower County, Mississippi, came north for opportunity. They were so poor, he used to say, “I would wear the same pair of pants, and I’d come home from work, and she’d sew them up.”
Once he got a job at Jays, Mr. Martin worked to get other African-Americans hired, including his brother- in- law. Mr. Martin also had a hand in a Jays push to sell hot-flavored potato chips, according to Halbert, because, “In the black and Hispanic areas, more spicy stuff is sold than regular potato chips.”
The Martins raised their family in Englewood and Matteson. Mr. Martin was a deacon at Chatham-Avalon Church of Christ.
Often, their home was a first stop for friends and family who headed north in the Great Migration. “Some of us lived with them,” said his sister- in- law Juanita Halbert. “He helped the men get jobs.”
Mr. Martin, who was close to the late Cook County Board President John Stroger, also landed a job working nights as an inspector with the Cook County sheriff’s office’s internal affairs division, his son said. He made an unsuccessful run for alderman in the late 1980s.
He was a fan of Westerns. “He loved some Matt Dillon,” his son said, and watched “Bonanza,” “Have Gun Will Travel” and “Rawhide.”
In addition to his son, Mr. Martin is survived by his daughters Alexandra Arseneau, Brenda Penn and Delores Martin; another son, Avery Williams, and two sisters, Vivian Martin and Gloria Arrington. He will lie in state from noon to 5 p. m. Friday at Chatham- Avalon Church, 8601 S. State St., with visitation from 5 p. m. Friday until a 6 p. m. funeral service.