Longtime club owner trying to sell business
Robbins venue site of fatal police shooting of Jemel Roberson
As he walks through his Robbins nightclub, which hasn’t served a drink in long time, Emanuel “Manny” Williams points to the improvements he’s made throughout the decades.
Williams, 83, said he would wake up in the morning with the idea to knock out a wall and extend this or that area, or put up a separate building off the main bar for private parties.
With no real experience in the building trades, he turned Manny’s Blue Room into a thriving business in the oldest majority Black suburb in the Chicago metro area.
While he’s had no direct hand in running the business for years, Williams, 83, is retiring for the second and what he calls the final time, hoping to sell Manny’s Blue Room as well as his home in neighboring Crestwood as he prepares to move to Florida.
“My time came,” Williams said as he walked through the empty nightclub. “I wasn’t really ready to go at first.”
Before it was Manny’s Blue Room, perhaps a half-century ago, Williams’ aunt had owned a bar at that spot, 2911 S. Claire Blvd.
She also owned a house next door, and Williams, who said he bought that bar from his aunt when he was 26 or 27, said in one of those “wake up in the morning with this crazy idea” moments broke through a wall and made a connection between the two buildings. The house became the upper level bar area, with plush velour benches.
One recent improvement Williams isn’t responsible for is a spray-painted mural on an outside wall of Manny’s Blue Room dedicated to Jemel Roberson, a 26-year-old Black man who was working as a security guard at the bar on Nov. 11, 2018, when he was shot to death by a white Midlothian police officer.
Roberson was shot four times by the officer, who was armed with an AR-15 rifle and was not charged criminally but faces a lawsuit filed by Roberson’s girlfriend and mother of two of his children, Avontea Boose.
According to investigators, a fight had broken out between two groups of men inside the bar. Shots were fired and four people
were wounded, including the man suspected of being the gunman.
Roberson managed to detain a man outside of the club, who witnesses identified as the shooter, and was holding him on the ground at gunpoint when he was shot.
The nightclub’s business license was suspended by Robbins officials following the shooting, and Manny’s Blue Room hasn’t served a customer since, according to the village.
Williams hasn’t had a hand in running the business since the end of 2016, when a big retirement party at the Blue Room was held in conjunction with a New Year’s Eve celebration.
His two daughters had helped out for a number of years, then the Williams family contracted with a company called Luxury U.S. Inc., initially to rent them the space to continue to operate the Blue Room.
Williams found himself in the bar business shortly after returning home to Robbins after serving in the U.S. Army in the early 1960s, stationed in Germany. His aunt had decided to get out of the business.
“Her husband died and she couldn’t keep it going,” Williams said.
A club he would visit in Indiana called the Blue Room inspired the name he gave his club, and along with overseeing his establishment he worked for 27 years in the shipping department at Western Electric’s Cicero plant. The massive industrial complex produced equipment for the Bell Telephone System.
His Blue Room over the years hosted live entertainment, including legendary blues harmonica player Jody Noa as well as blues singer and guitarist Vance Kelly.
It was open seven days a week and Williams said he would be there until 4 a.m. each day.
His family recently held an estate sale at Williams’ home, and in the garage was a rack of suit jackets, ties and smart-looking hats that Manny would wear each day.
He said he always dressed with a coat and tie because “everybody was dressed up.”
A sign of “house rules” posted next to the entrance said that proper attire was required, and no gym shoes, T-shirts or baseball caps were allowed.
Over the years, William supported the community, including holding fundraisers for the Cal-Park Eagles youth football organization and being a sponsor of Robbins’ annual Back to School Festival and Parade.
A plaque in his garage from the Robbins Park District, dated Jan. 11, 2017, after his retirement from the Blue Room, thanks him for his generous donations.
Williams, whose wife died a decade ago, says he has a possible buyer lined up who wants to operate the bar. Williams is moving to Florida to live with one of his two daughters in Tampa.
Another daughter, Holly DuPart, said the family had a “rental agreement” some years ago with Luxury U.S., which eventually planned to take ownership of the Blue Room. The agreement called for regular payments to be made by the company, which didn’t happen, and the family had to go to court to regain control of the business, she said.
Luxury U.S. had been awarded a business license and a local liquor license by Robbins in the summer of 2018, but lacked a required state liquor license. DuPart said the liquor license the family had to run the Blue Room had lapsed.
She said her father has always been kind and generous, and imparted to his children that “nobody is a throwaway person.”
Apart from his two daughters, Williams has a son, Eric Williams, who is a successful entrepreneur in his own right.
He is the owner and creative director of The Silver Room in Chicago’s Hyde Park community, which is a blend of retail space, featuring jewelry and other items created by local residents, and community space, with writing workshops, film screenings and tango classes, according to a 2018 Chicago Tribune feature on Williams.
The business had been founded in 1997 in Wicker Park before moving to 1506 E. 53rd Street in 2016, and it was while in Wicker Park that Williams started the annual Silver Room Block Party.
Initially drawing a couple hundred people, the festival has grown to attracting tens of thousands, but was canceled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.