Timuel Black — historian, civil rights activist and griot — reflects at age 100
He walks a little slower, but on his 100th birthday, Timuel Black — historian, author, civil rights activist — is still independent, arriving unescorted.
The elder statesman and griot of Chicago’s black community settles into his chair Friday, reflecting on a life that started in Birmingham, Alabama, a century ago.
“I consider Dec. 7, 1918, a famous day in history,” quips Black, the son of sharecroppers and grandson of slaves.
“My mother and father were children of former slaves, my great-grandparents, products of the Emancipation Proclamation,” Black begins.
“I came up in a time when AfricanAmerican men — women, too — were being lynched … people were fleeing to escape the terrorism,” said Black.
“There were two waves of Great Migrations. My parents were part of the first wave around World War I. … The second wave occurred around World War II,” said Black, an organizer in just about every labor, civil rights and political justice movement since 1940.
Saturday, the University of Chicago will sponsor “A Symposium on the Life and Times of Tim Black.” Lonnie Bunch, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and former president of the Chicago Historical Society, was to headline the event but fell ill.
“The most important thing that has happened in this country has been the migration of African-Americans from the South into places like Chicago,” Bunch said by phone.
“Timuel Black’s life was shaped by those stories. Here is someone who has lived his whole life trying to make Chicago better. … He has dedicated his life to fighting for fairness for the African-American community.
“Tim is also the keeper of the flame. He keeps the history of black Chicago alive, reminding us that civil rights is an ongoing struggle.”
Sunday, the Vivian G. Harsh Society will sponsor “100 Years: Music and Memories, Tim Black’s Bestest Birthday Party” at the South Shore Cultural Center. Drafted into a segregated Army, Black earned four Battle Stars and the French Croix de Guerre in World War II; at the party, he will receive the French Legion of Honor.
“I suppose when you live to 100, it’s worth celebrating,” said Black.
Black taught for many years in the Chicago Public Schools, followed by 30 years at City Colleges of Chicago.
Raised in Chicago’s “Black Belt,” Black graduated in 1935 from DuSable High School. Classmates included Johnson Publishing Co. founder John H. Johnson and jazz musician Nat King Cole.
Black would work with activists Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois in the ’40s and ’50s; then alongside Dr. Martin Luther King in the ’60s, helping organize Chicagoans’ participation in the 1963 March on Washington.
“Working with Dr. King was a magnificent experience. … This brilliant, articulate young man … was determined and dedicated to bring change in a way that frustrated the opposition. They didn’t know exactly how to handle it when they beat you up and you said, ‘God bless you.’ ”
Black also was instrumental in electing Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, in 1983.
“We needed a candidate that could unify. … But he wasn’t interested in running. He told us if we registered 200,000 new voters and raised $1 million he’d consider it. So we did. I called him and said, ‘What are you gonna do now?’ He said, ‘I guess I’m running.’ ”
Black was similarly involved with the nation’s first African-American president, advising a young community organizer named Barack Obama.
“I met Tim just after I moved to Chicago. We sat across from each other at Medici on 57th — the rookie South Side organizer on one side ... and the veteran South Side historian on the other. And it was during that first conversation that I learned of Tim’s deep well of empathy . ... And I was inspired by that,” Obama writes in the program for Sunday’s birthday party.
“Because he wanted to talk about how to make life better for people all across the city, how to bring about greater equality,” Obama wrote. “And, perhaps the most important part, after talking about it, he gets out there and does something about it, rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.”