83K MORE SHOTS GIVEN IN ILLINOIS AS POSITIVITY RATE NEARS ALL-TIME LOW
More than a century old, water-damaged mural at Quinn Chapel A.M.E. still inspires
Public health officials on Saturday announced 1,780 more Illinoisans were diagnosed with COVID-19 as more than 83,000 vaccine doses went into arms across the state.
A total of 83,048 shots were administered Friday, breaking a two-day streak of six-figure vaccination totals, including Illinois’ all-time high of more than 130,000 doled out Wednesday.
But the state’s rolling average of shots given per day has climbed to a new high of 69,736 over the past week. As that rate steadily rises, daily tallies of new infections have fallen precipitously. The Illinois Department of Public Health has reported roughly 1,800 positive coronavirus tests each day over the last week, down from an average of about 3,500 new daily cases at the end of January.
The latest cases were diagnosed among 81,668 to lower the average statewide positivity rate to 2.4%. That suggests the virus is spreading at its slowest rate since at least June, at less than a fifth of the pace it was during the worst days of the pandemic in November. Chicago’s regional positivity rate of 2.9% is an all-time low.
More serious cases of the disease have declined, as well. COVID-19 hospital admissions are back to summertime levels, with 1,353 beds occupied as of Friday night.
Still, officials reported 34 additional deaths. That one-day death total is roughly average for Illinois this month.
Nearly a year into the pandemic, about 1.2 million residents have been confirmed to carry the virus, and 20,494 of them have died.
A little over 2.6 million COVID-19 shots have been administered since the rollout began in December, but so far, only 772,410 people have received both required doses — barely 6% of the population. Experts say that number needs to hit about 80% to achieve herd immunity.
With vaccine supply still low, appointments remain hard to come by for most residents. Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he expects larger shipments from the federal government in the weeks ahead — and on Saturday, the FDA cleared Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot vaccine.
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When abolitionist Frederick Douglass visited Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church to speak in 1893, nearly 1,000 people turned out at the historic Black congregation on the Near South Side to hear him.
“The Black man will be respected nowhere while he is not respected in the United States,” Douglass told the crowd, according to a newspaper account that said his speech was greeted with “the greatest enthusiasm.”
“Our work,” Douglass said, “is to make ourselves respected.”
Nearly 70 years later, during the civil rights era, the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. also took to the pulpit at the church to speak.
Throughout that time and still today, there’s been a presence above the church’s altar that also speaks to the plight and salvation of African Americans. It’s a mural depicting Jesus as a Black man.
Painted in 1904 on the domed ceiling along with other religious figures, the mural remains a source of pride for the roughly 400-person congregation.
It’s also a rare portrayal of Christ, who typically has been cast as a white man with European features.
“Oftentimes, when you grow up, you think that your set of circumstances are how it is everywhere,” says Will Miller, Quinn Chapel’s historic preservation chairman, who grew up attending services there. “Looking at that image, I thought that every church had images of a Black Jesus, especially Black
churches.”
Tyra Owens, 33, a lifelong member of Quinn Chapel, says: “I just remember looking up at that mural during services” as a child “and seeing myself close to God. It really meant a lot to me.”
No one has been allowed inside the church to see the mural during the coronavirus pandemic, Miller says. Sunday services have been held remotely and recorded. Tours are on hold. Even weddings and funerals aren’t allowed.
Now, with age and water damage having taken their toll on the walls and ceiling of the church, Quinn Chapel is trying to determine how to have the mural restored so that it can remain vibrant for another century or more. The church is applying for a federal grant to help cover the cost, estimated at about $150,000. Church officials figure it will be sometime next year, at the earliest, that the work will be completed.
Beyond the mural, the congregation is a part of Chicago history. Now at 2401 S. Wabash Ave., Quinn Chapel was established before the Civil War — in 1844, with seven people meeting at a member’s home. The church was built in 1892, just before Douglass spoke there.
The church was a place of refuge for the Underground Railroad.
The building was designated a Chicago Landmark in 1977 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Other speakers over the years included Presidents William McKinley and William Howard Taft and women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony.
The mural is titled “Risen Christ Mural.” It was painted by Proctor Chisholm, of whom little is know, according to Miller, other than that he was a church member and selftaught artist.
Miller says the images of Mary and the angels in the painting were patterned on women and children in the church and that one of the angels — seen resting her head on the clouds — was modeled on a girl who used to rest her head on a pew.
Though that’s the story told throughout the church’s history,
Anna Swartwood House — an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina whose doctorate in art history focused on Renaissance art — immediately recognized the angel’s resemblance to an angel in the “Sistine Madonna” painted by Italian artist Raphael in the 1500s. That famous work features an angel in nearly an identical position as the one in the “Risen Christ Mural.”
Swartwood House was surprised to learn the Quinn mural was painted in 1904 because artwork depicting Jesus as a man with a non-white complexion was uncommon until the 1970s.
Experts say it’s almost certain that Jesus wasn’t the fair-skinned, blue-eyed, wavy brown-haired figure he’s still frequently portrayed as.
“He had dark skin, dark eyes, dark hair,” says the Rev. Laura Mayo, a minister in Houston who earned a master’s degree at Wake Forest University’s divinity school and did her graduate thesis on God images and the way people view God. “He was a Middle Eastern Jew. This depiction of Jesus as white is inaccurate, and it distorts our connections to the stories of Jesus and to the stories” of people of color.
Swartwood House says depictions of Jesus as fair-skinned became increasingly popular with European artists in the 14th century. The line of thinking that people were created in God’s image led the white Europeans to model their depictions of Jesus on themselves. And that depiction spread through trade and colonization, she says.