LONNIE BUNCH, president of the Chicago Historical Society
MAMIE TILL-MOBLEY
Two days before her death on Jan. 6, I was fortunate to have spent some time with Mamie Till-Mobley, mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old who was murdered by a white mob in Mississippi in 1955. It was a special afternoon that I will never forget. We talked a lot about Emmett, but then she said something that was very haunting. She said that while her calling was to keep Emmett’s memory alive as a beacon that called for racial change, she mentioned that sometimes she got so tired carrying that legacy. I almost felt that she wanted to make sure that there were others who would continue to carry on that legacy.
I know that I will try to help people remember not just Emmett Till but also Mamie Mobley. In some ways, her life is an example of what African-American women have done for generations. She fought hard to protect her family and then she used her grief as a weapon for change. Her courage forced Americans to confront the gap between their stated ideals and the reality of race relations in America. I think her tenacity inspired a generation to stand up and to confront evil, no matter how painful. But she also represented millions of black women who did not let pain and loss turn them into bitter individuals. Till-Mobley made sure that Emmett’s death mattered. She made sure that America would be a better place because of Emmett’s sacrifice.
I think that her actions turned a horrible and vile crime into a life-affirming episode that sparked the passions of thousands in the North to struggle actively to change the racial dynamics in America. Like many of a certain age, who grew up in the urban North but spent their summers “down South,” the murder of Emmett Till was used by my family as a cautionary tale of the hatred and dangers that existed in the American South.
While Emmett’s death helped to illuminate the darker corners of race relations, it was the response and the actions–both immediate and long-term–taken by his mother that were ultimately more important and long-lasting. Her grief, her pain, and her unflinching demand for justice forced America to see what it had previously ignored. Her actions, from her testimony at the trial of those arrested for Till’s murder, to her travels throughout the nation that highlighted this murder, to her lifelong commitment to education and racial justice, galvanized the modern civil rights movement. She is the unacknowledged mother of the movement. Ultimately, Mamie Mobley deserves our highest acclaim because she changed America.
URSULA BIELSKI, author of “Chicago Haunts”
ROSEHILL CEMETERY
When I was growing up, my dad would take me for largely unsuccessful driving lessons at nearby Graceland Cemetery. As I peered over the steering wheel, I caught name after name on the elegant stones: Palmer, Goodman, Pullman, Wacker, Kimball, Field, Honore. Many I recognized already–some from street signs, others from the facades of the grand places we visited on Saturdays downtown. I began to learn about Chicago when I asked about these names and now, as a student of the paranormal–and its inseparable folklore–I’m often reminded that the dead don’t tend to haunt cemeteries; rather, they remain with their work, at the places they changed with their energy.
No one haunts any place I know as thoroughly and wonderfully as Louis Comfort Tiffany haunts the Community Mausoleum at Rosehill Cemetery –even though he is buried in Brooklyn. The world’s first-ever communal crypt is a severely classical, multilevel maze housing thousands of vaults. Designed in 1914 by Sidney Lovell, the building was funded by Chicago’s wealthiest families. Scores of “family rooms” were created for the likes of Aaron Montgomery Ward, Richard Warren Sears and Milton Florsheim. But the promise of burial in grand company and style was lost in the dank halls of the dimly lit structure that arose.
Tiffany saved it all when the families commissioned him to create windows. The glum structure soon filled with color and light, and with images of hope: fields of lilies, rivers and sunsets, angels and saints. The central jewel is the crypt of the John G. Shedd family. Its window, crafted in the colors of the sea, reflects Shedd’s love of marine life, a love he would share with millions through the building of his world-famous aquarium. At sunset, Tiffany’s window bathes the Shedd family room in blue light, creating the illusion of an undersea sepulchre.
DICK GREGORY, activist, comedian
ROBERTS SHOW CLUB
Chicago was a town where black people could see things they weren’t exposed to in Memphis or St. Louis. In Chicago, you had the No. 1 black nightclub in the world. It was called Roberts Show Club, at 63rd and South Parkway, owned by Herman Roberts, the black millionaire.
It was the 1950s and it was the place where black stars played: Sarah Vaughn, Sammy Davis Jr., Redd Foxx, Nipsey Russell, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, all the black stars on the planet. It was like something out of Las Vegas. It was huge, it would seat 1,200 people easy. It had the latest technology: The stage would rise up out of the floor.
Black people would come from all over America. Now, the black stars could have played downtown, but they didn’t feel comfortable going down there. That was a white world. The Roberts club was brand new, people thought they’d died and gone to heaven. They might have charged 10 cents to get in, just to see the floor show. And like most of the small clubs in black neighborhoods, you could bring your own whiskey and you just paid for the ice and the soda water.
When you were at Roberts Showclub, you were moving up in the world. There were people who would save up all year for when special people came to town. People you saw on the Ed Sullivan Show played there. The role models were coming closer to the community. Eventually, I worked my way up and played there. Playing there was like playing in heaven.”
TOM GEOGHEGAN, lawyer, labor activist
JOE E. LEWIS
Chicago used to be the West Coast. We were California, we were Los Angeles, we were Las Vegas, all in one city. This used to be the farthest shore as far as most Americans were concerned; and I think that idea lasted through the 1920s and 1930s. One story in particular reminds me of how this place used to be a lot like Vegas. Everybody knows about the Green Mill [at 4802 N. Broadway]. But not everyone knows about Joe E. Lewis. Lewis was this great singer whose throat was cut by gangsters because he broke a singing contract at the Green Mill, and the management was so irked by this that they arranged to have his vocal chords cut. . . . So Lewis became a comedian because he couldn’t sing.
EDWARD M. BURKE, Alderman,14th Ward
“BUTCH” O’HARE
I am continually amazed at how few Chicagoans actually have any knowledge of the man after whom our city’s international airport is named.
In some ways that curious mystery makes Lt. Cmdr. Edward H. O’Hare an even more intriguing figure of history.
As a young naval flier in the Pacific aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, “Butch” O’Hare, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, conducted what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt later called “the most daring single action in the history of combat aviation.” On Feb. 20, 1942, O’Hare took on the Japanese air force single-handedly, in defense of the Lexington (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Back home, with his matinee-idol good looks, he became a hero early in the war and could have remained safely Stateside, fundraising for War Bonds. But he insisted on returning to active combat.
In November 1943, while commanding a squadron of night fighters, he was lost while pursuing the enemy near the island of Tarawa.
Ironically, though the City Council agreed in 1949 to rename a little-known municipal airport after the World War II hero, the airport’s tag code remains ORD, after its original name, Orchard Field. No one could have foreseen the growth this small airport would undergo.
The story of Butch O’Hare is a remarkable America saga and for me demonstrates how one man can truly make a difference.
