Remembering Timuel Black
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it was December 7, 1941, a young African- American man from the South Side of Chicago was celebrating his 23rd birthday. He was in a neighborhood tavern, and somebody bolted through the front door and cried out that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.
In 1943, that same young man was inducted into the U.S. Army, a segregated institution at the time. He landed in Normandy within days of D-day. He fought across France in the Battle of the Bulge. While his unit regrouped, they heard rumors--horrible rumors--about a camp near Weimar, Germany. This young soldier and his commanding officer hopped into a jeep to see for themselves. What he witnessed at Buchenwald, the Nazi death camp, changed this man forever.
As he recalled in his memoir, his first thought was ``this is what happened to my ancestors.'' This is what happens when human beings see others as less than human.
Then he made a vow to himself. He said:
I made an emotional decision that when I returned from the Army, the rest of my life would be spent trying to make [the place] where I live, and the bigger world, a place where all people could have peace and justice.
That soldier's name was Timuel Black. He kept that vow faithfully for 76 years. Tim Black was a foot soldier for justice. He died last week at the age of 102, living in the neighborhood that had been his home nearly all his life, a place that he personally called a ``Sacred Ground,'' the South Side of Chicago.
His passing is our loss--to our city, our State, and our Nation. If you are not from Chicago, you may not know his name, but we all live in an America that is better because Timuel Black helped shape it. He was a living link to some of our Nation's worst sins and our greatest achievements.
All four of Tim Black's grandparents were born into slavery. When he was a year old, Tim Black and his parents left Alabama and the terrorism of Jim Crow and headed to Chicago, part of the first wave of America's Great Migration. They settled on the South Side in a then- segregated neighborhood now known as Bronzeville.
After he served in World War II, Tim Black returned to Chicago. He graduated from Roosevelt University, earned a master's degree in history from the University of Chicago. He was teaching history in Chicago public schools in 1955 when he heard a young minister speaking on television, he was so moved that he decided, at his own expense, to fly to Montgomery, AL, to meet this man, a man by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr.
In 1963, Dr. King and the great African-American labor leader A. Philip Randolph called on Tim Black. They asked him to organize Chicago's contingent to come to Washington for the great March on Washington. Three years later, Tim Black asked them to return the favor and he persuaded Dr. King to bring his campaign for racial justice to Chicago. Together, they pressed for an end to discriminatory housing laws that squeezed many of the city's Black residents into overpriced, ramshackle apartments in unsafe, segregated neighborhoods with few jobs and failing schools.
In 1975, after decades working at high schools, Tim Black became a professor of sociology, anthropology, and Black history at what is now known as Harold Washington College. He was the Griot of Chicago, who preserved the rich history of the Great Migration and Bronzeville. He was also a brilliant political strategist who understood how to use his power to help others.
So, in 1982, Harold Washington, who had been his friend since they were children, was representing their neighborhood in the U.S. House of Representatives. Professor Black and a few others went to Harold Washington and said: You have to run for mayor of Chicago.
Washington replied: ``Sure. If you get 50,000 new Black voters and raise $100,000, then I'll consider it.''
Washington figured that was the end of it; they would never reach those goals. But Professor Tim Black started a fundraising drive and helped organize a voter registration campaign that ultimately registered not 100,000, not 50,000, but 263,000 new voters in Chicago, and he raised more than $1 million for the Harold Washington campaign.
In 1983, with the support from voters from all backgrounds--Black, White, and Brown--Harold Washington became Chicago's first Black mayor.
A decade later, a young lawyer by the name of Barack Obama sought out Professor Tim Black's guidance when he first considered running for office. Last month, President Obama returned to the South Side to break ground on the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson. Although Professor Black's failing health didn't allow him to attend in person, it is a good bet that ceremony couldn't have happened without him.
Mr. President, I was blessed to know Tim Black. When Barack Obama, my Senate colleague from Illinois, was elected President, I was given a handful of tickets to the inauguration. The first name that came to my mind was Tim Black. He had to be there, and his wife Zenobia Johnson- Black, a personal friend who volunteered to drive me in my first Senate campaign. Zenobia is a wonderful person. She is an exciting driver, and we had many escapades together.
So I invited Tim and Zenobia to come and sit in the best seats that I had for the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first African-American President from the South Side of Chicago.
I was fortunate I knew Tim Black. I counted him as a friend. I was there sitting next to him at his 100th birthday party. It was a great night, and the man still had it all together and a great sense of humor.
Loretta and I send our condolences to his beloved wife of 40 years, Zenobia Johnson-Black, his daughter Ermetra, and his countless friends and students. A great man has left us. He will be missed.
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