We too came as immigrants…
The following essay is adapted from a chapter of the forthcoming memoir, Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black, by Timuel Black with Susan Klonsky.
I was under a year old when my parents came to Chicago from Alabama on the train, bringing my 10-year-old sister Charlotte, my 4-year-old brother Walter, and me, the baby. My folks arrived in Chicago with quite a handful; their possessions plus the three of us, and my mother expecting baby number four.
We arrived in August, 1919, mere weeks after the infamous Chicago race riot. Uncounted dozens of Black Chicagoans had died at the hands of white mobs who raced through the few black neighborhoods of the city, setting