"CHICAGO"

 “CHICAGO”

Towards the end of May, Caroline, Susan, and I met in Chicago for an ancestry trip and a viewing of some of the many sites of Chicago. Susan flew into Chicago from Baltimore, and we all met at O’Hare airport, which was announcing that it was the world’s busiest airport, an assertion that made my ears perk up, because we in the ATL claim to have the busiest airport.  As I later learned, O’Hare has the most flights, while ATL has the most people passing through.  We rented a car and drove on the back roads to our Airbnb in Evanston, Illinois.  We chose that place because it is close to Northwestern, where Caroline was planning to do some research on some of her ancestors who attended Northwestern.  Our place was about a block from Lake Michigan, which is huge – but, it was relatively cool, so we only walked around the beach a bit.

As I wrote in “She Made a Way,” I had traveled to Chicago as a child several times with my mother on the train and on the bus to see her brother and my uncle, Maurice “Bud” Armour.  Caroline and I had been to hotels in Chicago to lead workshops for denominational conferences, but this was the first time that we would encounter the city of Chicago as adults.  As always, we were so grateful to have Susan with us – she is a fearless and skilled navigator.  After we rested up, our first stop was at Wrigley Field on May 24 (my mother’s birthday) to see the Cubs play the Astros.  Our Airbnb was close to a public parking deck where we could park our rental car and catch the “EL” to Wrigley on the Red Line.  As we headed towards Wrigley, at various stops, Cubs fans were piling on the train, and when we asked some of them how we would know we had arrived, they laughed and said “Don’t worry about it – you’ll know.”  And sure enough, the stadium was right off the Addison train stop.  It was such an exciting experience – major league baseball in person at one of baseball’s best stadiums.  Wrigley was filled, and of course, the Cubs lost.

The next day brought a milestone for me.  Prior to our trip I had contacted Michelle Duster, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, asking her to give us a tour of Ida B. sites in Chicago.  The only day that we all could work it out was on Memorial Day, but Michelle was so kind to give us most of the day, showing us around the South side of Chicago, where there are many Ida B. Wells sites.  Wells had moved to Chicago after she had been exiled from the South when Memphians blew up her newspaper offices in response to her definitive study on lynching called “Southern Horrors.”  Michelle took us to the house where Ida B. and her husband Ferdinand Barnett lived, to the street named after Wells in Chicago, to the cemetery where they are buried, and to a great monument to Ida B. on Langley Avenue.  It is called The “Light of Truth Ida B. Wells Monument,” and it was done by renowned sculptor Richard Hunt.  It is made of bronze and marble and is in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side.  It is powerful to see it and to read the selected quotes from Ida B. Wells.  Michelle also introduced us to her brothers, Dan and Dave.  It was their grandmother, Alfreda Duster (daughter of Ida B), who had preserved Ida B’s records and eventually got the autobiography before John Hope Franklin to be published by the University of Chicago Press in 1970.

The next day Caroline and Susan joined cousin Judy Asselmeier at the Northwestern library to do research on Caroline’s maternal grandmother, Mildred Boddy, who had graduated from there in 1915, and Mildred’s father, Samuel Boddy, who graduated in 1885.  Thanks to a great archivist named Kevin Leonard, they found a wonderful treasure trove of info about these ancestors.  Caroline had always known about her great grandparents and grandmother graduating from Northwestern.  As she got older, her interest grew but not much was ever said.  Then when we were cleaning out boxes from the attic at her parents’ house, there was a treasure trove of annuals, pictures, diplomas, graduation invitations and more!  Our trip to Northwestern was really a time to put the “dots together” with her foreparents from the North.

On another day, we crossed over to my side of the family to eat lunch with Uncle Bud’s oldest daughter Bonnie Armour Adams, whom I had known as a child before Bud moved to Chicago in the 1950’s.  Bonnie brought along her daughter Heather and her husband John, and we had a great visit.  The last time that we had seen one another was in 1988, when we all gathered in Byhalia, Mississippi, for Bud’s funeral there.  We had such a good time catching up, and they are thinking about coming down for my 80th birthday celebration on November 21.  Bud was such an important person in my mother’s life, and I was glad to make this reconnection.  As you’ll see in the photo, Heather noted that “double first cousins” Bonnie and Nibs wore the same kind of blue stripe tops!  And, we were glad to learn that they are on the left side of the political spectrum.

We had a great trip to Chicago, connecting with deep and old roots, we had other friends that we wanted to see but ran out of time and energy. and I also remembered all the Black people who had come up Highway 61 from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago in the Great Migrations.  And, as Michelle Duster noted, this important American city was founded by a Black man from Haiti named Jean Baptiste Point du Sable.