Other states, other lives, other souls

In 1966 I joined a national YM/YWCA summer organizing project to bring college students from all over the US to Chicago to be part of the Fair Housing Campaign for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. Martin Luther King. (www.movingimagearchivenews.org/the-1966-march-on-cicero-a-step-towards-equity/) I was 20 and a college senior to be. The goal was to open up housing in the segregated Polish working class community of Cicero through publicity and non-violent resistence. During the weekdays two of us White girls stayed with two African American families in East Chicago Heights, the poorest community in Illinois, on the southern edge of Chicago and western edge of Gary, Indiana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Heights,_Illinois).  We worked for various community organizations. Mine was a summer recreation program for kids.  On the weekends, we took the bus north into Chicago, to join whatever rally or march the Fair Housing Campaign was having.  One time I heard “little Stevie Wonder” (age 14) at a big Soldier Field rally.(Wikipedia.org photo)

My host family in East Chicago Heights was an older couple. Mr. Canada worked in a steel mill in Gary, with the hearing aids to prove it. He claimed he had worked as a driver for Al Capone in his youth.  Mrs. Canada was the remarried widow of a preacher, and lent a lace curtain ambiance to his blue collar life. He was devoted to her. My family was from Aurora, Illinois, 58 miles away, where racist remarks in my high school were common and unchallenged and city bowling alleys, unbeknownst to me, were still segregated.

Mr. Canada took me under his wing.  Worried about my weekend bus trips into the southside of Chicago, one day he sat me down and put on a 45 rpm record by the Nation of Islam. It was a warning/recruitment song about the White Devils, meant for Black people.  He thought I should know that not all Black people wanted me around and I might run into hostility in my travels. Another time he told me about a time when he left a bar in the early morning in Chicago. Several White guys confronted him as he got into his car and busted in his windows with baseball bats.  On his way home to East Chicago Heights that night, he saw a White woman signaling for a lift.  Her car had run out of gas.  He took her to the nearest gas station and went on his way home.

One Sunday morning, I sat in a small church on the South Side, to hear MLK preach to the congregation. In the back of the room were leather-jacketed young Black men, members of the Black Panther Party.  They stood with their arms crossed and challenged Dr. King on why he thought non-violence would work against a White establishment bent on maintaining its supremacy at all costs. Bolts of Christian doctrine were hurled toward the back and arrows of realpolitik returned. I stayed out of the line of fire but listened carefully, thinking maybe the Panthers had a point.

One morning in East Chicago Heights, on my way to the recreation center with another White civil rights student, a White truck driver in a huge semi saw us and began to back his truck down the narrow residential dirt road, following us and asking why we were in this neighborhood. We were frightened that he would not see a child in the road, as he was focused on intimidating us for spending time around Black people.  Finally he gave up his project on maintaining segregation and went on with his work.

At the end of the ten week immersion in Black culture and race relations, the Canadas invited my family to come for supper.  My parents, I am sure, had never been in the home of an African American family. Mrs. Canada served a classic soul food meal of greens, chicken and peach pie.  Everything was delicious. After I had gone back home for the short remainder of the summer, my mother confided in me shamefully that she was prejudiced.

Every Christmas after that when I came back to Illinois to see my parents Mr. Canada would call to ask how I was doing. During that time he retired from the steel mill and Mrs. Canada died.  Ten years from my cultural immersion I took my new baby back to East Chicago Heights to visit Mr. Canada.  To save money in winter he had closed off the upstairs of the old house and had collapsed his life into an easy chair and TV, his wife’s collection of silver in the dining room curio cabinet, and the kitchen. He seemed content with his life and forgiving that I had waited so long to come to see him. It makes me cry just to read over this story.