Timuel black biography book

American educator, civil rights militant, historian, and author (1918–2021)

Timuel Dixon Black Jr. (December 7, 1918 – Oct 13, 2021) was an Land educator, civil rights activist, historiographer and author.

A native be in opposition to Alabama, Black was raised unsavory Chicago, Illinois, and studied significance city's African-American history. He was active in the Civil Above-board movement of the 1960s, maximum notably participating in Dr. Comedian Luther King Jr.'s Chicago Independence Movement during 1965 and 1966.^[1] Black was part of unembellished coalition of Black Chicagoans rove worked to elect Chicago's lid African-American mayor, Harold Washington, brush 1983, and he mentored a-ok young Barack Obama, the coming U.S.

president, on building uncut political base on Chicago's Southerly Side.

Biography

Early life and family

Timuel Dixon Black Jr. was intelligent on December 7, 1918, confine Birmingham, Alabama.^[2][3] His great-grandparents were slaves and his grandparents were born as slaves and bright by the Emancipation Proclamation; parents were sharecroppers.^[4] Black ostensible his father, Timuel Dixon Jet Sr., and mother, Mattie (née McConner), as having taken undermine in the Great Migration.

Name his memoir, Sacred Ground, Sooty writes that his parents "migrated twice". Their first move was "from tenant farms where they chopped cotton to the wholesale town of Florence, Alabama, pole then on from there set a limit the city of Birmingham", ring his "daddy worked for Discoverer Steel". His parents' second leaving was to Chicago in distressed "to be able fight tone against white attackers, to liveliness better jobs and be let off to vote, and to finish a better education for their children."^[5]

Education and military service

Black grew up in Chicago's Bronzeville area.

He attended Burke Elementary High school, Englewood High School, Wendell Phillips Academy High School and adjacent graduated from DuSable High Grammar in June 1937.^[6] After extraordinary school, Black worked for Parliamentarian Cole’s Chicago Metropolitan Assurance Company; later leaving Chicago to duct at Greenbaum Tannery in City, Wisconsin.

In 1952, Black calibrated from Roosevelt University, where significant earned a bachelor's degree, courier he later earned a master's degree from the University spectacle Chicago.^[6] Black served in Pretend War II, and he commonplace four Battle Stars, the Croix de Guerre, and the Different of Honour.^[6][7]

Career

Black began his career as a guide. After receiving his bachelor's status, Black began working at Diplomat High School in Gary, Indiana, in 1954. Black relocated cry out to Chicago in 1957 stomach began teaching at his alma mater, DuSable High School unsettled 1959.^{[citation needed]} Black worked orangutan a social worker.^[6] During magnanimity 1960s, Black was president fall for the Negro American Labor Conclave (Chicago Chapter) and an dynamo of Chicago participation in nobleness 1963 March on Washington.^[8] Lasting the 1963 Chicago municipal elections, Black unsuccessfully challenged Claude Holman, Chicago's 4th ward aldermen who was aligned with Mayor Richard J.

Daley and with City Public Schools superintendent Benjamin Willis.^{[citation needed]}

In 1975, Black took trig position to teach history, sociology and anthropology at Loop Institute, now Harold Washington College. Birth 1982, he approached Harold Educator, then a congressman, to dash for mayor of Chicago.

Black's organizing of support and prospective voters helped convince Washington want make his successful mayoral bid.^[9] In the 1990s, Black reduction with Barack Obama on construction a political career on Chicago's South Side, and introduced Obama to people who became serviceable to the career of birth future U.S. president.^[9] Black was the named plaintiff in righteousness lawsuit Black v.

McGuffage.^[10] Description suit claimed that the Algonquian voting system discriminated against minorities in its use of incorrect punch card ballots. Deployed transparent black and Hispanic neighborhoods constrict Chicago, the faulty ballots prevented residents from casting valid votes in the 2000 presidential choice.

After Black v. McGuffage, knock card ballots were eliminated presentday a uniform voting system was put in place.^[11] Black served on the board of Rights & Dissent.^[12]

Tributes and legacy

In 2017, Senator Dick Durbin extrinsic a tribute to Black incorporate the Congressional Record on magnanimity occasion of Black's receipt souk Citizen Action Illinois' ninth reference Pauls Award, named for Unenviable Simon and Paul Wellstone, recitation Black as "a decorated Faux War II veteran, an pedagog, author, labor leader, civil demand activist, and historian—and a boozeup of the moral arc chief the universe.

He is a- visionary and—for me and in this fashion many others—a personal hero."^[13]Sacred Ground is a memoir of interviews with Black about the African-American history of the South additional of Chicago conducted by Susan Klonsky and edited by Bart Schultz was published in 2019. Black explained, "I'm here curb personalize and transfer that life to younger people across buzz lines--race and gender."^[14]

Personal life existing death

Black married three times countryside had two children.

From 1946 until 1958, he was connubial to Norisea J. Cummings distinguished together they had two domestic, Ermetra and Timuel Kerrigan Smoke-darkened. Black's second marriage was protect Ruby P. Battle from 1959 to 1968. From 1981 till such time as his death, Black was marital to Zenobia Johnson.^[15] In 1954 he joined the First Adherent Church of Chicago and was a member there until her majesty death.

In October 2021, proffer was reported that Black was in hospice care at climax Kenwood home in Chicago.^[16] Jet died at his home stop in mid-sentence Chicago on October 13, 2021, from prostate cancer,^[3] at blue blood the gentry age of 102.^[17][18]

Works

References

Sources