Black, Timuel D.

Timuel Black was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on December 7, 1918, but was raised in Chicago – a place he loves to call home. He is a revered and highly respected educator, political activist, community leader, oral historian and philosopher.

After matriculating from Burke Elementary School and DuSable High School in Chicago, Black enrolled at Roosevelt University. There, he received his bachelor's degree. Black also later earned a master's degree from the University of Chicago. One of his first jobs involved working as a field representative for the Metropolitan Burial Society.

After being drafted into the Army during World War II, Black returned to school and became a social worker. He has taught at a variety of high schools as well as colleges and universities. He is a pioneer in the independent black political movement and coined the phrase "plantation politics." Timuel Black has run for public office several times, including campaigns for Chicago's 4th Ward alderman, state senator of the 22nd District and state representative of the 22nd District. Black has spent his life furthering the cause of social justice. Black has recently completed a book,Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Great Migration. The book chronicles black Chicago history from the 1920s to the present, and is based on interviews he conducted.

Born on Dec. 7, 1918 in Birmingham, Ala. The family moved the next year to the south side of Chicago, just months after the Chicago Race Riots in 1919. He grew up in the 'Black Belt' of Chicago, with his parents stressing the importance of an education, even in an era of discrimination and hard economic times. Black graduated from Du Sable High School in 1937, and then worked in a variety of jobs in the neighborhood. In Dec. 1941 he was working for a fur dealer in Milwaukee, but returned to Chicago and began selling insurance before being drafted in 1943. Black was inducted into the Army at Camp Custer, Mich., then was shipped to Ft. Lee, Va. for basic training. He received training in logistics and was soon assigned to 308th Quartermaster Railhead Company. While in Va., Black was exposed to more overt forms of racism, and observed differences between northern urban blacks, and the mostly rural blacks of the south. His unit shipped to Wales in early 1944, and was eventually moved to an encampment near Southampton, England for further training and preparations for the D-Day landings. The 308th landed on Utah Beach just days after the initial landings, and the troops were soon performing their duties, first with the First Army, then with the Third Army under Gen. George Patton, as the Allies drove across northern France. The unit's manual tasks were performed by captured German POWs. Black's unit participated in the Battle of the Bulge, as well as fighting in the Rhineland. He saw the Buchenwald Concentration Camp several days following its liberation by U.S. forces, an event that deeply affected him. Thereafter, he committed his life to the cause of civil rights.

Timuel D. Black Jr. is a prominent civil rights activist and also a professor emeritus of social sciences at the City Colleges of Chicago. Born in Birmingham Alabama, Timuel D. Black, Jr. came to Chicago before he was a year old. The neighborhoods of Chicago are the map of his life. He is a well-known and highly respected educator, community leader, oral historian, and political activist. He was educated at Chicago's Burke Elementary School and DuSable High School and later earned a bachelor's degree from Roosevelt University and a master's degree from the University of Chicago. He taught at DuSable, Farragut, and Hyde Park high schools in Chicago, and became a renowned teacher and administrator at the City Colleges of Chicago. He is professor Emeritus of Social Science at the City Colleges of Chicago. His most recent publication is Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration (2005), an oral history based on interviews that chronicle the impact of the southern migration of Chicago's Black history. A second volume of Bridges of Memory was published in 2008. (http://www.prairie.org/bios/eat-think-be-merry/timuel-d-black)

Timuel D. Black was a high school teacher in Chicago's public schools, a civil and labor rights activist, an oral historian, and a professor and administrator at the City Colleges of Chicago. Black was born in Birmingham (Ala.) and came to Chicago in 1919 at eight months of age. He attended Roosevelt University and the University of Chicago.