Eve L. Ewing Collection - I See My Light Shining

Many elders in this collection have common experiences, including shared familial roots in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. However, the motivations behind their families’ moves to Chicago are varied. In their interviews, narrators assert that their experiences—and Blackness itself—are not monolithic: Blackness can be at once an individual experience, an intimate understanding, or a communal tethering, as vast as crossing an ocean or as natural as gravity.

Maséqua Myers, a youth arts educator who was active in the Black Arts Movement, summarizes:

And so a part of moving to all of these places was to, of course, better ourselves—you know, have a better education, have a better environment, a less violent environment, that kind of thing. But actually, the reason is the fact that we forget that there’s racism sometimes. [...] And what happened with our family, in both generations—in my generation, my mom and dad—was that we forgot those kind of places were all around white people. [laughter] So when my dad came to Chicago and my mom said, “Find a good school system, find a good neighborhood,” well, the neighborhoods that he found that was most likely a place that we’d want to live would be where white people were living at the time. 

Narrator Ayo Maat’s father left the South over safety concerns: “My father left Mississippi because they were going to kill him because he beat up the boss’s son for calling him a n[-----]. [...]. My grandfather, I don’t know if he was ever a slave. He certainly didn’t act like one. He and my father were never afraid of anyone. They demanded respect."

Others, including narrator Lila McKay’s father, were drawn by economic and career opportunities: “My dad came to Chicago because it was during the time when the cotton work was bad and low, and he wanted to make money as a laborer. He didn’t have education, but there were factories up north that he could come to to work in. And so that’s why he came to Chicago."

For some, leaving the South meant both employment opportunities and proximity to family that had already migrated. Myers shares, “And my mother left the South because she’s the baby of thirteen children, and there’s only two of them left. So she was following her big sisters. And the main reason was that they thought they could get better jobs in Chicago than what they were getting in Birmingham."

Many elders in this collection retell familial accounts of racial violence in the South. Sandra Jackson-Opoku, a writer born and raised in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, highlights “And I would always ask, “Why can't we go South for the summer?” and she’d say, “Yes, they killed Black kids down there, Emmett Till—” It was like Emmett Till was a family member, we spoke about him so much. And my mother would talk about one of her bitterest stories was having been—that there was a peach tree that everybody knew was infested with wasps, but she called them wasses [phonetic]. So nobody really climbed that tree to get peaches. And a white woman told her to go and get some peaches out of the tree, and you couldn’t say no to white people in the South.”

Floyd Webb, who was born in Mississippi, remembers his family migrating to Chicago during the last wave of the Great Migration. Webb recalls two incidents that led his father to join the Army at fifteen to escape the South: “He says two things happened: he was picking cotton and the white man he was picking cotton for got mad at him because he didn’t pick fast enough, and he told him that he picked cotton like a German.” [...] So the second thing that happened was [laughs] my father was sitting in his place, and he said this, and I almost hit the floor, he said, “The other thing it was was they killed that boy [Willie McGee] on the radio traveling in the electric chair.” I said, “What do you mean a traveling electric chair?” He said, “Yeah, they had a driver electric chair that they took from courtroom to courtroom and they executed him live on the air between commercials and some stuff like that.” I said, “Dad, that cannot be true.”

Described by Rami, Webb, and Thompson, including Lila McKay “It’s not that I wanted to see the end of Cabrini-Green, but it was like, there was so much negativity that had taken over in the place. So many people lost their lives to gun violence and gang violence and just, there were so many people that were devastated. It was a rare thing if you were there as a tenant and you didn’t smoke or drink or do drugs. You know, something was awful wrong with you. That’s why I left, because, you know, I didn’t want that for my children. So it had gone down so deeply, so badly, so horrifically, that it was like, if you really want to make it in life, get out or you won’t.”

Though Lila McKay moved to the North side, she didn’t forget where she grew up: “And by the time my fourth child was born, I left Cabrini-Green and went north. I went to the North Side of Chicago. But my Cabrini-Green time was rich and it was foundational.”

Some elders were drawn to other neighborhoods for work or school, contributing to new communities. Carol Adams, an educator, researcher, and community leader, moved from Chatham to South Shore while she was a student. “I found it and hey, yes, and I loved its community. I’m very dedicated to the South Shore community.”

Jae Rice, Director of Communications at Brave Space Alliance, recalls growing up in Evanston, a Chicago suburb, before moving to the city: “But it's a unique suburb to grow up in, it's not like, you know, Schaumburg. It's very close to Chicago, so a lot of Chicago influence have Evanston, but I'm a big advocate for it. Like, I plan to move back there someday. So growing up, I could say that I always felt safe. Didn't always feel seen, but always felt safe, for sure.”

This sense of not feeling fully seen led Rice to find an expanded sense of self when moving to Chicago:

"Q: Do you feel like getting into, like, arriving in Chicago when you did, and being in more Black, queer spaces influenced your own thinking about your gender identity, or gave you a different kind of space to that transitioning?
 

Rice: Definitely. Definitely. I always tell people, I'm, like, you know, I'm—yes, I think folks refer to me as a trans activist, but I'm, like, "Look, before I come to Chicago, I'm, like, pronouns, what is that?" Like, we weren't taught this. We didn't have that language. Like, people—I remember the first party we went to in Hyde Park, because we were living—our sister-in-law was in Hyde Park. And someone asked me my pronoun—or, no, gave me theirs, how we say— I said—they said something about "they," and I'm, like, where are y'all? I was so confused! [Laughter] I was mind-boggled."

This collection brings forth the ever changing and adapting lives of Black elders in Chicago, showcasing their vibrancy and diversity. With the Great Migration as a nexus point for many elders in Chicago, this collection presents a tapestry of generational experiences and shares the beauty in each Black elder.