Civil rights leader Timuel Black laid to rest in small but robust service attended by community, local leaders

“The world was Timuel Black’s classroom and we have lived enough to be some of his many students,” the Rev. Michael Pfleger said of the late South Side griot Timuel Dixon Black Jr.

Pfleger eulogized Black on Friday at his small, but robust homegoing at Hyde Park’s First Unitarian Church, Black’s church since 1953. Timuel Black died Oct. 13 at age 102 after a short stay in hospice. Family, academics, historians, activists and local politicians, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, were in attendance to honor Black’s service to the community and to the world.

“Timuel was a person who could speak at the podium of America’s most prestigious universities while never losing his ability to talk to people in the community or young people on the block,” Pfleger said. “He sat in the circles of the most wealthy and powerful of the world, but unlike many who get in those circles, he never forgot his role. His role was to be their conscience and their moral compass. No matter where he went or who he met, he would always take with him his love for the sacred ground of the South Side of Chicago.”

Since 1919, Black walked the streets of Bronzeville and remained there except for a few interludes and during World War II, as he wrote in his 2019 memoir, “Sacred Ground.” Black arrived in Chicago with the first wave of Blacks Americans who were fleeing racial violence and discrimination in the South. He grew up seeing firsthand how restrictive housing covenants, racial wage gaps and discrimination in educational opportunities and jobs shaped segregation in the city creating a separate Black metropolis. In his writing and oral history projects, Black described not only the pain of living through segregation, but also the joys of living in a thriving Black community. It was this history that he shared with generations of students when he was an educator at Chicago Public Schools and City Colleges of Chicago. It’s history that he passed on through bus tours of his beloved South Side home through the University of Chicago.

Black’s life was one of education and social justice, as evidenced by the words of local politicians who spoke at the service. Lightfoot teared up when she recalled sitting at the foot of Black’s bed before he transitioned, touching his socked feet. Michael Alexander Strautmanis of the Obama Foundation also had to pause in his remembrance of Black: “I may not run for as long as Tim did ... but when I’m ready to meet my savior and my God, I hope someone will note that I have handed the baton that Timuel Black handed to me, and I have done my part to move us closer to the beloved community that Tim Black wished for all of us.”

Acknowledgements of Black’s legacy from the ACLU, the University of Chicago and Illinois Sen. Mattie Hunter were read by U. of C. executive Wendy Walker Williams. His wife, Zenobia Johnson-Black, received a standing ovation for standing at his side through the years.

“He mentored and advised countless men, women and youth, giving them not only historical knowledge, but seeking to teach them how to bring about transformative change. He was never just satisfied about knowing the history, but how do we create and shape the history going forward,” Pfleger said. “He was consistently relevant — relevant to community issues and relevant and involved in social and racial justice issues. Timuel was indeed the wisest of elders, but he was forever young and always ready to roll up his sleeves and get involved.”

drockett@chicagotribune.com