75 years covering race in Chicago: A newspaper for a diverse city

Fletcher Martin

    Since February, I've been doing deep dives into the history of the Sun-Times to mark its 75th anniversary as a daily paper. I've written how we covered major disasters, and City Hall.  A prudent man would not have attempted to encapsulate as broad and fraught topic as our coverage of race over 75 years into one 3,000 word story. But I am not a prudent man. And yes, there was hesitation over whether I was the right person to tell this story, and I pointed out that if Jonathan Eig can write the definitive biography of Martin Luther King, then I can do this, or try to. It could easily have been three times as long and gone all sorts of other places. But this is where it went with the space I had.

     “Copy!”
     The way newspapering worked in 1951 was, when a reporter got to the end of the page he was pounding out on his Royal manual typewriter, he would zip out the copybook — a thick bundle of newsprint and carbon paper — from under the typewriter platen, remove one beige sheet and yell “Copy!” or “Boy!” Immediately, a copy boy, who by then was sometimes a girl, would run over and rush the page over to the city desk.
     Only nobody came running when Fletcher Martin called “copy” at the Chicago Sun-Times newsroom at 211 W. Wacker Dr. in 1951. He sat there, arm out, waving a page over his head. The copy boys ringing the room gazed determinedly into space.
     Martin was a former World War II correspondent who had been city editor of the Louisville Defender. He spent a year at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow — the first Black person to hold a Nieman Fellowship, then the first Black reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times.
     Hence the problem. Copy boys were the lowest form of life in a newsroom yet felt entitled to simply ignore Martin — until a white assistant city editor saw what was happening, stepped in and read the nearest copy boy the riot act.
     “Boy,” he said, according to a reminiscence published years later. “Go over, and get that copy. It’s hot copy, and his is as important as anyone else’s.”
     Or more. Martin brought a perspective that would serve the paper well in the 1950s as it tried to pivot into the civil rights era. The Sun-Times sent him to cover the NAACP convention in California in July 1956, and he wrote about two figures who were transforming America. His story began:
     “SAN FRANCISCO — Two widely dissimilar men have captured the imagination of the NAACP convention here and may emerge as the new Negro leaders. They are Thurgood Marshall, special counsel of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.”
     Marshall would become the first Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice. And King ... well, he needs no explanation, one hopes.
     As the Sun-Times looks back during its 75th year of continual daily publication, race is a key lens through which to understand the newspaper’s history. Race is often referred to as “the third rail” of Chicago politics — in both the “provides animating power” and the “touch it and you die” senses.
     A fraught topic. But ignoring it isn’t an option. Race is too huge a subject to tackle thoroughly, too important to be sidestepped.
     The Sun-Times played a dual role regarding race. First as a news source reflecting the enormous changes — and lack of change — that have affected the city since the daily paper began in 1948, from the impact of Black vets returning home, their eyes opened to the possibilities of life, to the struggles over housing, redlining, the riots to Latino migration and the rise of the Asian community as an outspoken force. In the early 1950s, thousands of white Chicagoans would rampage in the streets if a Black family moved where they thought they didn’t belong.
     And second as an employer of Black, Latino and Asian writers, editors, photographers, columnists, executives. Martin was the first of a string of talented journalists who would distinguish the paper, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers John H. White and John J. Kim.

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Signature signs off

    

     I'm a restaurant kind of guy, as you know all too well, and have chowed down at Chicago culinary landmarks from the Bakery to the Berghoff, the Blackhawk to Blackbird, and those are just the Bs. All long gone*, alas.
     Add to the roll of the departed the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the building formerly known as the John Hancock Center (at the moment calling itself "875 N. Michigan," if you're keeping track. No need to memorize that; if history is any judge it'll be called something else in three years). The Signature Room abruptly announced it was closing down Thursday due to "severe economic hardship."

     That is sad. Nobody likes to see a business fail. Particularly a Chicago institution such as the Signature Room.

     And yet ... at the news, I felt ... nothing. Zero. Just as certain deaths —  former Sun-Times publisher Jim Hoge comes to mind — inspire a nearly indignant, "He was still alive?" so my reaction to hearing that the Signature Room closed would be the same as if I got an email from the Snuggery announcing it was cancelling Disco Thursdays. "Really? It's still in business? That is surprising." I would not have blinked if, instead of reading about the restaurant abruptly closing, I'd seen a story containing the line, "the building recently called 875 N. Michigan, formerly home to the Signature Room, which closed permanently after a kitchen fire in 2004, will now market itself under the name "41.8/-87.6," which are its latitude and longitude coordinates..."
     I think I went to the bar on the 96th floor once, had a Heineken and left, but can't be sure — it was back in the day. I have the residual memory of a kind of insidery smugness, knowing you can pay $5 for a beer and gaze out from the 96th floor, or $15 for admission and no beer two floors below. I know my wife and I never ate there, for the simple reason that the Signature Room seemed one of those places where people who never go out to dinner go out to dinner. High school students went to the Signature Room after prom. It was the sort of place where couples from Peoria who ... 
     Actually, you know what? No, I'm not doing this. I'm not crapping on 30 years worth of memories for nice people who had their special moment at the Signature Room. I'm sure it was wonderful. I know whenever someone slags one my favorite places, whenever somebody informs me that Gene & Georgetti feels like the dank basement rumpus room of your mobbed up uncle in River Forest, or that Diana's Opaa was not particularly clean, I'd become indignant. ("Clean? Clean? It's not supposed to be clean!?! It's got Petros!!!") Despite the validity of the criticism. 
     So if you went to the Signature Room in 1996 and had a bottle of Lancer's Rose with your chicken kiev and he popped the question and your heart was going like mad and yes you said yes I will Yes, then God bless you. Why would I dream of sneering at that? Particularly to a place I'd never been, though I noticed the two page spread in the Sun-Times mentioned the view, repeatedly, but never said a word about the food. 
     That's okay. With certain places, the food is incidental. You went to Chicago Cut (I'm using the past tense because I have no idea what's been going on the past three years) for the networking and the view. The fact you had to eat their steak, well, that's the price you paid or, rather, somebody else paid.

     The inclusion of the word "Room" in the name may be the tip-off. I can't think of a good restaurant that's a "Room." The Pump Room? I remember their eggs benedict, after a night spent at the Ambassador East, resembling an Egg McMuffin. The Walnut Room? Again, a nice space. I suppose it would come down to how much you like chicken pot pie. Is the Walnut Room even still open? If I had to bet the ranch ... I'd guess ... yes, it is still open, in Macy's. (Checking ... whew, yes, the house is safe; 116 years and counting. And host to ... not just one, but a series of drag brunches. That's the danger of coming to a topic from a place of ignorance. I might have to stop by for a pot pie, only $16. Maybe the food at the Signature Room was sublime. I doubt it; but it's possible).

     Okay, I think that's enough for today. I considered putting this in the paper, but had second thoughts, and figured, if only for harm reduction, it would be better served in the private garden of Every Goddamn Day (though not so private anymore — September was my first month breaking 300,000 views, though a lot of that has to be outraged Aldi fans visiting once, snarling something nasty and never returning, plus robo spiders in Singapore clonicly clicking for some purpose I shudder to imagine.  

* There is a restaurant currently operating in the space once occupied by the old Berghoff, which closed in 2006. It goes by the same name, but is some sort of brewpub, an ersatz imitation of itself — I wouldn't know the specifics, having never set a foot inside, being unable to bring myself to step around the enormous pile of human hearts, ripped from the chests of loyal Berghoff patrons in 2006 and left in a pile to rot in the entranceway. Hard to imaging slipping past that to eat.

As politics degrade, language does, too

Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary.

     Yeah, I watched the second Republican presidential debate Wednesday night. Seven dunces without a chance of success trying to talk over each other. Through the cacophony, certain words kept popping out, like “agenda,” “Chicago” and “elites.” Old words with new meanings. So I worked up a quick glossary to help bring us up to speed.

agenda n. 1) the program of items to be discussed at a meeting (now obscure); 2) anything you don’t want to happen. “Joe Biden’s Green New Deal agenda” — former Vice President Mike Pence; 3) efforts by a group you loathe, often the LGBTQ community, to participate in, and therefore ruin, life activities that are your exclusive domain, like marrying, raising children, or visiting a theme park. “Hold Disney accountable for abandoning its historic mission of providing wholesome entertainment to one that is dedicated to imposing the LGBT agenda on unsuspecting children.” — Brian S. Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage.

Chicago n. 1) an American city at the confluence of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, its organized crime a source of endless fascination and grudging national pride, when committed by white people 100 years ago (now rare); 2) a menacing mythical place ridden with random crime whose existence tacitly undermines the value of both racial minorities and Democratic leadership. “Inner cities like Chicago ... ” — South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

elites pl. n. 1) rich jerks other than oneself. “Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.” — billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, presumably not speaking about himself; 2) out-of-touch bureaucrats serving in a branch of government different than one’s own. “The reason why we’re in this mess is because elites in D.C. for far too long have chosen surrender over strength.” — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

hate n. the imagined impulse leading to a dire result, particularly for former President Donald Trump. By pretending, for instance, legal prosecution is the result of malice, and not due to laws being enforced, it is possible, if not persuasive, to pretend that the just desserts of one’s misdeeds are due to a conspiracy of irrational hostility and not the neutral administration of justice. “Never before have I seen such hatred toward one person by a judge.” — Eric Trump, on the ruling that his father’s business empire is based on fraud.

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The $46.95 pizza.

     I write a lot. Every goddamn day, in fact. Okay, some days on EGD I don't write more than a brief intro to go atop something I've hauled out of the vault because my brain is just too spent to do anything else. Though usually that's because I've been working on some massive project that drained away all my energies. For instance, Tuesday's post — I thought of writing something new, but had just polished off a 3,000-word history project for the paper. I was fried.
     Trying to fill that void, I pretty much touch on anything. Yet there are things I don't say. For instance, our older son was with us for a few days last week, and that required pizza from Lou Malnati's — "the Prodigal Pie" as I call it. My wife and I always get the same thing — deep dish, buttercrust, spinach and mushroom. Though his wishes had to be considered, and he voted for sausage and onions. So half one, half the other.
     Do you see what's coming? I didn't.
     Place the order. Wait 25 minutes. Get in the car and drive the minute to Lou Malnati's — I can walk, and have. But something about the five-minute quickstep with a hot pizza in your hands. I figure, speed is my friend.
     I go into the empty store. Give the youth at the counter my name. He consults the register and says, "That'll be $46.95."
     Forty-six dollars. And ninety-five cents. For a large pizza. I don't understand how that's possible. The pizza wasn't quite ready — I like to come a few minutes early, to maximize hotness when it hits the table. So I pulled out my phone and consulted the menu. A large pizza is $28.89.  Realization dawned. The toppings. The toppings were the culprit. Four toppings — spinach, mushroom, onion, sausage — at $3.70 per, and no break for just covering half the pizza. "Full price charged for 1/2 portions." it says, right there. So 4 x 3.70, or $14.80. Plus the 99 cents for butter crust. That comes to $44.68. Plus tax.
     I've heard of this inflation business, but never had it struck home in quite this way before. Yowza. This pricy pie seemed worth sharing. A near 50 buck pizza seems a milestone (though not, I hasten to add, one that makes me even a tiny bit inclined toward electing a liar, bully, fraud and traitor as president. As bad as people who support Trump because he echoes their biases and fears, even worse are the guys who claim to be ready to shred their country's core values because gas costs $4).
    I took the pizza home, shared the news, put in a plug for two toppings next time, and we dug in. I never wrote any of this because ... well, a person as blessed as I am should not complain about trivialities. I'd have forgotten all about it. 

     But the same day, David Brooks, the conservative troll living under the bridge of the New York Times, tweeted a photo of a cheeseburger and a double whiskey, complaining of their price. I thought my pizza was expensive....
     “This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport,” Brooks wrote  on the social media site some still call Twitter. “This is why Americans think the economy is terrible.”
     The tweet blew up the Internet — as of Wednesday it had 38.5 million views, as readers piled on. Why? Somebody was ignoring the booze aspect. The restaurant itself pointed out that $17 was for the burger and the rest was Brooks' bar bill (I often wonder how he can live with himself; now I have a clue).

     Suddenly my expensive pizza conclusion (order fewer toppings) seemed like solid Midwestern good sense compared to Brooks' East Coast faux economic insight,  "This is why Americans think the economy is terrible." (No, they think the economy is terrible because publications like the New York Times keep telling them it is). 

     And perhaps because a pizza can push fifty bucks if it has a few extra toppings. Though at least with Lou Malnati's, it's worth it.

Imagining injury in order to inflict it

     Are there a lot of trans people? That depends on what you consider “a lot.”
     A government survey found 1.4% of 13- to 17-year-olds identify as trans, compared to 0.5% of adults. That shift partially explains part of the perception that this is a new, growing phenomenon.
     Living an ordinary suburban life on an ordinary suburban street, I personally know ... let’s see ... one, two, three, four trans young persons. I would call that a lot. They impact my life — beyond when I occasionally grope to recall their preferred pronoun — no more or less than any other acquaintance.
     So why are trans folk such an enormous political issue in 2023 America? Three reasons:
     First, for a person who spent their entire life grounded in binary gender identity, the trans presentation can be confusing, in a what-the-heck-am-I-looking-at? sense. I once glanced out the window and saw a neighbor’s adult child with a beard and breasts, pushing a baby carriage down the street. It took a bit of pondering to sort that one out, eventually filing the image under “Business, none of my.”
     If you strip the process of malice, I don’t see anything wrong with allowing people this adjustment. It can take a trans individual a long time to work out their own particular gender identity — to understand who they themselves are — so it doesn’t seem fair to then demand that any random passerby immediately achieve a similar understanding.

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Flashback 2006: "We didn't know what it meant."

Captured Syrian tanks

     Usually, I have a nose for anniversaries. I can see them coming. Not this time; I didn't realize that Monday was the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War until the rabbi leading the service mentioned it at the start of his sermon. Though I suppose it's fitting that the anniversary snuck up on me. It reminded me of the moment captured at beginning of this column, from 17 years ago. Back then, the column ran a full page, and I've left in the subheads, and the rest, including the lame joke at the end, in case you feel like reading it.

OPENING SHOT

     I once found myself on the Golan Heights, chatting with an Israeli general. We stared down at the sweeping vista; you could see for miles, into Lebanon and Syria.
     He was a veteran of the 1973 war, when the Syrians recaptured the heights, briefly, and I had a question that — though impolitic — I just had to ask:
     How'd they ever sneak up on you? How could the Syrian tanks possibly have stormed the heights and taken you guys by surprise?
     He paused, thinking — this was obviously a difficult question — then gave me an honest answer, one that has stuck in my mind ever since.
     "We saw them coming," he said. "But we didn't understand what that meant."

THE MIND HAS TO ADJUST

     I didn't go into the office Monday, deciding instead to camp out in front of my computer and watch CNN's coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, rebroadcast online as if in real-time.
     I didn't watch the day the attacks happened — busy — and was interested in seeing how the coverage transpired.
     What impressed me was how difficult it was for the anchors to process what was happening in front of them. Even though the second plane struck on live television — as some witness to the first attack prattled on, unaware — it was unnoticed and unremarked upon for a long time. At first they thought it might be a secondary explosion, related to the first plane. Even after they realized a second plane had hit, the CNN announcer clung to the notion that some kind of navigational beacon error might be sending airplanes into the World Trade Center.
     The word "terrorism" was never used, nor the possibility raised, until an unnamed government official announced that this was indeed an attack.
     I don't think CNN did a bad job, under the circumstances. Only it does remind us — as we cope with this uncertain future — how very human it is to cling to normalcy, to ignore what is going on under your nose if it deviates too much from the standard script. If Osama bin Laden himself, in turban and flowing robes, got aboard the 8:16 Metra Milwaukee North Line train this morning, and sat quietly holding a black spherical cartoon bomb on his lap, my guess is that most people on the train wouldn't give him a second glance, not until he drew out his lighter and lit the fuse, and only then because smoking isn't allowed on the train.

EMPTY PROMISES

     President Bush's first remarks on that day five years ago — Florida schoolchildren standing incongruously behind him, as if he were still going to talk about education — were to pledge the full support and power of the federal government to aid the disaster in New York.
     He needs to keep that pledge. As you probably have heard, as many as 70 percent of the firefighters, police officers, construction workers and ordinary citizens who rushed to the World Trade Center site to help, and who aided in clearing the scene, are now suffering from lung disease due to inhaling all that dust. Just like Americans as a whole, 40 percent of them do not have health insurance.
     Are they to be punished for helping? To suffer for their heroism, unaided by government? I watched Bush's speech Monday night, and was jarred to see him praise the dead and ignore the living. This is unacceptable, and the president should say nothing until he commits the nation to stand by its bravest citizens. He needs to make good on his past words before uttering any more.

WE'RE MORE POPULAR DEAD

     The Sept. 11 anniversary brought a blizzard of commentary, much of it daft. The most ridiculous, to me, was the statement, repeated again and again, that the United States enjoyed a groundswell of international sympathy immediately after 9/11, support we squandered by acting the way we did.
     Well, yeah. But what of it? They always love you when you die. Take it from a Jew — the world likes nothing better than to sit back and cluck sympathetically at your destruction.
     Act, however, in any kind of decisive fashion, protect yourself, and disapproval is swift. Israel was the spunky underdog when the Arab nations had its neck on the block and were sharpening their scimitars. Now that Israel has a bit of might, the world wails that it's a bully and an aggressor.
     President Bush had to do something after 9/11, and what he did — go after bin Laden and his supporters, the Taliban in Afghanistan, made perfect sense. The Iraqi war was more a stretch, but even then, WMD or no, there was a logic: One of the lessons of 9/11 was not to turn a blind eye to threats.
      It is fooling ourselves to pretend that, if only we had left Iraq alone, then the world would be our buddy. It wasn't before, and the flash of pity at 9/11 was certain to pass no matter what we did.

I THINK SHE LASTED A YEAR. . .

     You don't remember Lynda Gorov. But I do. She was going to be a big-deal Chicago columnist. In the hoopla welcoming her, which included billboards, she told Michael Miner that she was preparing for her newspapering fame by lying on a beach in Mexico, reading a Mike Royko anthology. The gods stirred.
     It has been nearly 20 years, but I can still feel the headshaking shiver of utter, slack-jawed, visceral disgust that rattled across me.
     Flash to today. Michael McCarthy, a Second City alum, is telling the Tribune all about his new radio show debuting next week on Q101. It's going to be Chicagoriffic!
     "At the end I do a commentary," he said. "I used Mike Royko as my model. I'm rereading his columns."
     Good idea. Hope it works. Though isn't that like rubbing a $20 bill against your wallet, trying to breed money? Royko doesn't rub off and only fools try. Whenever a reader writes in to say that I'm no Royko, I thank him, sincerely, because not being Royko is one of my major life goals.
     I particularly wouldn't use Royko as an example were I in broadcasting, given how wooden he was when he did political commentary on TV.
     But maybe you'll do better, Michael McCarthy, in however many months you've got before Q101 gives you the flush. Welcome to Chicago, pal, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. (Editor's note: McCarthy lasted a little more than a year at Q101 and died in 2020, age 61).

TODAY'S CHUCKLE

     This one is not my fault. It is the fault of Robin Reizner, of Vernon Hills, who in turn blames a client:
     What is Irish and stays out all night?
     Patio Furniture

     A lucrative client, I assume.

                                        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 13, 2006

Danes make bikes work; so can we.

Bikes parked at the Copenhagen train station.

     I first rode a bicycle in downtown Chicago the summer of 2000. We were about to move from East Lakeview to Northbrook, and I figured this was my chance to bike to work. I took the lakefront bike path to Grand Avenue, then cut over to the paper, then on Wabash.
     Or tried to.
     Nearly a quarter century later, I still remember that terrifying gantlet of zooming cars and idling trucks. I felt lucky to get to 401 N. Wabash alive.
     That might have also been my last bike ride downtown. But in the summer of 2013, Chicago introduced the Divvy bikeshare system. Pay a few bucks, undock the heaviest bicycle ever made and ride around the city to your heart’s content. A dock was installed right outside the paper: duty called.
     Starting small, I’d Divvy to lunch spots a bit farther than comfortable walking distance. Before I knew it, I was a pro, riding in February, my hands snug in their pricy lobster gloves. Zipping up the center of LaSalle Street at noon felt like being 12 years old again and standing on the pedals of my green Schwinn Typhoon. Riding a bike meant freedom, happiness.
     The Divvy led to adventures. Riding a Divvy, I was mocked by both Rahm Emanuel (rolling down the window of his SUV to give me grief in traffic) and Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, the president of Mongolia. (I went to his opening of the new consulate here in 2013 because there was a Divvy dock out front. As the only journalist present, I was bustled over and told to ask a question. I inquired about their border with China. “That’s a stupid question,” the Golden Swallow of Democracy replied, to general hilarity.)
     I haven’t Divvied since COVID struck — I’m not downtown enough to justify the annual fee. But my experience left me attuned to the struggles of those who navigate Chicago by bike, or try to.
     My social-media-formerly-known-as-Twitter feed is filled with reports of riders killed by careless motorists and the frustrating struggle to make Chicago more bike-friendly, which can seem one of those impossible tasks like building affordable housing or reforming the police.
     It was certainly on my mind during my recent trip to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, which can be considered the bike heaven and bike hell of Europe.

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