Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a five-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.
— Matt Moore (@MattKenMoore)
This afternoon will be mostly sunny with a high near 15 degrees with wind chill values as low as -6. Tonight will be clear with a low near 5 and wind chill values as low as -8. Tomorrow will be sunny with a high near 29.
Top story
Altgeld Gardens Memorial Wall’s place in Chicago history is clear, its future less so
One hundred and 30 blocks south of the Loop, there’s a stretch of brick wall, painted yellow, covered with hundreds and hundreds of hand-lettered names.
Some of the bricks are chipped. Some of the paint is faded. But to people who live — or once lived — in the Altgeld Gardens public housing community, this is their Memorial Wall, a place of family record for lost loved ones and a place of history.
A young man stops to scan the names.
“This is my grandmama name right here, Leola Lockett,” he says, declining to give his name. “She was a beautiful lady. These are all the people who’s raised up out here, who was part of the community. I miss ’em all.”
Baron Johnson grew up in Altgeld Gardens and comes back every year for an “old-timers” picnic. He gets sentimental recalling his time there: the baseball teams, late-night roller-skating in a school gymnasium, the annual flower festival, a village in which people looked out for each other’s kids.
“And everybody, when they come up to visit, they recognize the names and their memories,” Johnson says. “So the wall is kind of like a historic monument for everybody who used to live or still lives in Altgeld Gardens.”
Still, parts of the wall’s history is uncertain, and its future is even more unclear. The Memorial Wall sits in the breezeway of a dilapidated, privately owned commercial building at the center of the community. That building has been in demolition court for the last few years, and the wall’s future is tied up with it.
Altgeld Gardens is the most isolated of Chicago’s public housing communities. Completed in the mid-1940s, the complex was a racially segregated development for African Americans — war workers in the nearby armaments industry and returning veterans. In contrast to the high-rises that the Chicago Housing Authority later built, its original 1,500 units were two-story brick rowhouses laid out on curving streets, each with its own small front yard. The Gardens, as it’s often called, had a suburban feel.
At the heart of the Altgeld development was a privately owned commercial building that for decades housed a collection of Black-owned businesses: a drugstore, a shoe-repair shop, the Funky London lounge, a barber shop, the Garden of Eden beauty shop and, most important, a grocery store. This unusual building was designed by brothers George Keck and William Keck, the Keck & Keck architectural team who dreamed up the “House of Tomorrow” for Chicago’s 1933 World’s Fair. Built in the modernist style, this blocklong building had a swooping, cantilevered canopy and curving, glassy front wall. It served as a kind of town center, where people shopped and socialized.
Residents called the building Up-Top, and the Memorial Wall took root there in a covered breezeway that runs through the building.
WBEZ’s Linda Paul has more on the wall here.
More news you need
- Family members and neighbors are searching for answers after the body of 96-year-old Regina Michalski was found in a freezer in a garage behind a Portage Park apartment. “She didn’t deserve to go that way,” Michalski’s granddaughter told the Sun-Times.
- Hundreds of people gathered in downtown Chicago last night to demand justice for Tyre Nichols, who was beaten to death by police officers in Memphis, and call for swift police reforms across the country. Our Emmanuel Camarillo has more from the demonstration here.
- An avalanche of opposition from the police union’s staunchest City Council allies today derailed a $1 million settlement that would have compensated the family of a 26-year-old man who was shot and killed by police in 2019. Some Council members were furious over plans to settle the lawsuit by the mother of Sharell Brown, noting COPA concluded Brown was armed and posed a threat to police.
- Four years after filing the first in what became a wave of criminal charges against R. Kelly, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx announced yesterday her office will no longer pursue four pending sex abuse cases against the disgraced R&B star. The charges were officially dropped today.
- Social service agencies are bracing for a possible uptick in demand for resources once emergency funds that provide individuals with additional food benefits end. About 2 million people in Illinois who receive SNAP benefits will see their last emergency allotment in February, according to social service providers.
- Financial disparities that exist across race nationally are amplified in Cook County, according to a new study released today. The study by the Financial Health Network and the Chicago Community Trust found that Black and Latino residents are three to four times more likely to be financially vulnerable — unable to save and pay bills — as their white counterparts. Our Michael Loria has more on the study’s findings here.
- Chicago-based Groupon, the shrinking provider of online deals for local and national merchants, is laying off 500 people to deal with financial losses and plummeting revenue. The new cutbacks, disclosed in a securities filing, come less than six months after Groupon announced separate plans to cut staff by about 500 workers.
- A federal jury yesterday convicted Alex Acevedo, son of former state Rep. Edward “Eddie” Acevedo, on tax charges in a case tied to the feds’ larger investigation involving ComEd and former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. Alex Acevedo, his brother Michael and their father were each charged with cheating on their taxes in separate indictments handed up in February 2021.
- A city administrative judge will decide this spring if a long-contested car-shredding operation on the Southeast Side can open after being blocked by Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration almost a year ago. Weeks of hearings over the permit denial for the relocated and rebuilt General Iron wrapped up yesterday. Our Brett Chase breaks down where the city, residents and shredding facility owners stand here.
- Mayor Lightfoot today basked in the glow of an O’Hare Airport modernization project she helped to shape with the opening of the new 10-gate extension of the international flight hub better known as Terminal 5. Four years in the making, the project means 25% more capacity for an international terminal once housed in the ground floor of a parking garage.
Elections 2023
Valuable tool: Sun-Times/WBEZ 2023 Voter Guide
With the help of our colleagues at WBEZ, we recently published our voter guide for the upcoming municipal election, where you can find your ward and police district — and compare candidates. Our reporters pursued every aldermanic and police district council candidate — 284 in total — about their top priorities.
You can access the guide here, then enter your address to look up your ward and police district and to see who’s running in ballot order, complete with position statements submitted by the candidates. Plus, we’ve got exclusive video interviews with the nine candidates vying for the mayor’s office.
And in case you missed it, check out our mayoral questionnaire, where we have the answers to 23 questions that we asked each candidate. You can take our questionnaire yourself and see how your answers compare to the candidates here.
A bright one
Historic Black publisher raises money after flood damages property
Third World Press Foundation, one of the nation’s oldest independent and prestigious Black publishing companies, has called 7822 S. Dobson Ave. in Grand Crossing home for 35 of its 55-year history.
But a flood causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage has threatened the stability and financial viability of the company, the publisher said.
Haki Madhubuti founded Third World Press in 1967, from his basement-level apartment on the South Side. Now 80, Madhubuti built the company into a premier destination for Black authors. Throughout the years, Third World has become the publishing home for prolific Black writers including Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate of Illinois Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as Angela Jackson, who became the Poet Laureate of Illinois in 2020, poet Margaret Walker and novelist Sam Greenlee.
Madhubuti was in Cleveland on Dec. 9 when he got a call telling him the news — a pipe had burst under the building. The basement was flooded to the knees, and books were floating everywhere, he said. Two large dumpsters were filled with damaged books, Madhubuti said. Repairs took weeks, causing the nonprofit to lose crucial donation time during the Christmas and Kwanzaa seasons, which typically make up more than 25% of their annual revenue.
This prompted a suggestion from a board member to start a GoFundMe to raise money for the damages. Madhubuti, who said he had never heard of the concept, obliged.
“We’ve never done anything like that before,” he said. “But we were in such a critical shape that I said we’ll pretty much do anything now because after 55 years, nothing that hit us like this before.”
The company’s losses totaled $200,000, but the GoFundMe’s goal was set at $95,000 — Madhubuti thought the six-figure total would “scare people off.” The result was astounding. The GoFundMe reached the $95,000 goal within two weeks, and is still climbing.
“It was like a movement,” Madhubuti said.
As of Jan. 30, the fundraiser has received over $115,000.
Mariah Rush has more on Third World Press Foundation here.
From the press box
- Will this be a total rebuilding year for the Sky? Annie Costabile answers that questions and others in a WNBA mailbag.
- Former Cubs outfielder Dexter Fowler announced his retirement from baseball after 14 seasons.
- Patrick Mahomes II is “so good that sometimes it isn’t even clear what he sees on the field or how he adjusts to it, as though he’s making up reality on an artificial-intelligence platform inside his head,” Rick Telander writes in a column praising the two QBs (Mahomes and Jalen Hurts) who made the Super Bowl.
Your daily question☕
What’s something about Chicago winters that’s actually underrated?
Send us an email at newsletters@suntimes.com and we might feature your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.
Yesterday we asked you: What would you say is Chicago’s crown jewel? Here’s what some of you said...
“The Lakefront Trail. Ensuring public access to the lake is a truly unique and wonderful thing.” — Dan Hamilton
“Architecture. Chicago’s beautiful design is known virtually worldwide. I once met a person from abroad who referred to Chicago as the ‘world capital of architecture.’” — Craig Barner
“Wrigley Field. So much history.” — Donna Hart
“I’d say our Lake Shore Drive. Take a drive at night and the near-perfect alignment of not only the businesses but the housing set up on the drive with illumination accenting the symmetry. I haven’t been everywhere but we’re a tough act to follow!” — Christopher Mathews
“The crown jewel of Chicago is its Lakefront — you can walk, bike, run, swim, fish, fly a kite, jog, do yoga, exercise, sunbathe, ski, ride in a boat, have a picnic, learn to use the trampoline, get something to eat, photograph people and nature or just sit and take in the beauty while talking with your sweetie.” — Gene Tenner
“For me, it’s the Music Box Theater. It is my favorite place in the city and always has a special energy at its many unique programs, whether showing new releases on film, screening classic favorites, or showing lesser-known films to a new audience. It was also recently on Time Out’s 50 most beautiful cinemas in the world, so that doesn’t hurt.” — Cairo Dye
“Downtown Chicago. There are so many aspects to it, anyone can find something to enjoy. Architecture, nature, museums, parks, theater, sports, and arts, it’s all there. Great for people-watching too.” — Christine Bock
“You’d have to say the Chicago Symphony Orchestra remains a civic crown jewel. Still a top three ensemble the world over.” — Michael Vicari
“The Museum of Science and Industry.” — Norine Kehila
Thanks for reading the Chicago Sun-Times Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.
