This week on Chicago Stories, Mayor Emanuel sat down with 99-year-old Timuel Black, one of Chicago’s most influential activists and civil rights leaders. Tim is a WWII Veteran and also knew and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1918, Tim was the son of sharecroppers and the grandson of former slaves. HIs family moved to Chicago as part of the Great Migration in 1919 and settled in the vibrant community then called the “Black Belt,” now modern-day Bronzeville.

Tim attended DuSable High School with such classmates as Nat King Cole and future media mogul John Johnson. He also knew of a younger schoolmate and future African-American mayor named Harold Washington, whom he would closely work with 50 years later.

The onset of WWII brought Tim to the beaches of Normandy and the forests of the Ardennes, but it was seeing the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp that he decided to spend the rest of his life fighting for peace and justice.

In 1955, Tim formed a relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that carried over a decade through Dr. King’s campaign in Chicago to desegregate housing in the North. Tim organized the Freedom Trains that took thousands of Chicagoans to the 1963 March on Washington to hear the iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.

And years later, he served as mentor to a young law school graduate and future president, Barack Obama.

Listen to this week's Chicago Stories episode on http://bit.ly/ChiStories and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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