Timuel D. Black Jr. was a civil rights activist, historian, and author of African descent. He was born on December 7, 1918, in Birmingham, Alabama, to Timuel Dixon Black Sr. and Mattie McConner Black. Black’s parents relocated to Chicago, Illinois, in the summer of 1919, with their three children: Charlotte, 10, Walker, 4, and infant Timuel Jr. They boarded the northbound train with thousands of other Black Alabamans in what became known as the Great Migration.
Black grew up in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. In 1937, he graduated from DuSable High School, where he protested white-only employment in Bronzeville stores. After high school, Black worked at a few small stores before joining the Metropolitan Assurance Co.
In 1943, Black was drafted into the United States Army and assigned to the 308th Quartermaster Corps, which landed four days after D-Day in Normandy, France. Black was awarded four bronze battle stars and discharged honorably in 1945. He married Norisea Cummings one year later, and the couple had two children, Ermetra and Timuel Kerrigan, before the marriage ended in divorce in 1958.
Black enrolled at Roosevelt University in 1949 and earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1952. In 1954, he received an M.A. from the University of Chicago. Black began teaching at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana, the same year. Black returned to DuSable High School two years later and taught there until 1959. That same year, he married his second wife, Ruby P. Battle, and they were married until 1968.
During the 1960s, Black joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Chicago Freedom Movement. He organized 2,000 Chicagoans to march in the March on Washington in 1963. Black was the president of the Chicago Chapter of the Negro American Labor Council (NALC) and later worked as an administrator in the Chicago Teacher Corps. He was named dean of Wright College, which is part of the City Colleges of Chicago, in 1969, and vice president for academic affairs at Olive Harvey College in 1972.
Black’s position was terminated in 1973, but he was rehired when student, teacher, and local civil rights organizations protested. He was thereafter promoted to the City Colleges’ director and chairperson of community affairs. When budget cuts eliminated that position in 1975, he returned to Loop College to teach sociology and anthropology. Black held that position until his retirement from City Colleges in 1989.
When Black and his third wife, Zenobia Johnson-Black, were campaigning for then-state Rep. Harold Washington in 1982, they met. They were part of a coalition of Black Chicagoans who elected Washington as the city’s first Black mayor a year later. Timuel Black worked on the Black Metropolis Oral History Project and taught at Roosevelt University, DePaul University, and Columbia College.
He also authored several books including Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s First Wave of Black Migration (2005) and Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s Second Generation of Black Migration (2008). His memoir, Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black was released in 2019 when he was 101. Black mentored other political activists and politicians including future president Barack Obama.
Timuel Black died at the age of 102 on October 13, 2021. His wife, Zenobia, and daughter Ermetra survive him.