Dr. B and Me:

During this holiday season we must reflect and pay homage to a very special segment of our community.  Those who where born only a couple of generations after slavery, who  grew up during the humiliation
of segregation in a “Jim Crow America”, men who were called “boy”, and women who couldn’t  use the dressing rooms while shopping. These special people dared to challenge- even to the death- a system, one that they changed.

They make up the majority of our voting population and are active in the political process. Because of them Chicago elected Mayor Harold Washington in 1983 and America elected President Barack Obama in 2008. The change they brought was good for this country and because of it everyone has an equal opportunity to a piece of the pie. As they ascend to “Elder” status they are retiring and many of our treasures are passing away.

I often wonder who will be the next Dr. Burroughs the artist-activist. Who will be the next Lu Palmer, the journalist-activist? Who will be the next Johnnie Cochran, the judicial-activist? Who will be the next Bishop Brazier, the theologian-activist? Who will be the next Ed Gardner, the businessman-activist? 

While there are some in my generation seem to complain about the “Old Timers”, and say that they have had there moment and should go somewhere and sit down, I believe the opposite. The elders that are still around should be cherished. We should sit at their feet and learn like Plato did Socrates.  While we might be called “The Joshua Generation”,  I appeal to my peers to seek out those that helped us make a way out of no way. We must find guidance from those that have brought us to the mountaintop. We must listen and learn from them.

I am so thankful that I have had the opportunity to have been surrounded by so many people like Dr. Burroughs, John H. Johnson, Marion Stamps, Gus Savage and the list goes on. These are the people, along with my mother Dorothy Wright Tillman, who instilled a since of responsibility toward our community.

Oh how I will miss my time with Dr. Burroughs. She would often stop by my mother’s office on 47th Street while she was on one of her walks or waiting on the #3 King Drive bus. I would stop what ever I was working on and sit with her. Sometimes it was for only a few minutes, sometimes it was up to an hour. She would talk and I would listen. Then she would say “Now get back to
work!”

We had a very special relationship. It began when I was a little girl and won a prestigious poetry award from her friend Gwendolyn Brooks.  She would bring me books, magazine articles and pamphlets. She would talk about people and places, where she was going or where she was coming back from. It was priceless.

During her brief illness I kept contact with her through her family and I called to check up on her. I truly loved Dr. Burroughs and I will miss her dearly. So begins a new journey for the beautiful, courageous, artistic, innovating, humorous, revolutionary, and loving, friend, aunt, cousin, mentor, teacher, grandmother, mother, and founder of the DuSable Museum of African American Culture, Dr. Margaret Burroughs. Her transition has created
another void in our community.

by Ebony Tillman