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“Obviously, Brazier was a towering figure in the Woodlawn area,” wrote a dubious Mary Mitchell in the Sun-Times, “but his church isn’t even located on Stony Island.” That church, Apostolic Church of God, is at 63rd and Dorchester, where it takes up a city block. Long ago Brazier founded The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), and if you take one look at the massive church with his name on the side of it, you can’t doubt he was a major mover and shaker. But the honor the mayor proposes doesn’t pass Mitchell’s sniff test. “Coming at a time when a lot of black people have soured on the mayor,” she wrote, “what is supposed to be a tribute just looks like cheap political posturing.”
But let’s hear from one of Brazier’s champions. Hermene Hartman, publisher of N’Digo, thinks renaming Stony Island is a terrific idea:
Brazier had powerful allies, one of them being Valerie Jarrett, now President Obama’s confidante in Washington but then chair of the CTA. He got his way. As I wrote in a 1996 Reader column, there was a public hearing, but the public basically got rolled. The dailies reported that according to city “officials” and “planners,” 56 or 57 percent of the area’s residents supported demolition, but they didn’t look to see where these numbers came from. They were meaningless. They came, in large part, from self-serving polls and surveys that misrepresented the actual choice before the city. TWO, openly hostile to the el, ran a survey that asked, “Do you want the tracks between 63rd and University up to Cottage Grove to come down, or are you in favor of them staying up?” There was no acknowledgement that keeping them up would mean restoring them to service.
You might applaud the new housing and the new school, and as for the rest of that stretch of 63rd insist, “Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’ve got to give it more time.” Fair enough. My point is that 63rd Street is Brazier’s legacy, and to name any other street after him instead is to all but admit his legacy is his folly, about which the less said the better.
