Winner of The Blues Foundation's 1997 "Keeping the Blues Alive" Award.
Fruteland Jackson <Fruteland@aol.com> Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997
Dear Chancellor David C. Broski:
I am writing this letter as a friend of the Maxwell Street Market area and as a supporter of the coalition to preserve the Maxwell Street Market area as an important historical district for the City of Chicago, all Americans and the world at large. I sincerely believe that the preservation of this district as a monument and cultural hub that will honor Chicago's rich multi-cultural heritage. Because of the impact this area has had on the many individuals, who passed through the Maxwell Street district during the twentieth century, its legacy should be more than a bronze plaque and a few bricks. Today the spirit of this neighborhood and its brood is crying out for survival.
Immigrants from both inside and outside of our nation, from all walks of life gravitated to the Maxwell Street Market area in search of commerce and to get a sense of belonging with other similarly situated individuals and to find a focus in "the city that works."
I am an African-American whose parents migrated to Chicago from Mississippi in the late 1940's looking for a better way of life, better civil rights and education for their growing family. My parents frequented the Maxwell Street Market known to us then as "Jewtown." My early remembrance of the Maxwell Street Market was experiencing my father's car vibrating over the cobblestone bricks that was used for the pavement. On one occasion when I was about three years old I became lost in the sea of tall people while my father was buying hotdogs. When I did not see him next to me, I began to cry. Someone held me up high in the air and said whose son? I was so relieved to see him reach for me. I remember the bustle of people, the smell of grilled onions and a man sitting on a milk crate with a chicken on his head. I would grow up and return to "Jewtown" time and time again as fate would have it
During the psychedelic 1960's Maxwell Street was the place to buy the latest fashions like pink or yellow dress pants or stacked shoes or for the huge sum of twelve dollars you could purchase a pair of "Converse All-Star" tennis shoes. In the early 1970's I returned to Maxwell Street to open a restaurant (Take-A-Steak Restaurant on Halsted) with a couple of friends. I was at this restaurant where I met my wife -to-be. She had been a life long resident of the Maxwell Street Market community. We moved to 1400 S. Union where we had our first child. My mother-in law ran a gift shop on Fourteenth St. and my father-in law was one of the many street vendors who sold his wares in the open air market.
I opened my first charge account at the Original Twelfth Street Store which has long sense has disappeared from the landscape. I had met many of the characters who were fixtures in the Market area like the "Socks Man" and I brought my first guitar from a pawn shop that was next door to a drug store where you could purchase Mojo beans, Zina ray oil and holy candles. For two dollars I had my fortune read by a gypsy lady who lived over the restaurant where the movie Blues Brothers was filmed. Also, I developed a love for Latin music which could be heard daily up and down the market's side streets.
Having come from a house hold where blues music was played and because of my early exposure to the Blues traditions heard in the Maxwell Street Market area, it might have had something to do with my career choice as a blues artist and lecturer have received the 1996 Illinois Arts Council "Ethnic/Folk/ Heritage Award" and the 1997 "Keeping the Blues Alive" award for Blues in Education at the W.C.Handy awards week ceremonies this past May. I believe that those blues traditions have now become one of America's great gifts to world culture.
The preservation of this district is worthy and honorable. The impact it has had on my life and many, many others are a testimony to Chicago's enduring cultural heritage. The historical, and cultural importance of the Maxwell Street Market area hold the same importance to Chicago's diverse personality as the Haight-Ashbury district in San-Francisco, Ellis Island, the French Quarters in New Orleans or Greenwich Village in New York
Please preserve the Maxwell Street Market area.
Sincerely
Fruteland Jackson
cc: Mayor Daley
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