The Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition was awarded The Blues Foundation's 'Keeping the Blues Alive' Award for Historical Preservation, for the year 2000. The award will be presented in Memphis at a January 22 ceremony.

The Blues Foundation was founded in 1980 with a mission to promote and preserve Blues music around the globe. The Blues Foundation continuously encourages and recognizes the highest achievements of artists, writers, promoters and other supporters of the Blues. Among the things they do are the annual W.C. Handy Blues Awards and maintaining the Blues Hall of Fame. According to the Blues Foundation, "Like the W.C. Handy Awards, which are bestowed on America's best Blues artists, musicians, and recordings, the 'Keeping the Blues Alive' Awards recognize the outstanding accomplishments and contributions of non-performers in the Blues world. Recipients are chosen through an intense selection process by a committee of professional Blues industry representatives."

Says Indiana University folklorist and Secretary of the Coalition Janelle Walker, "We thank The Blues Foundation for honoring our movement to save the last remnants of the old Maxwell Street area, 60 historic buildings, with a vital community life of over 100 years. Blues musicians still come by to play out in the street as they did earlier in the century when Maxwell Street musicians created urban electrified blues, the Chicago Blues sound. As Jazz and Blues are America's only indigenous art forms, we feel all Blues landmarks should be honored and preserved but we focus on Maxwell Street because it is now at greatest risk on destruction. We are thankful to people and Blues Societies who have helped us from all over the world and feel about Maxwell Street as Craig Meyers does, of the DC Blues Society, -- that it would be a horrible way to start the millennium by destroying what got us all here together."

Says Steve Balkin, Roosevelt University economics professor and Vice President of the Coalition, "It is our view that if you enjoy Blues music you must also appreciate and respect the culture that the music came from. However, here in Chicago, in the near west side where Maxwell Street sits, is a pernicious assault on Chicago's poor and working class African-American communities by the University of Illinois and Mayor Richard M. Daley. This is old-fashioned 1960's style 'urban renewal equals Negro removal'. This is Daley Machine ethnic cleansing."

Balkin says further, "Our Coalition says YES to free enterprise, higher education, community development, jobs and economic development, and balanced real estate development. But we say: NO to using public subsidies to destroy communities, NO to real estate developers controlling state historic preservation agencies, NO to crony-capitalism, NO to facadism, and NO to destroying historic sites."

Chuck Cowdery, attorney, writer, Blues Historian, and President of Coalition remarks, "As urban electrified blues and its offspring, rock n' roll, are at the root of world popular culture, Maxwell Street is not just a local historic site. It is a world landmark and destroying world heritage is a crime against mankind. We therefore urge all people of good will to support us with money, media, and legal resources to continue our fight against the University of Illinois and the Daley Administration to stop the scheduled destruction of Maxwell Street."

Maxwell Street Blues veteran 78 year old Johnnie Mae Dunson Smith, along with Chuck Cowdery, and Blues greats, Jimmie Lee 'Lonely Traveler' Robinson and Frank 'Little Sonny' Scott Jr. will be going down to Memphis to receive the Award for the Coalition. In a plea to Hillary Clinton, she cried out, "If it had not been for Maxwell Street and all the musicians coming here, playing on the street, getting a start, Chess Records and them other companies wouldn't never have a lot of artists. I was here in the 40's and also with a lot of people. Porkchops let me play his drums. I would appreciate very much if you would consider us. We need to save Maxwell Street."

For more information about the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition contact Steve Balkin, ph: 312-341-3696 and visit the Coalition's website <www.openair.org/maxwell/preserve.html>.

For more information about The Blues Foundation contact Jean Reid, ph: 800-861-8795 and visit their website <www.blues.org/>.

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