A Letter to the Chicago Sun-Times by Steve Balkin <mar@openair.org>, published April 29, 2001, p. 30A
Background: This Letter in response to an article about UIC Professor Bert Bledstein's $500,000 Internet project to do a history of the near west side of Chicago, which heavily includes Maxwell Street.
The news story, 'Photos illustrate immigrants' world' (April 22) seemed to be doing PR for UIC rather than reporting. Noticeably absent from Professor Bledstein's project is what made Maxwell Street internationally famous, its Blues music. The Blues music from Maxwell Street is Chicago's greatest cultural export and has had more world impact than any Frank Lloyd Wright house.
Why didn't reporter Newbart ask UIC Professor Bledstein why he is stopping his history at 1935 just before the second wave of the Great Migration when the Blues musicians arrive from the Mississippi Delta; why he is doing no oral history; and how many people from present day Maxwell Street use the World Wide Web. The agenda of UIC and the City of Chicago is to continue to largely ignore the African--American and Blues history of Maxwell Street so poor minority people of color will no longer come down to the old Maxwell Street area. UIC spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to perpetuate the notion that that the proper place for history is on websites and in libraries not in historic sites where ordinary folks can see, smell, taste, and listen to their own history from the people who made it and their descendents.
Blues (and its daughter Jazz) is America's only indigenous art form. Blues musicians still come to play outside on the street every Sunday afternoon in good weather. Why isn't Professor Bledstein there recording the music history of these legends? Why isn't Dave Newbart writing about one of the last places left in America where live blues musicians continue their tradition on the street and pass their art on to future generations?
This Sunday, April 29, the first Maxwell Street Blues jam of the year will start at about 1PM on old Maxwell Street by Halsted across from Original Jim's Hot Dog stand. This will be a special jam honoring the birthday of neighborhood legend Jimmie Lee Robinson. There is still life on old Maxwell Street. The place is alive and teeming with history, a veritable living museum. People should experience it before UIC does its final cultural assassination. The last remnants of old Maxwell Street can still be saved if only more people would care and express outrage for this needless destruction.
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