“These tour guides are fighting segregation in Chicago,” read the headline in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune. The article featured two Black Chicagoans who are acquainting people with segregated neighborhoods where typically tourists don’t go. Sherman “Dilla” Thomas’s Chicago Mahogany bus tours take visitors, many of whom are white suburbanites, into South and West Side neighborhoods. Tonika Johnson’s Folded Map Project connects Chicago residents whose addresses are the same except for the “North” or “South” designation.
“Once you learn about the history of a place, it increases the value that you fell about that place, and it can make you question the things that you hear,” the article quoted Johnson.
Thomas admitted that his guests want to steer the discussion to gangs and drugs in his featured neighborhoods, which include North Lawndale, Bronzeville, Englewood, Pullman/Roseland, and Chatham. He doesn’t shy away from talking about gangs but discusses them in the context of causes. Last spring I took Thomas’s wonderful bus tour of North Lawndale, one of the most crime-ridden areas of Chicago. I wondered about how safe I would have felt had it been a walking tour.