March 31, 2006

From left to right in photo: Harold L. Lucas president/CEO of BMC&TC Yue Zhang a Doctoral student from Princeton University and Paula Robinson Managing Partner of the Bronzeville Community Development Partnership (BCDP) embrace after a meeting at the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority (MPEA). Ms Zhang is a participant in monthly meeting at MPEA convened by the BCDP where strategic plans are being created to support the development of the Black Metropolis National Heritage Area. MS Zhang was in Chicago over the past year researching comparisons between heritage tourism development in three world class international cities; Beijing, Paris and Chicago. (photo credit:Yue Zhang).

March 31, 2006

Dear Harold and Paula,

It's so nice to get updates from you and thanks a lot for staying in touch! I have spent the past three months in Beijing. As my fieldwork in Beijing is almost completed, I'm leaving for Paris on Sunday. I will be doing research in Paris from April to June. As the meantime, I'm analyzing the data collected from my Chicago fieldwork, and will send you my Chicago paper as soon as I'm done with it. My article about urban preservation in Beijing is recently publisehd in a book edited by UNESCO: Beijing and Beijing, A Critical Dialogue. The book is a product of the Social Sustainability Project in Historic Cities Project, organized by UNESCO. I'd like to share my article with you (please find it in the attachment), just in case you are interested in exploring more about Beijing.

Also, I met a senior program specialist of UNESCO in Beijing last week. Since the preservation and revitalization of historic cities and neighborhoods is always an important focus of UNESCO, she told me that they are planning on a conference in Beijing in 2007, and the theme of the conference is the issue of social sustainability in historic districts. She asked me for suggestion and I recommended the case of Bronzeville, because I think the effort of promoting local capacity and sustainability in Bronzeville fits into the theme of the conference very well. It probably is also a good resource for Bronzeville's NHA designation. So if you don't mind, I'd like to provide the contact info of both of you to her, and she probably will be in touch if the plan of the conference is finalized.

Best wishes from Beijing,

Yue

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January 17, 2006

Dear Paula and Harold,

Greetings from Beijing!!

I left Chicago at the end of December. After coming back to Princeton and staying there for about a week, I arrived in Beijing last week. It's so nice to come back home, but I did enjoy my days in Chicago a lot! Again, I wanted to say thank you to both of your for your support to my research. I've learnt a lot from both of you as well as others in the group. I will keep working on my project and keep you posted. I also hope that my research will contribute to the preservation and revitalization of Bronzeville as a Black Metropolis!

During the first half of 2006, I will be doing research in Beijing and Paris, then will go back to school in summer. I think I'll go back to Chicago before long, probably in the coming summer or so. Looking forward to seeing you again soon! In the meantime, please keep me posted and we can always exchange ideas via email.

Attached please find two pictures that we took together during the last meeting of the year. We all look great in the pictures! :-)

Happy New Year!

Yue

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November 18, 2005

Chicago Defender

Officials, others hope church where Emmett Till's funeral will bring tourists

Associated Press story:
by Don Babwin

It was the site of a seminal event in the civil rights movement, where a photograph was taken that gave the country a glimpse of the horrors of racism.

Today, a half century after scores of mourners filed into Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ and past the open casket of a brutally beaten 14-year-old boy named Emmett Till, there is hope the church will become to this chapter in American history what places like Gettysburg are to the Civil War.

"This is part of the civil rights trail," said Jonathan Fine, president of Preservation Chicago, which is pushing for the city to give the church landmark status. "The civil rights trail begins in Chicago and it began in this church."

It was here that Mamie Till-Mobley decided to make what historians and activists say was one of the most significant statements about civil rights. After her son's body was brought back to Chicago from Mississippi where he was murdered, allegedly for whistling at a white woman, Till-Mobley insisted the casket remain open. She wanted the nation - the tens of thousands who descended on the church to pay their respects and the millions who saw the photographs in Jet Magazine - to see firsthand the brutality directed at blacks in the South.

Rosa Parks was among those influenced by the images. About three months later, on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., the seamstress refused to give up her seat to a white man. It was a simple decision that became one of the most significant acts of defiance in American history.

"I once asked Mrs. Parks, 'Why didn't you go to the back of the bus?'" said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "She said, 'I thought about Emmett Till and I couldn't go back.'"

"If Rosa Parks was the mother of it (the civil rights movement)... Emmett Till was the martyred son of it," Jackson said.

Today, it is no accident that there is an effort to gain landmark status for this nondescript church on the city's South Side. Across the nation, more and more houses, churches, hotels and other structures bound together by the struggle for equality are being designated as landmarks, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and turned into museums.

Just this year:

- In Alabama, 15 churches where civil rights activities took place were listed on the historic register.
- In New York, the Hotel Theresa, where Black entertainers stayed when most hotels turned them away, was placed on the register.
- In Greensboro, N.C., the International Civil Rights Center and Museum is being built where four North Carolina A&T State University students sat down at a segregated lunch counter on Feb. 1, 1960.

"There has been a push in the last few years," said Alexis Abernathy, a National Register of Historic Places historian. "Everybody is really looking at (sites) in the context of the civil rights movement."

One reason is that 50 years have passed since the events that made such sites famous. That milestone makes simpler the process of inclusion on the National Register.

"Enough time has passed to put a historical perspective on these events," Abernathy said.

Another reason is that spots associated with the civil rights movement are becoming popular with tourists, in much the same way that Civil War battlefields have attracted tourists.

That has been recognized by communities, which have begun to advertise their place in the civil rights movement. In 1999, it prompted the historic register post on its Web site "We Shall Overcome," a page devoted to places associated with the civil rights movement.

"The whole rebirth of civil rights tourism is clearly a phenomenon," said Amelia Parker, the executive director of the museum in Greensboro.

Places like the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, in the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in 1968, and Atlanta's Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site are major attractions that bring in millions of dollars.

"There is a national focus on these communities and the history of civil rights in these communities," said Harold Lucas, the president of the Black Metropolis Convention and Tourism Council in Chicago. Just last month, he gave a tour to about a dozen foreign journalists - at the request of the U.S. State Department - of sites in Chicago associated with the civil rights movement.

The city played key roles in the labor movement, sports, gospel music, jazz and blues because it attracted so many leaders from those fields during the Great Migration of Southern blacks to the North in the early 20th century, said Lucas and others.

But Chicago has lacked a well-known landmark from the civil rights movement. And why Roberts Temple was not given landmark status before is anyone's guess.

Fine said it may be because so few knew the church still existed. It was not until federal prosecutors reopened the investigation into Till's death last year that the church was thrust back into public consciousness.

Today, those pushing to keep it there by giving it landmark status - likely to come before the City Council early next year - hope the designation will attract tourists.

Fine points out sites attract visitors to Montgomery, Ala., and other cities that historically are not tourist destinations.

"I mean, Montgomery is a beautiful city, but it's not a resort," he said. "There are definitely people nowadays who specifically go to these cities to see places that relate to the civil rights movement."

Roberts Temple pastor Cleven Wardlow Jr. said tourism dollars could start to flow if the church is listed.

"If it's on the national register, you can't help but become a tourist attraction when people visit the city," he said.

If that happens, Lucas and others hope tourists will stay to see the dozens of sites in Chicago related to history of labor, or the blues.

"History is so very dense in this area of Chicago," he said. "If people come to study the civil rights, we can link them to a broader area and they can discover that there is a full pallet of experiences there." AP

photo credit: www.bronzevilleonline.com

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December 8, 2004

7th Annual Cultural & Heritage Tourism Alliance Report
Chicago Illinois, November 18-20, 2004

Cultural & Heritage Tourism Alliance Mission Statement:

To strengthen cultural and heritage tourism and address shared challenges in the travel industry.

* Advocate for the value of cultural and heritage tourism

* Provide and annual forum for professional development

* Promote the integration of culture and heritage into a broad range of economic development strategies

On Friday, November 19th, Smithsonian Magazine sponsored a plenary session on Rural Cultural
& Heritage Tourism.

Standing front left in photo, Sharon Calcote, Heritage Tourism Development Marketing Supervisor,
Louisiana Office of Tourism gave an insightful, interactive power point presentation on the opportunities and pitfalls faced by rural communities and regions in developing successful Heritage Tourism programs.
CRT - Home Page

From left to right in photo, Heritage Tourism professional Louis C. Fields, from Baltimore, Melissa Hayes Director,
Corporate Events & Sponsorship-Chicago Historical Society CHS , Neal Shoemaker, Harlem Heritage Tours and Paula
Robinson from BCDP meet for the first time during the opening plenary session on Product Development and Marketing.

Black heritage tourism practitioners from Chicago and around the nation, gather at the Negro League Cafe in
Bronzeville, to collaborate around the issue of organizing a national association of African American Heritage
Tourism professionals.

Juana Guzman, Vice-president, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, (far right in photo) passionately describes
how community residents, local businesses, community organizations, artists and government agencies worked
collaboratively to promote and preserve the rich cultural heritage of the historic Pilsen neighborhood, during a
Neighborhood Tourism workshop.

Welcome to the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum

Paul G. Bruce, a volunteer neighborhood tour guide for Chicago Neighborhood Tours provides an informed
perspective of Chicago's African American heritage of the Bronzeville/Hyde Park communities during the Mobile
Learning Workshop session.


African American heritage tourism practitioners from all over the country gather at the Hotel Allegro after the
closing plenary session: From left to right in photo are: Walton C. Burwell, Chairman of the Board,
West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, Neal Shoemaker, President Harlem Heritage Tours || Historical walking and
bus tours through Harlem, New, Paula Robinson, Bronzeville Community Development Partnership and Louis C. Fields
President BBH Tours & Cruises:BBH TOURS.

Hello Harold Lucas,

My name is Neal Shoemaker and I run a company called Harlem Heritage Tours. It was a pleasure meeting you in Chicago in November of 2004 at the conference.

I just viewed your webpage and would like to say thanks for posting my website and photo. I'm currently having meetings with some interesting people in the industry and would will be working with you guys to strengthen our position in the industry.

Happy New Year my brother and I wish you the best in all of your endeavors, lets stay in contact with each other - stay strong.

PEACE

Harlem Heritage Tours
Neal Shoemaker
230 West 116th Street, Suite 5-C
New York, N.Y. 10026
http://www.harlemheritage.com/
212 280-7888

Harold Lucas speaks to U of C students
on cultural policy issues in Bronzeville

On Monday November 29, 2004 Harold L. Lucas spoke with students in Prof. Terry Nichols Clark's class in Cobb Hall about Cultural Policy issues in Bronzeville.

Ms. Evelina Shpolyansky (center in photo in black sweater) a 3rd year U of C student responded to the class discussion with the following statement.

Hello Mr. Lucas,

I was one of the students who spoke to you after class on Monday after your
presentation in Mr. Clark's class. I am sorry that i did not email you earlier,
but i was wondering if i could somehow get involved with your program. Now its
final's week and i'll be going home soon afterwards so i am not sure if i will
be able to contribute anything before the new year, when the new quarter starts.
However, i am from NYC, the Bronx namely, and if there is some research or
something that needs to be done there about the Bronx, i can devote some time to
it and bring you back some results after the break. I just wanted to let you
know that you have sparked my interest and that i would like to help.
Thank you very much for your lecture on Monday, it definitely opened my eyes to
certain things that i have not really thought of before.
again please keep me in mind,
thank you for your time,

Evelina Shpolyansky

3rd year undergraduate at the U. of C.

Mr. Lucas,
I am writing to thank you for coming in and talking to Professor Clark's Culture and Politics class.
Your presentation was interesting, and I learned a lot about an area Ive gone to school so close to
for years and known almost nothing about. The primary reason for this email is because you
mentioned having an interest in beginning a tutoring program with the U of C. I run a non-profit -Her Voice - we primarily run programs to help empower girls through mentor style relationships, but i
would love to form a partnership and create a tutoring program for Bronzville. I was surprised to hear that there was not already a program in place. I would hope to be able to pair the college students
with older children and potentially get the Lab high school involved in tutoring younger children.
We currently do not have significant (or really any) money with the non-profit right now, but i would
be more than willing to push for aid from the university to facilitate this. Please let me know what you were interested in having us do, and how I can help. Please feel free to email or call me at any time. Our web sight is Hervoice.org.

Thanks,
Michelle Holmes