a Beautiful Schizophrenic
Everyone is reading Bean Soup Times, right?
CHICAGO--A jury awarded a south suburban man $10,000 on July 11 for the pain and suffering from a November 2001 handshake.Attorneys for delivery truck driver, Anthony Paretti, argued that their client was a victim of "cultural negligence and wreckless negrosity" at the hand of Roscoe "Uncle Fats" DuBois owner of the "Uncle Fats Wings and Thangs" chain of fast food stands.
[. . .] Paretti went on to testify that his experience at Uncle Fats was surprisingly uneventful until the end. "It was cool. Uncle Fats himself gave me three wings, some fries, and a slice a bread for the road. Then I go to shake the guys hand and all hell breaks loose." Next Parreti described a "harrowing" 15 minute ordeal of grasps, slaps, snaps, under the leg manuvers and random commands such as "on the black hand side. I thought he was playing patty cake or something at first, but it just wouldn't stop. Two minutes in and I'm like what the *&%@."
[. . .] Harlan Jenkins, the lone Black American on the jury and single dissenter, was disgusted. "Aw, he hurt his hand, poor baby. I broke my ass last week trying to get out of Bridgeport and ain't nobody give me nothin'."
Like much of the humor here, this story requires some background information just to make sense of things. Specifically, it helps to know a bit about Bridgeport:
Before World War II, Chicago was divided into ethnic enclaves that were bitterly mistrustful of their neighbors on all sides. When an Irish neighborhood adjoined a Slavic one, or a Polish neighborhood adjoined a Scandinavian one, the fault lines were clear and the animosities barely restrained. For Bridgeport, the great dividing line was Wentworth Avenue, which separated it from the black neighborhoods to the east. Bridgeport's fears were exacerbated by the fact that the population in the black ghetto was expanding rapidly as a result of migration from the South. At any moment, it seemed, the black neighborhoods to the east might expand and grow large enough to overrun Bridgeport.The intensity of Bridgeport's racial feelings would be laid bare decades later by a small but brutally revealing incident. It was June 1961, just weeks after busloads of Freedom Riders had been beaten up in the segregated bus stations of the South. The old Douglas Hotel on the black South Side had caught fire, and eighty residents had suddenly been made homeless. Red Cross volunteers had arrived on the scene and — unaware of Bridgeport's racial sensitivities — evacuated the refugees to temporary quarters in Bridgeport's Holy Cross Lutheran Church, a few blocks from Daley's home. Word spread quickly, and almost immediately a crowd of jeering whites was standing outside the church demanding the removal of the black fire victims. "They threatened to break windows in the church and screamed obscenities I can't repeat," Helen Constien, the pastor's wife, said afterward. "They threatened to destroy the church if we didn't get the Negroes out of the building." The Red Cross quickly took the black fire victims out of Bridgeport.
That's actually from a very good page -- hell, a very good site, and I use it for a throwaway gag. I disappoint myself at times.
Update: Landmarks of Chicago and New York: A Tale of Two Cities
This exhibition of more than 150 black-and-white photographs represents a cross-section of the thousands of significant buildings that are protected by local landmark designation in Chicago and New York City. The story of how this came to pass is both as similar and as different as the cities themselves.
Found on Metafilter, which I figured I should say something nice about at some point.
While looking for info on Bridgeport, I happened across this about Lee's Place:
The first American settlements that arose were farmer dwellings connected with the Charles Lee and Russell farm shortly after the establishment of Fort Dearborn (Charles Lee himself lived nearer the lake). At the farm lived tenant farmers, housed in cabins. Their names were Liberty White, John B. Cardin, a soldier named John Kelso (or Kelson), and one other not described. Farm products such as livestock and hay were known to be produced here.The Lee farm, or "Lee's Place" as it was called by locals, was the site of an Indian raid in April of 1812. This was the precursor to the Fort Dearborn Massacre later that summer. John Kelso and a young lad there at the time managed to escape. The two remaining at the farm were shot, stabbed, mutilated and scalped.
[. . .] Like Chicago itself, The Lee farm was abandoned following the Fort Dearborn massacre in August of 1812. While fur traders were thought to have still traversed the area, American activity did not resume until after federal troops returned (4th of July, 1816) to rebuild Fort Dearborn.
One could say "Chicago and the surrounding area have a history of racially motivated violence." If a) one has a gift for understatement and b) one failed to realize that the same holds true for the rest of the U.S., only usually not quite as extreme. We're just more honest is all. It's that Midwestern ernestness.
Update IV: Lovely photo, but the accompanying text:
This is an area steeped in Chicago's history. In 1812, the area was the site of the so-called Fort Dearborn Massacre, where hostile Indians attacked a band of European settlers.
Um, yeah. European settlers just sitting there, minding their own business, when a bunch of hostile Indians came out of nowhere and attacked for no reason. The author must be a warblogger.