BLACK HEROES MATTER SEEKS RECOGNITION OF DUSABLE

A group is advocating for greater representation of Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable. Black Heroes Matter is trying to get a 25-foot statue of DuSable, a signifi cant portion of Lake Shore Drive named after DuSable and a city holiday in his honor. Photo courtesy of Black Heroes Matter/Martin’s International Foundation
A group is advocating for greater representation of Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable. Black Heroes Matter is trying to get a 25-foot statue of DuSable, a signifi cant portion of Lake Shore Drive named after DuSable and a city holiday in his honor. Photo courtesy of Black Heroes Matter/Martin’s International Foundation

BLACK HEROES MATTER SEEKS RECOGNITION OF DUSABLE

BY TIA CAROL JONES
      Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable was a Haitian settler and trader who had an outpost at what is now 401 N. Michigan Avenue, near the mouth of the Chicago River. Although DuSable’s name appears on a high school, African American History Museum, Harbor and Bridge, a group – Black Heroes Matter – has been formed to ensure his accomplishments and contributions to Chicago are recognized even more.
       Martins International Foundation, owned by Ephraim Martin, spearheads Black Heroes Matter. Valerie King is the public relations director for Martins International Foundation. “We feel this man, who founded Chicago, set the territory settlement for Chicago, has really not received his just due,” she said. “There’s so much that we should know and that we need to know, and we should be informed about what this man did.”
     King said Black Heroes Matter feels that DuSable deserves to be recognized with a 25-foot monument, a significant portion of Lake Shore Drive named after DuSable and a city holiday in his honor.
“We have presented this to city council, with Alderman Moore helping to lead the structure of our proposal, with Ephraim Martin, as well as presenting this to the city’s mayor, Mayor Lightfoot,” she said.
     King said Black Heroes Matter feels that recognizing DuSable can bring balance and equity to people who look like DuSable. She said his story is very compelling. “When you really think about this man had amassed a great deal of wealth, he was very prosperous, in terms of his settlement, and that wealth was restructured, or it was taken from him and the places he settled in this city are renamed for white men, and we still recognize those men today,” she said. “People that have set forth and paved the way, they also deserve a revisit of what they did, and revisit to what they gave us, and we feel it should be rightfully justified and rightfully stated who they were and who benefits from that.”
     Shaka Barak, president of the Marcus Garvey Institute, is a supporter of Black Heroes Matter. Barak said that DuSable’s post sets the groundwork in terms of fur trading and the grain industry. “On those 800 acres, there were smokehouses, bakeries, hen houses and the trapping that was being done was sent to Europe,” he said. “To know that DuSable was not an ordinary man, he had extraordinary ability. He was a linguist, he spoke French, he spoke Spanish, he spoke English and he spoke several dialects. He was a man of peace and he could bring the tribes together.”
     Barak said if it were not for DuSable, there would not have been a lot of different varieties of industry in the city of Chicago. “Anytime a person is that significant to a city, that city owes them the honor of putting things in place, so that the children, and the future children of that city know who that man was,” he said.
     Barak said while there is a bust of DuSable on a bridge, it is so hidden that people pass by and don’t know it is there and that this is the location of where DuSable’s post once stood.
     Black Heroes Matter is supported by 80 organizations, including the Haitian Lawyers Association and the Haitian American Museum of Chicago. Stanmorr Sports, Inc., Illinois’ first and only Black-owned Gun Range, is matching all the current GoFundMe donations. “We will not give up. We know this movement is really important, so we’re in it for the long-term, even though it is a marathon. We won’t tire,” King said.
     For more information, visit blackheroesmatter.org.

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