Marilyn Griffin traveled only one block from her Bronzeville residence Saturday morning, as she does most years, at hand out faculty provides for teenagers and be part of hundreds gathered alongside Martin Luther King Drive for an August ritual within the Black neighborhood: the annual Bud Billiken Parade.
Griffin says she’s glad the parade has lived on for 96 years.
“It speaks to the longevity of the African American household and the help methods that the communities present for these households,” Griffin mentioned. “As a resident of Bronzeville, it simply actually warms my coronary heart to be right here to observe this yr after yr.”
The parade is taken into account the most important of its sort within the U.S. and marks the beginning of the college yr.
As native highschool bands, drill and dance groups marched down King Drive within the steamy warmth, bystanders arrange garden chairs, meals stands and grills alongside the parade route.
Carolyn Jones, the principal of Perkins Bass Elementary in Englewood, known as the parade a “reset.”
“We’ve had a good time off in the summertime,” Jones mentioned. “Everyone is relaxed and chill. And now we’re going again to deal with the enterprise of college.”
She mentioned her college students find out about how the parade was created in 1929 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, the founding father of the Chicago Defender, as a option to have a good time Black kids and their achievements.
Additional down the route was Shenika Dupart, who introduced her niece and grandson.
“As a baby, I’ve at all times come to the Bud Billiken; it’s been a household custom,” she mentioned. “So I used to be very excited to come back. I used to be off work, and it was like, ‘Why not deliver the little ones?’”
Dupart mentioned the parade is a chance to have a good time “individuals from my background, my tradition, my nationality.”
Bri’leigh, her 7-year-old niece, mentioned she hopes to hitch one of many dance groups at subsequent yr’s parade.
For Delecter Clark from Outdated City, the parade takes him again to his childhood.
He used to come back to see the cheerleaders and faculty bands carry out every year along with his siblings. Clark recalled how they used to hunt for a shady spot close to the barricades wherever they may squeeze in alongside the parade route.
As an grownup, he now sees the parade as a logo of Chicago’s historical past.
“It’s been right here means earlier than I used to be born,” Clark mentioned, “So it’s historical past to me.”
Among the many teams on the parade have been representatives of the Nationwide A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, which is positioned within the Pullman neighborhood.
This yr, the museum is celebrating the centennial of the founding of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Automotive Porters, the primary Black labor union in America. The BSCP was based by the labor organizer and civil rights chief Asa Philip Randolph and a gaggle of porters who have been employed by the Pullman Palace Automotive Co. They fought in opposition to harsh working situations and discrimination within the office.
This yr’s celebration comes because the Trump administration has scaled again a number of the form of civil rights protections that leaders like Abbott and Randolph fought for, parade-goers mentioned.
Jones, the Perkins Bass principal, mentioned she has not been shocked by the Trump administration’s actions.
“I’m simply praying that we as a neighborhood can proceed to face up and struggle for what we all know is true,” she mentioned.
Anna Savchenko is a reporter for WBEZ. You possibly can attain her at asavchenko@wbez.org.
