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It’s Saturday night. Tandra Anderson is in St. Louis to do a little holiday
shopping. Kim Moore also is in the Lou, on business. Jimmy Rice is at the Panera Bread on
Springfield’s east side, typing quietly on his laptop and sipping hot
tea. He is toying with the idea of going to see the latest Will Smith
movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, and will probably go to bed afterward. All three live in Springfield, went to college, hold
full-time jobs, are under 40, and are African-American. For them, and young black professionals like them,
Springfield just isn’t where it’s at. The least pessimistic ones will you tell you that
Springfield, at best, is lame. Others straight-up hate it here. For them, Springfield
is a steppingstone, an agonizing layover en route to a “real”
city with nightspots that play the music they like, that embraces
African-American culture, where blacks are represented in high-ranking
government offices and there are lots of other blacks. If opportunity were to knock, not only would they
answer the door but their bags would likely already be packed and waiting
by the door. The root of the problem goes deeper than the old
nothing-to-do refrain. Part of it is the city’s troublesome history,
dating back to the 1908 race riots. It’s also the sense that
Springfield can be fiercely resistant to progress, stuck in 1865, its
entire identity pegged on an American hero who once said that if he could
save the Union without freeing a single slave, he would do it (even if he
also said he would free all of the slaves to save the Union).
What’s more, getting ahead in Springfield is
about more than who you know — it’s about “who’s
yer daddy,” what political party he belongs to, and which party
happens to be in power, they say. In Springfield, a city whose population is 13 percent
black, which has never had an African-American mayor or fire
chief, and which has had, at most, a couple of black members of local
legislative bodies at a time, this means that there aren’t a whole
lot of blacks getting ahead. So why would they want to hang around for the long
haul? But the issue here is more serious than a handful of
unhappy citizens. What demographers sometimes call brain drain — the
exodus of skilled, talented individuals as a result of lack of opportunity
— can have serious long-term consequences. Nicole Jenkins, a 23-year-old graduate student and
Virginia native attending the Southern Illinois University School of
Medicine, is among those who want out. “I went to Hampton [University, in Hampton, Va.]
and lived in an area where being young, black and educated is commendable.
Here, it doesn’t matter — you’re just black,” she
says.
“There’s no arena to go to where there is
even a mixed young, ethnic crowd, which is sad. I’m just ecstatic I
only have six months left in this prison sentence, then back to the coast,
where there is not sickening outright racism, and an innumerable amount of
blacks. “Sorry if I’m so negative, but I’m
telling you the truth.”
Let’s face it: Springfield is not a hip city. Among the town’s top attractions are the
International Carillon Festival, the Lincoln Pilgrimage, the International
Livestock Exposition, the State Farm Classic LPGA Tournament, and the
Midwest Charity Horse Show.
But it’s not just blacks who say that
Springfield sucks. Many young white professionals feel the same way, and
this attitude is partly what led to the formation of the Young Springfield
Professionals Network. According to YSPN co-founder Sarah Wolin, the group is
for the “young and young at heart.”
On Dec. 1, despite a snowstorm, more than 100 people
showed up for a YSPN trivia night. Most of the members, who must be at
least 21 to join, are from Sangamon County, Wolin says.
Asked about diversity in the fledgling organization,
Wolin says the leadership doesn’t have specific numbers but is
conducting outreach through several community groups. “When we talk about diversity, it’s not
just ethnic diversity. It’s the type of professions they’re in
— age and where you’re from, rural areas versus more urban
areas,” Wolin says. The way 34-year-old Springfield resident Moore sees
it, Springfield’s problem is that it’s a city with a small-town
mentality, run by a cadre of wealthy, politically entrenched white
families. If you happen to be in the minority here, someone who
doesn’t have one of those magical Springfield surnames, you’re
just out of luck. When the workday ends, Moore says, she and her friends
would rather to stay at home than do the downtown bar scene, where most of
the patrons are white.
On weekends, they often head for Chicago or St. Louis
to be around other people who look like them. “There are 101 poetry events going on in St.
Louis on any given night; there are concerts constantly; you can go to the
Central West End and see a bunch of young black people hanging out,”
she says. But, Moore says, “When you can drive an hour and
a half to another state, that’s not good” for Springfield. Studies show that cities with large numbers of young
black professionals tend to do a better job of attracting and retaining
them. Memphis, Tenn.; Houston; Charlotte, N.C.; Washington, D.C.; Detroit;
Baltimore; Philadelphia; Dallas; Chicago; and Atlanta are perennial
contenders for the honors of best cities for African-Americans, according
to Black Enterprise magazine.
Rice, a 27-year-old native of Springfield, moved back
home from the D.C. area in 2005 to take a job at Abundant Faith Christian
Center.
“I was almost depressed when I got back,”
Rice says. “Black culture was minimal; there was no place to go kick
it, no place where the people looked like us. When Staci Baldwin, also from Springfield, moved to
Georgia for college, she never looked back. “Springfield doesn’t really offer much for
young African-Americans trying to excel in life and not become a
statistic,” says Baldwin, now a special agent with the Federal
Aviation Administration in Atlanta. “I didn’t see any jobs in Springfield in
the field of criminal justice that caught my eye, and I’ve been
reading about the SPD — and it still looks grim.”
Erica Meek’s assessment is just as bleak. Meek,
who recently graduated from a St. Louis-area law school, says she
wouldn’t consider a move back to Springfield, either. “There are no incentives to move back — no
diversity, no culture, no restaurants, no nightlife, no shopping, no good
schools,” she says.
“The only thing attractive about Springfield is
the cost of living, but that just isn’t enough incentive to give up
all of the other offerings of a larger and more progressive
metropolis.”
On Nov. 29, the Citizens Club of Springfield brought
about 75 people together to discuss the future of race relations in
Springfield. The organization had already sponsored two forums on the
subject. There was no absence of brainpower in the Dove
Conference Center that day. On the dais were Ken Page, president of the
Springfield branch of the NAACP; Larry Golden, emeritus professor at the
University of Illinois at Springfield; Jim Lewis, a federal prosecutor;
Gary Plummer, president of the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce; and
David Burns, business manager of an International Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers local. Kenley Wade, chairman of the Citizens Club’s
race-relations subcommittee, moderated. For two hours, the usual suspects
— as Golden characterized the panelists — recited the usual
litany of problems in the Springfield Police Department, boosting minority
employment with the city, economic development on the east side, and more
jobs for black folks. If anyone could fix any of it, it was the people
collected in this room. Mayor Tim Davlin and his top assistant, Jim Donelan;
Ministerial Alliance president Dr. Wes McNeese; mayoral candidate and Ward
10 Ald. Bruce Strom; and former U.S. Marshal Robert Moore (Kim
Moore’s father) were just of the few of the players in attendance.
The message was simple: Springfield has made some
progress but has a long way to go, as the NAACP’s Page said, before
it can even become an “adequate city.”
And those in attendance seemed to agree that the task
is now up to Springfield’s younger generation of leaders. However,
even though 18- to 39-year-olds account for 26 percent of Sangamon
County’s population, the white representatives of that group present
that night wouldn’t have filled the seats around the City
Council’s horseshoe, and there were even fewer young blacks at the
forum. If young people don’t participate in these
discussions, it’s unlikely that anything will change, a dilemma
understood all too well by Thomas Dorsey, a Springfield attorney and
president of the Black Chamber of Commerce, who did attend the meeting.
“I want my kids to grow up and go to a good
school and get a good education with a diverse population,” he says. In a recent interview, Davlin said that he absolutely
sees “the value in attracting and retaining young professionals from
all races and ethnicities to our city” and believes that young people
have always been one of Springfield’s strengths. “When Mike Pittman and Kevin Gamble joined
forces, they did not have a track record of success,” Davlin says,
“yet through perseverance they have not only expanded development in
the inner city area but Mike has begun a specialized newspaper and Kevin is
a leader at the University of Illinois at Springfield.”
Davlin says that Springfield, with its primary
employers in government, health care, and insurance, is in a good position
to attract a diverse group of young professionals. Not only will those people contribute to the success
of Springfield financially, he says, more important, they will also have a
big influence on the future of Springfield. “As society strives to part ways for good with
all semblances of racism, I believe one of the keys to achieving this goal
is for young professionals of all races to be role models for our
children,” Davlin says. “This is best achieved when children see people
of all colors and backgrounds contributing positively to our successes.
Given opportunity, young professionals can have a profound impact on our
community.”
The mayor suggests that minority young professionals
lead by example. Kim Moore agrees. Her group The Network hosts events
in Springfield that appeal more to young, black professionals, such as
Expressions in the Dark, which is held on the first Friday of each month. “We have to make it happen for ourselves,”
she says. “When there’s a few of us, we need to bring all of us
into the fold so we can grow.”
But Moore, one of The Network’s co-founders,
says that blacks can still do a better job of supporting one another. “I want my city to be so much better, because it
has so much
potential,” she says. This summer, however, she was disappointed at the low
attendance at Meeting at the Elders Circle, a gospel play her group brought to Springfield.
“You want to say there’s nothing to
do?” Moore says. “We’re breaking our necks, going into
debt. . . . But I do it because we have to do something. If I didn’t,
we’d go berserko.”
For 40-year-old Dorsey, economic development is the
key. He credits the GSCC with “trying to take us to a new
place” with its Bridges initiative, which, according to GSCC president Plummer, will boost
the local economy by $2.6 billion, add 4,500 new jobs, and give rise to more than 350 business
startups. This could translate into more black-owned businesses
in Springfield, which is why Dorsey is trying to track down as many of the
African-American business owners as he can find among the some 500
minority-owned businesses located in Sangamon County and get them involved
with the Springfield Black Chamber of Commerce.
“There should be alternatives besides working
for the state. You talk about brain drain now? If there are no jobs, people are gone,” he says.
Ultimately, Dorsey says: “City leaders will have to figure out how to
attract youth and must also take a youthful perspective on things. This
city will have to decide if it wants to make itself attractive, and maybe
it doesn’t.”
Contact R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2007.
