People listening to Shermann Thomas at a monument to Ida B. Wells, a journalist, educator and early leader in the Civil Rights Movement, in Chicago recently. Photos: TNS
He towered over the packed bus, standing well over 1.8m, with a head full of locks and a purple shirt proudly boasting “Chicagoan” on his chest.
“You’re getting an official Mahogany tour because the bus pulled up late,” Shermann “Dilla” Thomas joked with the crowd of onlookers.
The Mahogany Bus Tour is an initiative created by TikTok star, community historian and cultural worker Thomas to encourage natives, transplants and tourists to move beyond their screens, off their blocks and into Chicago’s diverse communities.
Thomas, a South Side native, shines a light on the rich history of Chicago’s neighbourhoods that is often skipped over by the tourism industry.
On a Saturday in May, the North Lawndale tour bus rolled to a stop behind the Douglass Park field house and an eclectic crowd eagerly climbed aboard. One ticket-holder wore a tweed jacket with collegiate elbow patches. Another had bright pink hair and a rainbow belt. According to Thomas, the tours attract some tourists and community members, but their most consistent customers are white suburbanites.
He greeted the crowd with the same charisma and enthusiasm he displays on his widely popular social media channels.
Shermann Thomas, Chicago’s urban historian, leading his Mahogany Bus Tour of Bronzeville in Chicago, recently.
With over 100,000 followers on TikTok and over eight million views, Thomas has amassed a community of supporters invested in his telling of Chicago history. This support has led him to appearances on the Today show and The Kelly Clarkson Show, along with guest lectures at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and a number of partners at the City Colleges of Chicago network.
In addition to his Mahogany tours, Thomas also helps conduct Disrupting Segregation Tours with Tonika Johnson, another influential Chicagoan working to interrupt the legacy of segregation that still affects local communities.
Johnson is a photographer, a social justice artist and an Englewood native. She is also co-founder of the Englewood Arts Collective and Resident Association of Greater Englewood, which “seek to reframe the narrative of South Side communities, and mobilise people and resources for positive change”.
One of Johnson’s most widely regarded initiatives is The Folded Map Project, designed to encourage individuals who live at the same address on opposite sides of Chicago’s grid system to meet and share experiences. Following the success of that project, Johnson created the Folded Map Project Action Kit to lead people to perform everyday tasks, such as buying soap or getting cash from an ATM, in different Chicago neighbourhoods as an act of racial healing.
Johnson and Thomas partner with Chicago’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice to offer the Disrupting Segregation Tours in Englewood and Lincoln Park. On those tours, Thomas focuses on the history of Englewood while Johnson points out houses that were dilapidated or “totally gone” due to contract buying.
“Once you learn about the history of a place, it increases the value that you feel about that place, and it can make you question the things that you hear about it,” Johnson said. “That’s the aligned value system that Dilla and I have that made it such an easy partnership.”
Shermann Thomas walking near his bus during a recent Mahogany Bus Tour.
As the Mahogany tour bus wound its way through the narrow North Lawndale streets, Thomas pointed out the surrounding beauty. He detailed the unique brickwork of the Sears Roebuck YMCA. He described the “amazing”, short-lived pre-Depression era greystones that lined city blocks.
However, amid the beauty, he didn’t hesitate to discuss what had been left behind. “The reason the space like the one we’re riding through now has all these vacant lots is because of restrictive racial covenants, redlining, disinvestment, contract buying, the city saying ‘F you’, white flight and also gang violence. I tell that story,” Thomas said.
“And if, in hearing that complete story, that makes you want to advocate for restorative justice because of redlining, if it makes you proud that your heritage comes to this space so you want to spend money here, all that works for me. I’m just trying to tell the story.”
While the two-hour outing is heavily grounded in the history of Chicago’s communities, Thomas also incorporates his personal experiences. When discussing the lack of access to banks and financial education in Black communities, he recounts losing his first job at McDonald’s after his car broke down and he couldn’t get a loan to repair it.
When describing community efforts to rename a high school named for Justice John Marshall, known for rendering the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy vs Ferguson and instituting “separate but equal” policies, not only did he reference textbook knowledge of the community’s relationship with the name, he also recalled being shot down by “75-year-old Black dudes” in his efforts to change it.
“I’ve never enjoyed being cursed out more in my life,” he said, noting that “change should come when the community wants to change, not from others.”
For the North Lawndale tour, South Shore native Latoya Howery brought her grade-school-age daughter, coincidentally named Mahogany.
“When I was growing up, I literally just knew about the South Side of Chicago, and only knew about the blocks or neighbourhoods that I lived in,” Howery said.
“So because I’m South Side, her dad’s West Side, (we’re) bringing her so she can learn about both sides of town.... There’s so much history that we didn’t know anything about.”
As far as pushback on the efforts, Thomas says he sees less opposition to the tours themselves than to the content he chooses to highlight. Attendees often want to direct the tour discussion towards the prevalence of gangs and drugs in Chicago’s communities.
“I’m totally OK with talking about (the fact that) we need to resolve contemporary gang issues,” he said.
“But the conversation has to start with: You can’t create Chicago gangs in integrated neighbourhoods. All of those street gangs got created in segregated neighbourhoods. How do I know? Look at the names: Latin Kings – that got started in a Latin neighbourhood. Black Disciples – what does that mean? Black neighbourhood. That tells me that Chicago segregation helped play a part in the formation of the gangs.
“So, if we’re not starting the conversation there, then how can we talk about fixing the problem?”
Johnson noted two sources of hesitancy when launching the Folded Map Action Kit: One common among white suburbanites, and the other among Black residents of the South and West sides.
“When I introduced the action kit, people thought, ‘Oh, you just want white people to visit Black neighbourhoods’. And so when people say that, I use them saying that as a perfect demonstration of, ‘That’s exactly what segregation does’. It makes you not even think about the learning that Black people can get,” she said.
“There are Black people who are advocating for resources in their neighbourhood and they don’t know that it literally exists in another neighbourhood. If it can be done in a neighbourhood not far, you can use that as a way to advocate for what you’re entitled to.
“And it can inspire you to want to understand how and why. Why are you all able to have this? What is your alderman doing? Or, why are these businesses not looking into our neighbourhoods? It’s learning both ways.”
Johnson said that another barrier that interferes with individuals visiting the South and West sides is the fact that the historically Black and brown neighbourhoods are “for the most part, residential”. So, if folks don’t know anyone in those communities, they won’t visit unless they’re volunteering.
“How you enter a neighbourhood ultimately influences how you visit,” Johnson said.
“So I tell people these neighbourhoods are not a monolith. Englewood is not a monolith. You might feel: I don’t want to be extractive so I’m going to go and volunteer and do something. Who you meet when you go and volunteer might not be the full representation of that neighbourhood.
“It’s not to minimise who you encounter, but it’s still not the full representation. There’s nothing extractive about going to a grocery store that has people who are different from you because you’re equal – you’re both shopping. You can learn while you’re meeting people who are doing the same things that you’re doing.”
With a few of these lessons in hand, the passengers packed up their belongings and began to head off the bus, with some stopping to buy an “Everything Dope Comes From Chicago” T-shirt.
Meanwhile, Thomas still proudly displayed “Chicagoan” on his chest. And as he turned to wave goodbye to the exiting passengers, the back of his shirt was revealed: “Till Chicago Ends”. – Tribune News Service/Chicago Tribune/Jenna Smith
