Compiled by Steve Rhodes
With the Rev. Michael Pfleger once again facing reassignment from his beloved St. Sabina, now is an opportune time to dip into Robert McClory’s Radical Disciple: Father Pfleger, St. Sabina Church, and the Fight for Social Justice
The Billboards
“At the end of one unproductive meeting he asked a billboard official if he would ever consider saturating the Chicago Gold Coast or the affluent North Shore with the kind of concentrated advertising accorded the minority communities.
“‘No,’ said the official, ‘they wouldn’t allow us to do that.’
“‘Then neither will we!’ said Pfleger as he left the meeting.”
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See also: City Balks As Billboards Overrun Poor Areas
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“Standing Up, Taking Back organized a two-day sit-in at the Midwest office of the Lorillard Tobacco Company, the manufacturer of Newports, in the upscale Chicago suburb of Naperville. More than one hundred protesters milled around the company grounds for the better part of two days, demanding that Lorillard cease inundating the minority community with ads and stop distributing caps and T-shirts that linked Newports with good times. ‘Bouncing balls, skates, happy people – that’s the image they give of cigarettes,’ said Pfleger. ‘They should be showing coffins instead.'”
The Liquor Stores Sting
“Standing Up, Taking Back also sponsored projects at the local level, one of which eventually created citywide reverberations. It was well known to Auburn Gresham parents that children as young as twelve were able to buy beer at local liquor and convenience stores – no identification required and no questions asked by clerks or owners.
“Pfleger decided it was time to determine how widespread the practice was, and he devised a carefully choreographed sting operation to provide answers. Three fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys who had summer jobs at St. Sabina were recruited and trained. One or more would enter a store and attempt to buy a six-pack or a quart of beer. Several adults from a parish team would wait outside in a car. If the purchase was successful, the youths would get in the car and turn over the beer, the receipt, a description of the clerk, and any other relevant information, which was dutifully recorded.
“Over a two-month period the team visited thirty-four South Side stores along a three-mile stretch fof 79th Street and a mile and a half of Halsted Street. The receipts and the alcohol the youths provided established that they had been successful in purchasing beer in twenty-two of the thirty-four stores.
“Pfleger held a press conference in a vacant lot on 79th, providing all present with the names of the stores, copies of the receipts, and information about the whole operation. ‘A young person who looks fourteen or fifteen years old can walk in and ask for a quart of Old English or a quart of Colt 45,’ he said. ‘These people [store owners] do not give a damn about our kids. They care about one thing: how much money can they make before they close their doors and drive off to another community.’ He then turned all the evidence over to the district police commander.
“That evening Pfleger got a personal call from Mayor Daley, who asked that Pfleger present himself in the mayor’s office in city hall the next morning. Pfleger was immediately concerned about what this meant. Hiring underage youth to commit unlawful activity was clearly illegal. He could be arrested and prosecuted for his audacity. Besides, this sting operation showed up and embarrassed Daley’s police force, which should have been cracking down on establishments so openly selling liquor to children.
“When Pfleger walked into the mayor’s office, his fears seemed justified. Sitting with Daley were Superintendent Philip Cline, the city corporation counsel, and the head of the zoning board. Daley immediately asked Pfleger to explain what he had been doing regarding liquor sales to young people. Pfleger described at length the details of the sting, emphasizing his motives and his abiding concern about the easy access children have to liquor and cigarettes, ‘the gateway drugs’ to narcotics.
“When he finished there was a moment of silence. Then, according to Pfleger, Daley turned toward his police superintendent and demanded, ‘Why haven’t you been doing this? Why does it take the reverend here to expose this criminal activity?’ Cline and his corporation counsel tried to explain that the law does not permit police to involve underage youth in deceptive practices. ‘I don’t care,’ thundered Daley. ‘I want this stopped, and you find a way to do it!’ Daley then politely thanked Pfleger for his work and wished him well.”
The Reunion
“When [athletic director Christopher Mallette] told the pastor of his interest in [having the parish’s teams play in] the Southwest Conference, Pfleger reacted with uncharacteristic hesitancy and caution. He was aware that the parishes of the SCC were the very ones to which many white families had fled from St. Sabina in the racial transition of the 1960s. And he knew from his own experience as a native South Sider (and from what Monsignor McMahon had shared with him in his early days at Sabina) about the hard feelings many of these ‘refugees’ harbored toward black people, which had been passed on in many cases to their children and grandchildren.
“Also fresh in his memory was the Grand Sabina Reunion in 1998 three years before, when all the graduates from the parish school from 1916 to 1966 were invited to a picnic, mass, and celebration of great memories. It was titled ‘Goin’ to Sabina’s one more time.’
“But no one was going to Sabina’s. A planning committee scheduled the event to be held on the grounds of St. Xavier University, some seven miles from the church, a convenient location for far South Siders and south suburbanites.
“Pfleger was not invited, nor were any graduates after 1966, a period of some thirty-two years, during which the school had continued to produce crops of grad every year. The cutoff, explained the promoters, was set at 1966 because that was ‘the year the music died’ – that is, the year the mammorth Sabina Sunday night dances were cancelled. That made no sense to Pfleger, since the event was billed as a school reunion and had no connection with the dance.
“A more likely, and sinister, explanation was racial discrimination. The class of 1966 had 17 black students out of a total of 111, while by the next year (and every year after that) the graduating class was predominantly black.
“Pfleger demanded to meet with the planning committee and did so at a South Side pancake house. When the tense conversation quieted, a leading member of the committee approached Pfleger and said bluntly, ‘We have nothing in common with them,’ referring to the post-1966 grads.
“Pfleger blew his stack, saying, ‘It’s what I thought – pure racism! You cannot do this, and unless all are invited I will fight you!’ The committee refused to reconsider the invitation list, so Pfleger called the president of Xavier and Cardinal Bernardin, expressing his anger. Xavier then cancelled the use of its facilities, and the cardinal revoked permission for an outdoor mass on the university grounds. Pfleger, in turn, shared his views on the matter far and wide but with little effect.
“The Grand Sabina Reunion was held at a suburban forest preserve on August 20, 1998, with an estimated four thousand guests and a mass celebrated by eleven priests.”
The SCC
“When the basketball season began, everything seemed to be going surprisingly well – at first. Security at the games was adequate to assuage fears; there were no forfeits at Sabina; and some parishes went out of their way to welcome the newcomers to the league. One even threw a pizza party for the team. But as the Sabina team (nicknamed ‘the Saints’) dominated opponents in many games, the mood shifted.
“Cardinal George did not help when he attended a game and good-naturedly told the Sabina team, ‘Don’t beat my boys too bad.’ If the white kids were the cardinal’s boys, the team wondered, then who were they?
“By mid-December, complaints about refereeing became more common, as were charges of rough play, especially throwing of elbows. Mallette told the Saints, ‘Keep moving. They can’t hurt you if they can’t catch you.’
“There was little chatting or fraternization between parents and supporters from rival schools. Black parents clustered on one side of the gym cheering for their kids whle white parents huddled on the other side rooting on theirs. An angry woman approached Pfleger during a game at St. Germaine and accused him of being an anti-white racist. Later a group of adults accosted him in the parking lot, asking why he was bringing trouble into their peaceful community.
“With teams jockeying for play-off positions after the Christmas break, the tension increased. At St. Bede the Venerable, after a game which was called ‘especially dirty’ by Mallette, a Sabine player was confronted by a member of the St. Bede team who reportedly said in a loud voice, ‘Time to leave, nigger!’
“Mallette regarded it as a clear-cut case of racial harassment and filed a grievance with the SCC. The executive committee acknowledged that the charge was valid but said Sabina failed to positively identify the offender. The incident, in fact, had been videotaped, and Mallette claimed the culprit could be positively identified.
“After considerable argument, the SCC finally agreed that the ideal remedy would be a mandatory mediation session at a neutral site with the two boys involved and their parents present. Failure by the accused to show up, said the executive committee, would result in St. Bede being barred from the playoffs.
“On the appointed evening, the Sabina youth and parents appeared; the St. Bede boy and his parents did not, sending instead a letter denying built.
“As a result, St. Bede was ruled ineligible for the playoffs. (The St. Sabina student later suded the SCC and the archdiocese, seeking more than one hundred thousand dollars for alleged racial taunts and for being compelled to dress for games in cafeterias and kitchens. The suit was resolved in 2007 with an unspecified amount paid to the youth.)
“Meanwhile, matters only got worse. The Sabina Saints, who were compiling the best records in the league, had been using an especially talented seventh-grader on both the seventh- and eighth-grade teams, as was considered acceptable in Chicago grammar and high schhol competition. The rules allowed for a youth at a lower level to compete also on an upper level team but not vice versa.
“Mallette was informed by the SCC that this procedure would not be permitted in the playoffs. The seventh-grader could only play on the seventh-grade team. Mallette vigorously pursued an appeal, asking how and when this new rule had been hatched and where he could find a copy. As it turned out, there was no rule; it was ‘an unwritten rule.’ But it was going to be enforced anyway.
“That decision soon became moot when Mallette was presented with a playoff schedule that had the two Sabina teams playing at the same time in two different gyms. In addition, Sabina was scheduled for no home playoff games at all despite having the top season records at both grade levels.
“Then came the final blow: Mallette learned in March on the eve of the playoffs that the SCC, without informing him, had reversed the penalty on St. Bede, and they would indeed be participating. Phelan, the conference chairman, explained that the executive board had ‘changed its mind’ and decided banning the team would be ‘too steep’ a penalty.
“It was, Mallette said, ‘too much.’ On March 7, 2002, Pfleger, Mallette, and Blakey met with the team members’ parents and leaders of the Sabina community. They reviewed the events of the season, discussed the endless controversies, and asked for the will of the people. ‘It was a difficult and painful decision,’ said Pfleger. ‘Do we win a trophy or teach a lesson in self-respect? Which is greater?’
“The gathering opted for self-respect. In a five-page letter to the SCC listing their grievances, including the failure to adequately address a racial insult, they wrote, ‘We have unanimously decided that due to this issue and a myriad of other issues, which demonstrate a lack of equity and integrity, effective immediately we will no longer participate in South Side Conference activities and events.”
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Comments welcome.
Posted on March 21, 2011