IL: The Sequel To The Dyett Story

Ten years ago, Dyett High School in the Chicago southside neighborhood of Bronzeville, was up against the ropes. I'll pull from some of what I wrote about it at the time (apologies if some of the links have died).

In 2012, Chicago Public Schools decided to close Dyett, allowing the last freshman class to finish their education there if they wished. Only a handful wished (and they were reportedly pressured by CPS to wish differently), but they're done, and the time had come to decide what Dyett would become.

There were three proposals. In a poor, black neighborhood of Chicago, there was an outside proposal for entertainment industry, an outside proposal for sports, and a community proposal for science, technology and leadership. I respect athletics, and you know I love the arts, but you tell me which one of these proposals set the highest aspirations for the children of this community.

Bronzeville is poor, but they had worked hard for their school (back in 2011, just before the district dropped the hammer, they won a grant from ESPN to rebuild their athletic facilities with big fancy upgrades like working handles for doors). They were improving and growing stronger. There's no question they needed some help, but a search doesn't turn up stories suggesting that Dyett was some sort of notorious hellhole in freefall.

But Dyett was located in the northern end of Washington Park, a very desirable chunk of real estate that was one of the two locations in the running to be the location of Barack Obama's Presidential Library. In fact, the proposed location was within a stone's throw of Dyett.

In fact, Washington Park seems to have been in the crosshairs for many years. Back in 2008, when Chicago was feeling the Olympic love, Washington Park was called one of the hottest neighborhoods, a diamond in the rough, and there is still talk about turning it into a community that could attract and support business, arts, and all the trappings of gentrification. And gentrification is a concern in Bronzeville, just as many see it as a hallmark of Rahm Emanuel's tenure as mayor.

CPS stalled and hemmed and hawed and tried to avoid saying out loud "We are stripping Bronzeville of their community high school" and so a group of parents staged a hunger strike. First, they did all the right things, developing their own proposals, presenting them, petitioning, and getting ignored by Emanuel and his crew. So they moved on to a hunger strike.

The Chicago press ignored them, except when people wrote really stupid editorials about Dyett. When the new school year rolled around and the strike had been going on for a month, CPS tried to shut them up with a bogus "compromise" (for the announcement of that, the strikers were not allowed in the room). It was infuriating, and symptomatic of reformsterism at the time. As I wrote at the time:

Dyett is the worst of the reformster movement in a microcosm-- residents will be stripped of their local school, given no voice in what will replace it, because their Betters have decided what they need, what they deserve. And because small politicos want to make sure that local voices are shut out, that power is not allowed into the hands of ordinary citizens.

Dyett is all of us, sooner or later (and in some places, already)-- privatizers and profiteers shutting down democracy so that they can get their hands on those sweet sweet piles of tax money and keep their hands on the wheels of power.

Jitu Brown was a hell of a voice for the hunger strikers, and the strikers themselves were a strong statement, and the school was rescued from closure, becoming an arts-focused school with technology training. "New Century. New Needs. New Direction."

Last week they held the third annual awards ceremony established in honor of the school's namesake, Chicago music educator Walter H. Dyett. Dyett was an accomplished musician who taught in Chicago schools in the mid-20th century. His students included Nat King Cole, Bo Diddly, Milt Hinton, Dinah Washington, and Redd Foxx. It's a big legacy.

The school's basketball team has been a state powerhouse, making it to the playoffs multiple years. But last week they made it all the way to the top-- the Walter H. Dyett Eagles beat Althoff Catholic High School to become AA state champions. Ten years ago, they were elementary students who had no idea where they might get to go to high school. Now they are state champs. You never know how these stories are going to turn.