What's a Bud Billiken?

Freedom!

I have been freed from Das Boot! After six weeks of pretty much never leaving my house, I am now free to walk about the city (slowly, gradually increasing distance, in a lace-up ankle brace).

I’m getting ready to travel again, and I’m so glad I don’t have to do it in a boot! I’ll be appearing at Page and Palette bookstore in Fairhope, Alabama on Tuesday, August 18^th. Info here, as well as info about other appearances. I still have a couple more to add.

Other than that, I’ve just been thinking and plotting and commencing to start writing again. I’ve started a bit, but I’m not yet ready to release the Kraken, so to speak. But soon!

And we’re getting ready to be invaded by military jets and skydivers and boats as this weekend is the annual Chicago Air and Water Show. Actually, some of the jets flew overhead yesterday. It’s funny. I used to get so pumped for this weekend; we live near the location of the show (off North Avenue Beach) so we hear the jets screaming overhead and if we’re out and about, we see them flying over the beach, between the skyscrapers, and I used to think it was pretty cool. And it is, for a minute.

But now, I think of all the poor pets who are traumatized by the noise. I also can’t help but feel some horror at the blatant military display, knowing that so many people in other countries equate screaming military jets with something much worse than a good time. Like, you know—imminent death. So now that I’m older, and I guess wearier of the state of the world, I have mixed feelings. There is a literal buzz in the air this week, that’s for sure. And it just adds to the terrific atmosphere of a Chicago summer that’s jampacked with festivals and shows and concerts and parades.

Speaking of parades, you know something I like a lot more than the Air and Water Show? The Bud Billiken Day Parade, and I bet you’ve never heard of it. Neither had I, until I moved to Chicago. So get ready to learn something cool.

The Bud Billiken Day Parade is the largest African-American parade in the United States, and it’s been around since 1929!

Back in 1905, a man named Robert S. Abbott founded a newspaper called The Chicago Defender. It’s still publishing, online. The Defender was a ground-breaking Black newspaper that defied traditional (meaning mainly white-owned) papers and informed readers of the lynchings that were happening, primarily in the south, during the Jim Crow era.

Abbott worked (underground) with Pullman porters who were based in Chicago to get the newspaper distributed in the south. And the paper urged readers there to move to the north to escape that area’s violence and segregation; eventually, due to other circumstances as well, this led to the Great Migration. (Read Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, which is just terrific.)

The Great Migration brought a lot of African-Americans to Chicago. So Abbott used the Defender to help define and inform the black communities here, and of course cover news that was important to them, including labor and political issues.

In 1923, Abbott and another editor founded the Bud Billiken Club, and featured it on the Defender, Junior page of the paper, encouraging black children to read, and providing them with social and academic opportunities and stories that encouraged children to take pride in their race. (Remember, this was the 1920s.)

Bud Billiken is completely fictitious, just a name and face for the club and its goals, but a Billiken was a popular mythical creature of the time, a cartoon-like elfin thing first drawn by a woman named Florence Petz, who dreamed it up. She decided the little-thing-was supposed to bring luck and protect children.

In order to encourage children to attend school every year, the Defender and the Bud Billiken Club decided to hold a parade and a picnic (really, it’s now a big festival) near the end of summer. Over the years the parade has expanded; lots of celebrities and important figures participate (such as Michael Jordan and President Barack Obama; even Harry Truman once was Grand Marshall!). What I love is all the school groups who participate, like dance troupes and marching bands and the famous Jesse White Tumblers. (Look them up. They’re beloved in Chicago and beyond, even appearing recently on America’s Got Talent. They will blow your mind.)

And then at the festival after the parade, local organizations provide school supplies and things like backpacks and stuff to children whose parents can’t afford them, so that they’re all ready to start the new school year.

I just love this parade. It’s in the Bronzeville neighborhood (which is a really cool neighborhood historically and architecturally and should definitely be part of any Chicago visit!). And it’s televised.

I love it for the community and history it celebrates, and of course, because it’s all about getting kids excited to go back to school and learn. But there’s also a little melancholy around it, because it does mark the end of summer in Chicago and that’s always a little sad.

Still, now you know what a Bud Billiken is. You learned something!

Just like the kids at the Bud Billiken Parade.