A Personal Journey Through Black Chicago History
Growing Up in Bronzeville:
When Black Music Was Magic
From the Great Migration to Mahalia Jackson, the Regal Theater, and the cousin who gave me a memory that lasted a lifetime.
Annie Rideout told to J. A. Jackson Article Written By Author J. A. Jackson
Some childhood memories fade with time. Others become part of your soul. Mine began with a journey from Arkansas to Chicago, an extraordinary cousin named Barbara Jean, and a voice so powerful that I can still hear it nearly sixty years later.
The Day I Heard a Voice That Touched My Soul
I was just a little girl when I heard Mahalia Jackson sing.
I didn't understand the full meaning of the moment. I didn't know enough about American history, the Civil Rights Movement, or the extraordinary contributions of African American musicians to appreciate everything happening around me.
But I knew something special was taking place.
I remember the children gathering along our Chicago neighborhood streets. There were little boys and girls, older children, grandmothers, aunts, baby sisters, and grown folks who understood the importance of what we were about to experience.
We were walking together to hear a woman whose voice had already touched millions.
Her name was Mahalia Jackson.
The adults told us how important she was to our people.
I listened, but I was a child. What did I really know about greatness?
Then I heard her voice.
And suddenly, I understood.
It was unlike anything my young ears had ever experienced.
Her voice seemed to travel beyond the theater doors, beyond the Chicago streets, beyond everything I understood about the world.
It reached something deep inside my little girl's soul.
To this day, I can describe that feeling only through the language of the Divine Feminine.
It was as though Divine Mother Barbelo and Pistis Sophia had placed the perfect voice inside the perfect person—a voice capable of feeding, soothing, comforting, bringing peace, sharing love, and offering hope to a people who had endured so much.
That was how Mahalia Jackson's voice felt to me.
And I have never forgotten it.
1968: From Malvern, Arkansas, to the Streets of Chicago
My Chicago story began in 1968.
I was in the third grade when my parents moved our family from Malvern, Arkansas, to Chicago, Illinois.
There were five of us children, along with my mother and father.
My parents wanted something better for us.
Better opportunities. A better future. A chance to build a life with possibilities they believed might be harder to find in the South.
We were part of the larger story of African American families who migrated north during what history now calls the Great Migration.
Between approximately 1916 and 1970, millions of African Americans left the South in search of greater economic opportunity, personal freedom, and relief from racial oppression. Chicago became one of the most important destinations.
But when you're a little girl moving from Arkansas to Chicago, you don't think of yourself as part of a historical movement.
You think about your family. Your cousins. Your new neighborhood. And all the exciting things waiting to be discovered.
The Big Chicago Apartment That Held Two Families
When we arrived in Chicago, we lived with our cousins in a huge apartment on 45th Street.
And when I say huge, I mean it was big enough to hold two families!
There were my parents, my brothers and sisters, our cousins, and the everyday bustle that comes when an extended family shares a home.
What I remember most wasn't the size of the apartment. It was the people.
Our building was filled with families who had come from Southern states. They brought their traditions, their food, their music, their family values, and their ways of looking after one another.
Chicago might have been a big northern city, but inside our building, there was still something wonderfully Southern about the way people lived.
The grown folks looked out for the children. The older children looked out for the younger ones. And everybody seemed to know somebody who knew your mother!
We had something that I believe many children today would benefit from experiencing.
We had a village.
Not a perfect village. Not a world without hardship. But a community where children belonged to something larger than themselves.
And among the most important people in my little world were my cousins, Charles and Barbara Jean.
Barbara Jean: The Coolest Girl I Ever Knew
Oh, how I admired my cousin Barbara Jean!
Barbara Jean had lived in Chicago all her life. She was older than I was, and in my eyes, she was the coolest girl in the whole wide world.
For one thing, she didn't have to go to school like I did.
Now, when you're a little girl, having a cousin who doesn't have to go to school sounds like the height of sophistication!
And Barbara Jean had something else that made her absolutely fabulous.
She had a fantastic collection of 45 rpm records.
Oh, those records!
For younger readers, a 45 was a small vinyl record that usually carried a song on each side. Before streaming services, playlists, and digital downloads, those little records were treasures.
And Barbara Jean had a collection that made my young heart sing.
Music was part of her world. And because I adored her, music became part of mine.
But there was something about Barbara Jean that I didn't fully understand as a child.
She had sickle cell disease.
In those days, treatment options were far more limited, and many children with the disease faced devastating health challenges and shortened lives.
I remember being told that Barbara Jean wasn't expected to live beyond eighteen or nineteen. I believe she made it to nineteen.
Even now, writing those words brings back the realization of how precious her life was.
Yet when I remember Barbara Jean, I don't first think about her illness.
I remember her personality. Her wonderful records. Her knowledge of Chicago.
And the way she made me feel that the world was full of exciting things worth discovering.
Most of all, I remember that she knew something I didn't.
She knew how important it was for us children to hear Mahalia Jackson.
And she made sure we did.
The Neighborhood Walk That Became a Lifetime Memory
I can still picture the children gathering.
Barbara Jean helped round us up. There were children from our block and more children we collected along the way.
And there were grown folks, too. Grandmothers. Aunts. Women who understood that some experiences were too important to let the younger generation miss.
We walked together through our Chicago neighborhood.
Imagine that for a moment.
A gathering of neighborhood children and elders, moving together through the streets, united by the simple desire to hear one extraordinary woman sing.
There were no smartphones recording every second. No social media posts. No livestream.
Just people. Community. Anticipation.
And the knowledge, passed from the adults to the children, that we were about to witness something important.
I remember the energy. You could feel it.
Something was happening. Something bigger than us.
And even though we children didn't fully understand why everyone was so excited, we understood that the adults wanted us to remember.
They were right.
I have carried that memory for nearly sixty years.
Mahalia Jackson: More Than a Singer
Mahalia Jackson wasn't simply an extraordinary entertainer.
She was a woman whose voice became intertwined with the spiritual and cultural history of African American life.
Born in New Orleans, she moved to Chicago in 1927 and became one of gospel music's most influential performers.
Her recording of Move On Up a Little Higher helped introduce gospel music to a much wider audience.
She also became closely associated with the Civil Rights Movement and performed at the historic 1963 March on Washington.
But none of those facts explains what her voice meant to me as a child.
I didn't hear a list of accomplishments.
I heard comfort. I heard strength. I heard something that seemed ancient, maternal, and eternal.
As an adult, I sometimes think of her voice through the spiritual symbolism of Barbelo and Pistis Sophia—figures associated with divine emanation and wisdom in certain Gnostic traditions.
That is my personal spiritual interpretation, not a claim about Mahalia Jackson's own religious beliefs.
She sang from the Christian gospel tradition.
But the feeling her voice awakened in me transcended the religious vocabulary I knew as a child.
To me, her voice was an expression of love powerful enough to reach into human suffering and offer hope.
What a gift to give a child. What a gift to give a people.
And what a gift Barbara Jean gave me by making sure I heard it.
Chicago's Bronzeville: Where Black History Had a Soundtrack
When I think about growing up in Chicago, I remember more than buildings and streets.
I remember a cultural world.
The music. The restaurants. The neighborhood gatherings. The performers who seemed larger than life. The people who dressed up to go out.
The feeling that Black culture was alive, visible, and worth celebrating.
Chicago's Bronzeville had already earned a remarkable place in African American history.
Often called the Black Metropolis, Bronzeville became a major center of Black entrepreneurship, journalism, music, literature, and political life. Its cultural institutions flourished even as residents confronted segregation and discrimination.
It was part of a larger Black Chicago world that continued shaping my childhood and teenage years.
And one of the most legendary landmarks of that world was the Regal Theater.
The Regal Theater: When the Stars Came to 47th Street
The original Regal Theater stood at 4719 South Parkway, the street later renamed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Opened in 1928, the theater became one of Chicago's most celebrated stages for African American entertainment.
It welcomed legendary musicians and performers across generations, including jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, and soul artists.
The original Regal closed in 1968 and was demolished in 1973.
Think about what that means.
An entire world of Black entertainment history once stood at a Chicago intersection.
The voices. The applause. The excitement. The audience members dressed in their finest clothes. The children dreaming of seeing their favorite stars.
The Regal belonged to a remarkable musical tradition that included performers such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King, and Stevie Wonder.
To younger generations, these are names in music history.
To those of us who grew up around that era, they were part of the cultural atmosphere of our lives.
And when I think about the Regal, I don't think only about famous people.
I think about the ordinary Chicago families who made those performances meaningful.
The mothers and fathers who bought tickets. The grandmothers who loved gospel music. The teenagers who adored Motown. The neighborhood children who waited for a glimpse of somebody famous.
It was happening on the sidewalks.”
Gladys' Luncheonette: Where Soul Food Met Stardom
And speaking of Chicago history, let me tell you about another place that lives in my memories.
Gladys'.
If you knew Chicago's South Side food culture, you may remember Gladys' Luncheonette.
I remember it as a place with wonderful soul food, served in a cafeteria-style setting, where the excitement extended beyond the dining room.
It was the kind of place associated in neighborhood memory with entertainers, late-night meals, and people hoping to see somebody famous.
For us children, part of the excitement was simply being nearby. We wanted to see the stars.
And when I think of those days, I remember how food, music, and neighborhood life all seemed to belong together.
A restaurant wasn't merely a place to eat.
It could be a gathering place. A social center. A place where stories were exchanged and people felt connected to their community.
In later years, I remembered another restaurant called Blue 47, and I began wondering about its connection to the Gladys' I knew.
That is one of the wonderful and sometimes frustrating things about childhood memories.
You remember the feeling perfectly. But you sometimes need to research the names, dates, and buildings to reconstruct the history around it.
And that is why I believe our stories should be recorded.
Because a restaurant can close. A building can disappear. A neighborhood can change.
But the people who were there still carry pieces of its history.
Bonanza, Motown, and the Magic of Chicago Talent Nights
Another name that comes back to me is Bonanza, around 69th and Halsted.
I remember hearing about talent nights and the connection people made between Chicago's entertainment scene and the rise of the Jackson 5.
The Jackson 5 became one of the greatest success stories in American popular music.
And the history of their discovery has been told in different ways over the years.
Diana Ross became publicly associated with their introduction to Motown audiences, while other accounts emphasize the roles of Gladys Knight and Bobby Taylor.
For me, what makes that history fascinating is the larger story.
Chicago had a thriving world of talent shows, theaters, nightclubs, and community audiences.
Before stars became international celebrities, they were young performers trying to be heard.
And ordinary people sometimes had the opportunity to see greatness before the rest of the world recognized it.
That is something I remember about the Chicago of my youth.
It felt as though music was everywhere.
And possibility was everywhere, too.
1975: The Year I Met Jesse Jackson at South Shore High School
By 1975, I was a high school student at South Shore High School on Jeffery Boulevard in Chicago.
And that year, I met Jesse Jackson at my school.
Think about that for a moment.
I had arrived in Chicago as a third grader in 1968, the year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Now, only seven years later, I was a teenager meeting another prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement.
As a child, I had heard the extraordinary voice of Mahalia Jackson.
As a teenager, I encountered a man whose name was connected with the continuing struggle for civil rights, dignity, and opportunity.
At the time, I was simply going to school and living my life.
But looking back, I understand that I was growing up during a period of profound social and cultural change.
And I had a front-row seat to small but unforgettable pieces of that history.
Arkansas Roots, Chicago Memories, California Dreams
My childhood wasn't spent entirely in Chicago.
I was born in Arkansas, where I lived until our family moved north in 1968.
In 1970, I spent time living with my aunt in Redwood City, California.
Then I returned to Chicago in 1971.
Chicago remained my home until 1981, when I moved to California.
And California has been my home ever since.
Sometimes I think about the extraordinary combination of places that shaped my life.
Arkansas gave me my beginnings.
Chicago gave me an unforgettable childhood filled with music, family, culture, and history.
California became the place where I continued building my adult life.
Each place contributed something to the person I became.
But Chicago holds a special place in my heart.
Because that was where I learned how much beauty could exist in a community. How powerful music could be. How important older relatives were in shaping a child's understanding of the world.
And how a single experience could remain alive in your heart for decades.
What Barbara Jean Really Gave Me
As I grow older, I find myself thinking more about Barbara Jean.
Not only about the records she owned or how cool I thought she was.
I think about the limited number of years she had.
I think about how she lived with sickle cell disease during a time when medicine could offer far less than it can today.
And I think about the way she chose to share the things she loved.
She loved music. She knew Chicago. She understood that Mahalia Jackson mattered.
And she helped gather the neighborhood children so we could experience something we might otherwise have missed.
Barbara Jean probably never imagined that decades later, her little cousin would still be telling this story.
But here I am.
Still remembering. Still hearing that voice. Still grateful.
And I realize something now that I couldn't have understood as a child.
Barbara Jean didn't leave me money, jewelry, or some grand material inheritance.
She left me something far more enduring.
She left me a memory.
She gave me an experience that became part of my soul.
And perhaps that is one of the most beautiful ways a person can live on.
Through the love they gave. Through the joy they shared. Through the moments they made possible for somebody else.
Why We Must Preserve Our Black Family Stories
When people study African American history, they often begin with famous names, landmark events, and important dates.
And those things matter.
But I believe another kind of history deserves to be preserved.
The history carried by ordinary families.
The mothers and fathers who moved north hoping for better lives. The cousins who shared apartments. The grandmothers who walked neighborhood children to hear gospel music.
The record collections that introduced younger generations to legendary performers.
The restaurants where families gathered. The schools where young people encountered leaders who helped shape their understanding of the world.
These stories are part of American history, too.
And if we don't record them, some of them may disappear.
I want younger generations to understand that the Great Migration wasn't merely a historical movement represented by statistics.
It was families. It was children. It was hopes and sacrifices.
It was people leaving familiar places because they believed a better future might be waiting somewhere else.
My parents were among those people.
And because of the choices they made, I experienced a childhood I still treasure.
Nearly Sixty Years Later, I Can Still Hear Her
Sometimes I wish I could go back.
Not to change anything.
Just to stand on that Chicago sidewalk one more time.
To see the children gathering. To watch the grandmothers and aunts walking with us. To hear the chatter and excitement.
To see my cousin Barbara Jean, young and full of life, sharing something she knew was important.
And then, once more, to hear Mahalia Jackson's voice.
That voice.
The one that seemed to reach beyond the theater doors. The one that touched a little girl's soul. The one that carried comfort, love, peace, and hope.
I would love to tell Barbara Jean what that day meant to me.
I would love to tell her that I never forgot.
But perhaps, in a way, this article is my opportunity to do exactly that.
For Barbara Jean, With Love
For your wonderful collection of 45 records.
For your love of music.
For the way you looked after us younger children.
For the extraordinary gift you gave me without ever knowing how long it would last.
And for every grandmother, aunt, cousin, mother, father, and neighbor who helped make Chicago's Black communities places where children could grow up surrounded by love, music, and belonging.
Buildings may disappear. Theaters may close. Neighborhoods may change. But the voices of our childhood—and the people who taught us to listen—can live inside us forever.
And nearly sixty years later, I can still hear Mahalia Jackson.
A Question for My Readers
Did you grow up in Chicago's Bronzeville, South Shore, or another South Side neighborhood during the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s?
Do you remember the original Regal Theater, Gladys' Luncheonette, neighborhood talent shows, or the excitement of seeing Black entertainers perform?
Did your family move north during the Great Migration?
I would love to hear your memories.
Tell me about the streets, schools, restaurants, music, and people you remember. Our individual stories may seem small, but together they help preserve an extraordinary part of African American history.
Discover More From Author J. A. Jackson
Stories, reflections, books, and creative writing celebrating history, love, family, imagination, and the human spirit.
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Historical Reading & Resources
Explore more about the places and history mentioned in this personal essay:
- Chicago History Museum
- National Park Service — African American Heritage
- Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
Historical note: This essay combines personal childhood recollections with historical background. Some performance dates, venues, and neighborhood associations remain subjects for further verification.
Topics: Bronzeville Chicago | Great Migration | Mahalia Jackson | Regal Theater | Black Chicago History | African American Family Memories | Motown | Chicago South Side
© 2026 Author J. A. Jackson. All rights reserved.
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