“ All the strands of my life came together”
IN THE SHADOW OF
OBAMA’ S TOWER
By OSARETIN IYARE
CHICAGO – Mark Clark watched it happen from his window.
For years, the view from his apartment across Stony Island Avenue was a running track and a basketball court, then a fence, then dirt, then cranes, then, slowly, a tower rising out of Jackson Park, the site of the 1893 World’ s Fair. Back then, at the urging of Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass, Black people boycotted the
Jackson Park exposition because its planners excluded Blacks from any meaningful participation.
But the construction and opening of the Obama Presidential Center has changed that.
“ I literally watched this being built from my window,” Clark said.“ And the people in my building, my neighbors, we were all getting excited about it. Because we needed something in the neighborhood.”
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