Harvest Seasoning: Story-Banking & Seed-Saving with Englewood Elders

“The project documents audio conversations with Englewood Elders and activates these memories through installing “little free seed libraries” at corresponding neighborhood sites, stocked with flower/vegetable seeds packaged with collaged ephemera and paired with a QR/digital link to Elders' conversations, thereby providing residents dynamic entry points to meaningfully engage with narratives of their neighbors.”

— Proposal Summary (Artists Run Chicago Fund)

Ms. Barbara Miller

Through Harvest Seasoning, Cooperation Racine is supporting Elders in documenting their legacies–personal, familial, community–and sharing these experiences with neighbors, K-8 youth, and the broader public. The medium of seeds as a connecting bridge reflects the deep history in Black & Brown communities of gardens as sites of sustenance and resistance.

The tradition of seed saving, wherein Elders protected and preserved the community's seed collection, ensured continued economic prosperity, nutritional variety, and cultural pride as a particular varieties of fruits and vegetables were a source of pride for a family establishing themselves in a new community, during the Great Migration, for example.

Rather than a traditional, linear, scripted Q/A, our time together is structured around a series of “conversation stems”, forming a foundation of the nature, path, and values reflected in the larger project. In contrast to an interview, we encourage Elders to organically flow through these items and partner with us to select excerpts of their conversations to be preserved in the Story-Bank. Elders are given full, unabridged recordings for their personal and family archives.

During Cooperation Racine’s initial 2023 community outreach, two clear themes emerged in conversations with neighborhood Elders:

First, a deep worry that our generations (Older Millennials & Gen Z) will never see the full spectrum of joy and abundance that the neighborhood once had.

Second, the generations coming after us will be unable to imagine neighborhood possibilities beyond the violence and socioeconomic precariousness that decades of disinvestment have reinforced.

A particular urgency underlies these two threads.

Elders yearn to preserve & share these histories during their lifetime.

They are also aware that sharing their stories could potentially change the trajectory of young neighbors and foster deeper care and appreciation for the neighborhood.

Ms. Sylvia Taylor

My parents married in 1945 and lived on 44th and Evans this place was described as a kitchenette with a remarkable roach infestation. Kitchenettes are broken up apartments where tenants share the same bathrooms and sometimes kitchen. Being light skinned had helped my father to go into the gas station along Highway 51 driving from Mississippi to Chicago, he and his brothers were driving caravans. He was able to go in to order food for my uncles, who were not as light. My father said that while he was apartment hunting, he stopped at an apartment near 61st & Cottage Grove, because of his complexion and straight hair, he was accustomed to being mistaken for white. My father confirmed his identity and that he was married. He said my mother had never been mistaken for a white woman. The landlord explained to him that he seemed like a good fellow, but he wouldn't have too many— that he would have too many problems renting to him if my mother was unable to pass for white.

Later, they left Evans and moved to Englewood. My parents treated their apartment as if they owned it. The owner of their new place was an acquaintance of my mother's from Kosciuszko her husband did work at the steel mill. He was proud Republican because Abraham Lincoln was most people who moved on our block also had ties to Mississippi. There was a tavern down the street that played nothing but the blues. The owner and more of the musicians were also from Mississippi. People on our block were sometimes related, and we overwhelmingly shared the same values. Our community was a safe haven. Most businesses were managed by blacks if not owned by blacks. The population was comprised of blue collar workers, business owners and professionals like teachers and lawyers. More families than not had working fathers at home. There were only a few remaining white families. Eventually, they left. By the mid 60s, my mother and father had then become homeowners.

We often went to Mississippi two and sometimes three times a year when I was old enough to travel back and forth by myself on the city of New Orleans train. I was born at 63rd Street in Chicago. With me was my shoebox filled with fried chicken, light bread and pound cake. This seems to be how many people traveled. I would ask the porters why there were no Black conductors. Usually they would tell me they would like to know why, too. The delay was relatively long when the train stopped in Memphis, Tennessee. I was fascinated to see black women who worked on the railroad. They are toting what appeared to be very heavy hoses. I thought that they had to be making big money. My stop was at Durant, Mississippi. The train did not stop in Kosciuszko or Weir (W, E, I, R), my mother said— it used to when the town was busy with industries. I was only one saw mill and not much work.

I always felt powerful in Mississippi because both my grandparents had their own land and grew their own food. My maternal grandfather owned the cafe and also bootleg whiskey. I admired him. We seldom shopped in stores. My maternal grandmother made most of my clothes. In my eyes, she was a genius. There was nothing that she couldn't do. My uncles and cousins could build or fix anything. I felt related to everyone seeing the colored section sign at the show in Kosciuszko, in nearby Italia County, I teased my friend Sheila about having to sit upstairs. She retorted, at least we don't have to worry about Mayor Daley ruling us in Chicago!

We always came back to Chicago with hams and types of preserves that my relatives would give us. We also had a garden at home. I never ate any store-bought canned goods until my junior year in high school. Sometimes my playmates in Chicago called me country. Sometimes my schoolmates would make fun of my speech and tease me about being from Mississippi. I used to feel funny about that, until I realized that some of them had never been downtown in Chicago, and could not even spell Mississippi.

It was fun and empowering for me to be in Choctaw County, but I was also happy to get home to Chicago. Back in Chicago, I dealt with contradictions. It was taken for granted that we were living better up north. I wonder why some kids from Mississippi would be put back a grade once they came to the Chicago Public Schools. There was some confusion in my mind about living better than my cousins, too. School Superintendent Ben Willis did not seem to be so concerned about black kids and their education in the Chicago Public Schools. I remember our books being old, sometimes torn and often outdated. Willis answer to overcrowding in black schools were the “Willis Wagons”: his way ensured that our school remained segregated and unequal in resources to white children better education.

My mother and father told me that I had to do better than white kids because standards were different for blacks, we had to work harder and be smarter just to survive, they also emphasized helping others when you can and being a good neighbor. Both of my parents worked, they helped who they could. Sometimes kindness was mistaken for weakness. My Mississippi cousins were as talented and skilled, not city slickers, but honest, respectable people who understood how to live off the land, how to count money and own businesses. They also enjoyed good music, good food, people who had more in common with Booker T Washington than WEB DuBois, in retrospect, black immigrants from the South would be far more wealthier using those skills. During that time, Jesse Binger had opened a bank. Dr Williams had opened provident hospital, according to Nathan Thompson and Kings, these businesses were financed by the Jones brothers.

Well, I will continue to try and fulfill my parents' legacy by doing better than them, and encourage my kids to do better than me, following those rules and skills from the South.

Cooperation Racine: A lot of people really don’t know about seed saving. You go to Home Depot, you go to Lowe's, you get your packet, you plant it, and then you go back next year. So what seed saving like? Why is that important?

Essell Booker: Well, I have a this thing, this GMO stuff, that I've heard about, and how you get these GMOs, but you can't get seeds from that fruit. And so that made me just have a more of appreciation for reusing my own seeds. You know, I might have maybe been like those people you just described, going back every year, buying seeds, but once that I got that, that's like an act of resistance to that, because, you know, they're trying to push that stuff, especially on Africa, you know, because, see, then you got to come back to them to get more seeds, whereas, so, yeah, that's, that's why I have an appreciation for that.

Not to mention, it's like there's no natural reason for anyone on this planet to be hungry. No one you and I can take one apple, cut it in half, those two seeds in there two trees full of apples from one apple that nourish two people. So I have an appreciation for that. You know, that's that's one of the reasons, because there's no reason for anybody to be hungry. It's by design. It it is strictly by design.

Cooperation Racine: I love that, and it made me think of something from my own childhood. My mom always had a garden, and we had a compost pile. And one year, I just remember being out playing, and all of a sudden I was like, Mama, there's a watermelon growing, and watermelon had grown from inside the conquest pile, from the year before somebody tossing the watermelon runs. And I feel like that was my first memory. I think maybe fifth grade, yeah, fourth grade, yeah. That was my first realization. Like, wait, this just grew by itself. Big plants can just grow. And it seems so simple now, but yeah, this formative years to,

Essell Booker: Yeah, yeah, your folks

Cooperation Racine: And are there other folks in your family—

Essell Booker: No, except when they was in Mississippi. I'm sure. I've never been to Mississippi myself, but that's where my family is from. You know, me and my first cousins all that most of us. We're the first generation of my family born here in the North. You know, they came up in the migration like, not— No, we ain't no immigrants. Now, we ain't no migrants. Don't let these people, this guy gonna talk about we migrants too, trying to get us to fall, go in for this migrant stuff. That Joe Biden gonna come, that guy the head of the NAACP, because, see, [Mayor] Brandon Johnson called himself, trying to pull out. You know, they always pull out all these, these ploys with us.

Essell Booker: They never come with tangibles or any kind of policies directly to benefit us. They come with either shaming, fear mongering, the boogeyman or they, they channeling on our collective suffering. And “your ancestors died for the right” you know, all that you know. So he seen how we was resisting this, this migrant stuff. So he gonna pull out the ministers and all the civil rights leaders and bring them in here, and that Trump had nerve enough, Derek Johnson, I think his name is, had nerve enough to come here and say we are migrants too. How would you insult our ancestors like that?

So you gonna tell me being snatched up, thrown in the bottom of a ship in chains, that's immigration, yeah, but he said that just to show you how you form your mouth like that, just to go along with this DNC crap, man, you know. So we're not migrants, you know, we, in fact, it could have been the great movement. We could have called it “The Great Movement”. It's the same thing, the great migration, the great movement. Don't mean we immigrants. It's sad, but it's funny. You know,

Cooperation Racine: I've never thought about that rebranding. It is “The Great Movement.”

Essell Booker: Yeah. I mean, because, for him, because, you know, what are you talking about? Man, you that shameless?…

Cooperation Racine: So families from—

Essell Booker: Mississippi, Vicksburg,

Cooperation Racine: Oh, I was just about to ask any family still south or mostly folks were born—

Essell Booker: Yeah, and see, I'm, I'm 67 years old. So a lot of my siblings, peers, you know stuff, they're deceased too. Now, you know, down south, if there is, I don't know who it is. I don't know, you know, you know, I used to talk with a cousin of my mother's because I was trying to find out about our family, you know, because, as you know, we were brought over here, you know, we was like property of cattle and chickens, you know, and all that.

And I learned, though, that from word of mouth that my great, great grandmother, she was based on how old she was when she passed. Passed away, which is in 1939 she was 105 so she had to be born in 1834 now they, she told people what happened to her, that she was, you know, taken, r*ped, and had, that's how my complexions, that's part of that got in our family through that, you know. And she said something, my mother, it just happened. And I know this got to be authentic, because my mother's not a historian or anything. She just happened. And we were talking, and I had been looking into our history for a long time by the point I heard this, and my mother said, Yeah, I remember great, great grandma Sarah, talking about how when she was pregnant and Massa had her whipped, they would have a hole dug in the ground so she could lay with her belly down in a hole so they could beat her without hurting the baby. And I never heard anything like that before. And all of the reading and whatever, I never heard none like, you know…

And then I had people describe her, who talked to her, and they were saying she was real dark woman, and she spoke that funny English, and that broken English sounded me like they said. She spoke with accent, so she might have been African. Man, you know, I was tickled when I heard that. I tickled to death. Man, you know, but yeah, man, I tried to learn about them, and they did farm, you know, my grandfather, he he was a sharecropper too, but he was fortunate. And the reason he was fortunate is he happened to sharecrop for some decent, honest people in that, you know, and he didn't get no credit. And his brother managed to get a hold of some land, and offered to have him coming, and that's how he got off to the sharecropping thing and got him some land. So, yeah, that was pretty fortunate that he happened to be with a decent, honest person, you know. Thank you.

Ms. Sylvia Taylor

Copernicus was a good school, admittedly, I had no reference for a bad one. At Copernicus, we diagram sentences. Learned about Peter and the Wolf, participated in science fair, saw annual European car shows on our playground and Marinette puppet shows in our auditorium. Past physical fitness test contribute to the poor box. Was well acquainted with Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston, Hughes and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Briefly, we had one student who was a French speaking from who was French speaking from Africa.

What we didn't do, in general, was misbehave. Most of us knew that if we did, we would get a whooping when we got—when we came home, some parents would come to school and administer the whooping. Others were terrified of the “whooping machine” at school. On occasion, we would hear that Darryl was about to be sent to the whooping machine. Darryl would come back a changed person. Most of the time. He was so quiet when he came back, we forgot he was in class. Daryl loved to entertain.

There was discussions between me and some of my classmates on what and where was the whooping machine. I figured it had to be this colossal belt in the basement. Every day I would see this big, wide, gray belt connected to this iron monster humming machine. I could not see how it worked. I tried to figure out how each time I passed, the belt was longer than our apartment. It also operated on pulleys.

I didn't act up in school. My father was enough whooping machine for me. None of my friends were likely to come in contact with the machine either. Basically, we realized it would amount to getting dealt with twice. Daryl never felt like talking after his visit. It took him a while to do something else, like anticipating the teacher jumping straight up after putting the tack in her seat, or taking out his glass eye and rolling it across the floor.

Years later, Darryl and I were reminiscing about the good old days at Copernicus. I told him that I don't think I ever figured out where the whooping machine was and how it worked. I could not figure out how someone would fit into that conveyor belt that I had imagined it to be. I had completely forgotten that Darryl was the one of the few that probably knew the answer. He laughed and said the janitor was the whooping machine. He had several encounters, and was told that if he found out,—if they found out, he was the one who told, he would get it twice as tough.

I wondered how I came up with the idea that it was possible for a conveyor belt to be a whooping machine. I also wonder who else knew it was the janitor?