The historic tour of black Chicago was scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. But at 9:40 a.m., Charles Taylor of Houston was still waiting for the tour bus at 8th Street and Michigan Avenue in front of Kitty O’Shea’s Irish restaurant in the Hilton Chicago hotel.

Taylor was sure he was waiting in the right place after reading an email from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), which was wrapping up its annual convention at the Chicago Hilton. Taylor, a senior studying media arts at Louisiana State University, was one of thousands of young people attending the convention that week. Taylor believed the historic tour of black Chicago would be a nice way to end an exciting week.

But with no tour bus in sight, things seemed to be going downhill for Taylor.

I was there to photograph the NABJ guests boarding the tour bus. I arrived at 9:15 am, 15 minutes before the tour was scheduled to start. Taylor was there and we waited in silence while watching people head to Grant Park for the Lollapalooza music festival.

Taylor wasn’t the only NABJ attendee to get a personal tour from a Chicago resident. Former Cook County Board President Todd Stroger gave Atlanta Voice editor Donnell Suggs a tour of Black Chicago after Mahogany Tours was sold out.

Taylor was still hoping to board the air-conditioned tour bus. But 30 minutes after I arrived to wait for a photo op, Taylor finally expressed his frustration. He had paid $35 for the tour and was looking forward to seeing interesting black historical sites he had read or heard about at home. The two-hour tour at 9:30 a.m. was Taylor’s only chance to see black Chicago, as he had events scheduled for lunch and later.

He was staying at the Hampton Suites Hotel in Streeterville, so he also had to take an Uber or taxi to get to his hotel room. As he shook his head in disgust and headed back to the hotel, I offered him a personal tour of Chicago’s historic black neighborhoods. I told him that I was a journalist for the Chicago Crusaders and had written many historical articles about our city’s rich black history, its people, places and important events that shaped black Chicago and black America.

Leading a Black historical tour is something I’ve always wanted to do in Chicago during the summer. I believe a historical tour is an extension of my role as a journalist, educating others about Black Chicago and connecting generations to the city’s rich past.

After an inspiring week of NABJ seminars and panel discussions, as a resident of the host city, I was excited to share compelling stories about black Chicago’s past and its amazing influence on the nation in politics, business, media, religion, literature and sports.

After introducing myself and my profession, Taylor said, “You sound like someone I can trust.” I walked to the next block to get my car and gave him a ride. Our impromptu tour began. According to Taylor, my tour exceeded his expectations so much that he said it was probably better than the tour he paid for but didn’t get.

Our first stop was the Johnson Publishing Company building, just one block south of the Chicago Hilton. I showed Taylor a picture of the Ebony and Jet sign that still hangs atop the 11-story building and gave him a brief history of the building, including its heyday after John H. Johnson bought the property, posing as a white friend and himself as the caretaker. Today, it is an official Chicago landmark and a high-rise apartment building after the Johnson Publishing Company went bankrupt. Taylor stopped in front of the building, got out of the car, and was able to snap a picture of the historic Chicago marker on the building.

The next stop was the iconic Chicago Defender building at the corner of 24th and Michigan Streets. Today it’s an events company, but Taylor marveled at the building’s stonework and the clock tower at the top. He listened intently as I told him how the building was the centerpiece of the Defender’s glory days, when it was a black daily newspaper known around the world for its role in Chicago’s Great Migration.

We drove to Dr. Martin Luther King Drive, where Taylor learned it is the oldest street in the world named after the slain civil rights leader. He said he couldn’t believe it when I told him that Chicago’s then-white mayor, Richard M. Daley, had renamed the street after King out of fear that blacks would come downtown to riot after King’s assassination. With its numerous landmarks, historic mansions, greystone residences and churches, King Drive in Bronzeville was the centerpiece of our tour.

Taylor saw Dunbar High School, where singer Jennifer Hudson and actor Redd Foxx attended. He saw the Supreme Life Insurance Building at the corner of 35th and King, where John H. Johnson worked as a postal worker before starting his media empire. I took Taylor to the home of journalist Ida B. Wells and the mansion of Lu Palmer.

We turned west at 39th/Pershing to see Chicago’s oldest black high school, Wendell Phillips Academy. Taylor seemed impressed by the building when I told him that singers Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, actors Redd Foxx and Marla Gibbs once roamed its halls.

We drove to Prairie Avenue, where music producer Quincy Jones grew up. At the corner of 33rd and Indiana, Taylor saw the ruins of the Pilgrim Baptist Church, known as the “birthplace of gospel music” and the future site of the museum. Across the street, he saw the current site of the church where worshipers come every Sunday.

Along the way, I told stories about black Chicago during segregation, when a severe housing shortage forced extended families to share small apartments. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks moved six times in Bronzeville before she got her big break. At the corner of 47th and King Drive, Taylor got out of the car and took a photo in front of the large photo of Brooks.

Across the street, in the historic TK Lawless building, named after the world-famous black dermatologist, Taylor took a photo of the large black-and-white photograph of Nat King Cole, who lived in Vincennes in Bronzeville. Taylor also saw the mansion Lawless owned on King Drive before his death. It is now owned by former City Councilwoman Dorothy Tillman.

During our tour, we visited the last building where the Chicago Defender operated, at the corner of 46th and King Drive, before staff moved out during the pandemic. A few blocks away, Taylor saw the mansion of Defender founder Robert S. Abbot, who died there in 1940, the same day that Black publishers from across the country met at the historic Wabash YMCA to form what is now the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), also known as the Black Press of America.

In the Washington Park neighborhood, Taylor saw the former childhood home of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, whose play “Raisin in the Sun” was based on her experiences in a white neighborhood during racial segregation.

After visiting Emmett Till’s house in Woodlawn and ordering soul food at Daley’s, Chicago’s oldest restaurant, I drove Taylor back to his hotel in Streeterville. We didn’t have time to see Barack Obama’s mansion, Providence Hospital, Kanye West’s childhood home, and Michelle Obama’s house. When I told him about other sights we missed, Taylor shook his head and said, “I guess I’ll have to come back!”

By the end of the tour, Taylor had forgotten that the tour bus hadn’t arrived. He was so excited about the personal tour that he gave me a $20 tip and called it a day. For Taylor, the tour was absolutely worth the money.