In 1923, Wiley Carthan left Mississippi on the Illinois Central Railroad, heading for Chicago. He settled just outside the Chicago city limits in the town of Argo, Illinois. Argo’s real name was Summit, but the largest corn processing plant in the world—the maker of Karo syrup, Bosco malted milk, Mazola cooking oil, and, critically, Argo Corn Starch—made Summit a company town, and locals called the place Argo. Carthan settled in and sent for his wife Alma and daughter Mamie, and the family made a life there. Mamie Carthan graduated with honors from the high school and soon married another Argo worker, Louis Till. In 1941, they had a son named Emmett.

The Argo plant shaped every facet of life in Summit. If locals called the town “Argo,” they called Argo the “university”—it was the place where boys went after high school. Emmett’s father, his stepfather, and many members of the Till family punched the clock at Argo.

Historians use the phrase “The Great Migration” to describe the early years of African American exodus out of the South to cities in the North. Of course, that movement really started with the underground railroad and continued through the rest of the 19th century. But the first mass migration came in the era of World War I and into the 1920s. For example, Chicago’s blacks made up 2% of the city’s population in 1910, 7% by 1930, and 25% by 1960.

Southern Jim Crow laws were firmly in place by 1900, depriving African Americans of the rights of citizens—voting, equal justice under law, trial by jury, etc. Few Southern blacks managed to acquire property, so share-cropping and tenancy kept most in penury. Schools, accommodations, transportation, and housing were all rigidly segregated, and black life was hedged in by a vicious system that enforced laws against vagrancy and other crimes with long sentences and brutal labor. And too, the lynching of blacks who “got out of line” added an element of terror to the indignities of Jim Crow.

Faced with such conditions, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Isabel Wilkerson has written that “nearly every black family in America had a decision to make.” And scores upon scores did “what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.” The Carthans joined the throng of what was, in Wilkerson's words, a “back-against-the wall, reluctant yet hopeful search for something better.”

The World War I economy and the prosperity of the 1920s created new opportunities in the urban North. Word of these opportunities spread on the growing popularity of the Chicago Defender, a weekly newspaper with national circulation that repeatedly urged Southern blacks to leave their benighted homeland. The same railroad that carried Till to and from Mississippi carried the Defender to the rural South, bearing news of a brighter day in Chicago.

Equally important, African Americans voiced their resentment of American apartheid. The founding of the NAACP in 1909, for example, was a key moment of black politicization and resistance. The growing political resistance combined with industrial opportunities in the North lured the dispossessed to Chicago by the hundreds of thousands.

Corn Products made Argo a small boom town, attracting not only Southern blacks, but Poles, Slovaks, Russians, and Italians. African Americans got the worst jobs, but the work was steady, and the town prosperous enough to sustain a life far better than anything in Mississippi. Blacks founded their own churches, businesses, and neighborhoods. Like the town itself, Corn Products was not fully integrated but not rigidly segregated either, offering a margin of decency. Life got even better for workers when the union organized Corn Products in the late 1930s. The Argo Local of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union brought better pay, benefits, overtime, and if not equality, at least a measure of dignity and security.

Before Till took the train to Mississippi in 1955, his family had its trials: Wiley Carthan left for Detroit, Louis Till abused his wife. But the modest prosperity provided by Corn Products made Till's hometown a more safe and secure environment than he might have experienced in Mississippi or on Chicago’s South Side.

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On July 25, 2021, this site became a memorial. To participate in the memorial, and help fund the education of underpriviledged youth, contribute to the field of memorial bricks here. 

We usually think of Emmett Till as a Chicagoan. He did live on the segregated South Side during his last few years, but most of his life was spent in Summit, Illinois, a tight-knit industrial community of 12,000 people just outside of Chicago.

On July 25, 1941, Emmett was born in Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Although his first home was a nearby Summit apartment, he moved to this lot (7526 64th Street) with his mother Mamie Till before the year was out. In 1947, Till’s cousin Wheeler Parker arrived from Mississippi and moved in next door (7524 64th Street). Till's first school was just a block west.

These were happy years. In her memoir, Mamie Till-Mobley spoke warmly of Summit, remembering, “Our whole neighborhood was like an extended family.” She described how African Americans had a strong sense of community centered around church, work, and family. Emmett, along with his best friend Wheeler, explored every bit of this community on foot and by bicycle. Even after Emmett and his mother moved to Chicago in 1950, he returned to Argo most weekends to see his friends and extended family.

Summit may have offered a tight-knit community, but it was also an industrial town. In fact, the southern half of the town was known by locals as “Argo,” the eponymous name of the company that owned the world’s largest corn processing plant. Just west of Archer St., the 30-acre plant produced Argo Corn Starch and shaped virtually every facet of life in Summit. As Mamie recalled, “Every day, the people in our little Argo community could see the Corn Products plant spread out there on the horizon, dominating our landscape. It stood there as a constant reminder that the gateway to a better life was hard work.”

During the World War I era and into the 1920s, the Argo plant was indeed a gateway. It attracted thousands of African Americans determined to escape the Jim Crow South. Argo (both the town and the company) offered jobs, schools, and neighborhoods that were not rigidly segregated. Although the streets north of 63rd were red-lined and closed to African Americans, 64th Street was integrated. To be sure, Argo was no racial paradise. But compared to the Deep South from which most migrants came, it was a big step up. The plant employed black laborers in the most dangerous and difficult roles, but they offered steady hours and decent pay. In the 1930s, the plant was unionized, and laborers enjoyed better protections still. Opportunities to vote, hold property, and educate children were far superior to what lay behind in the South. Even the local sports teams had black and white players.

After a short-lived adventure in Detroit, Mamie Till-Bradley, her new husband Pink Bradley, and the ten-year old Emmett left Argo for Chicago’s South Side in 1951. With a job downtown, Till-Bradley moved to 63rd Street and St. Lawrence, in a densely packed and rigidly segregated neighborhood near her son’s school. But Argo, more than Chicago, still felt like home. Emmett took the 63d Street streetcar back week after week, and his mother never worried about him there: “I knew he was in good hands. I knew the entire community was looking out for him. . . . Argo was a good fit for Emmett. . . . He would hang out with his friends all day on Saturdays and spend a good part of Sundays in Church, where, of course, he’d find his friends again. He lived for the fellowship. He lived for the fun. That most of all.”

Argo is still a home for Emmett. In 2009, under the leadership of Dr. Marvel Parker and Rev. Wheeler Parker, the home base of the Summit Community Task Force became the Emmett Till Memorial Center. Located a short block from here, at 6450 S. 76th Avenue, the building provides space for a range of community and justice-oriented activities.

On July 25, 2021, on Emmett Till's 80th birthday, the Task Force unveiled a commemorative sign and a field of commemorative bricks. Donors can buy the bricks to to support the Emmett Till Scholarship Fund.

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