In July of 1965, Winnetka was an all-white community as were many of the North Shore villages.  But Winnetka had had a long history of social activism and, in the Nineteenth Century had not only served as a significant stop in the underground railroad but was a hotbed of abolitionist activity.  This harkens back to a little known political reality that the Republican Party was formed specifically as an abolitionist party, with Abraham Lincoln its very first presidential nominee and the elimination of slavery in our country as a core of its platform.  On the North Shore, a committee was formed in 1965 called “The Summer Project”.  The very best families were recruited to fight for desegregation of housing as a moral and legal responsibility of the community.  Segregation was both an economic reality because of high housing prices, but also a legal reality because individuals could place restrictions on the sale of their homes so that they might never be owned by Jews or African Americans.  Such restrictive covenants were, of course, struck down by the Supreme Court.

The Summer Project committee invited the most prominent civil rights leader of the time, perhaps of our entire national history, Martin Luther King, Jr to speak.  It would be the first time he would appear before an all-white community.  Although Winnetka had a population scarcely more than 12,000 people, eight thousand people gathered at the Village Green on the hot July 25^th morning, more than four hours before Dr. King’s limousine arrived.  There was singing and picnicking and an atmosphere of welcome, excepted only by four members of the American Nazi Party from Chicago who left when informed by Winnetka Police Chief Don Durning that he could not protect them. 

Dr. King loved the welcome but he also chided the audience, reminding them that they did a great disservice to their children by raising them in a segregated community.   “Every white person does great injury to his child if he allows that child to grow up in a world that is two-thirds colored,” Dr. King said.  “and yet live in conditions where that child does not come into person-to-person contqact with colored people.”   His words resonate today in every community on the North Shore.  I think of my own children who seldom saw a person of color while they were growing up and I wonder if Dr. King is absolutely correct.

Dr. King also attacked a very well regarded theory of that era that African Americans weren’t “ready” for integration and that time and market forces would gradually and peaceably solve the problem of desegregation.  This theory, of course, is a corollary of the notion that the Civil War could have been avoided because slavery was ultimately unprofitable to the South and would eventually die out of its own accord. 

“Be nice and patient, some say, and wait 100 or 200 years and the problem will work itself out,” Dr. King told this large but ultimately receptive audience.  “But time is neutral.   It can be used constructively or destructively, and the forces of evil have used time much more effectively than the forces of good will.”

The rally was a success.  It was the sixth speech of the day for him, his voice was hoarse, and he had recently been released from a Chicago hospital where he had been treated for exhaustion.  But he was pleased.  And the Summer Project committee took that success and used it as a springboard for lobbying in Washington as well as at home.

Students from Winnetka’s Carleton Washburne Middle School have petitioned the Village Council to create a memorial on the Village Green.  The Village Green is a grassy square block of park property, with a small playground and a cenotaph devoted to the Winnetkans who have given their lives in war. 

On Tuesday, March 6^th, the Village Council meets at seven o’clock and the students will present a petition to have a memorial of that July day on the Village Green.  The students are not quite united about what sort of memorial they want—they have a lot of ideas.  But they have learned a lesson in politics and good government.  They have circulated a petition amongst the voters and have visited local boards and clubs to garner support.  The students are earnest and their organization is impeccable.  Their teacher sponsor is Cecilia Gigiolio who is a lifetime resident of Winnetka whose parents own the restaurant Bella Winnetka—Mr. Gigiolio could not seat guests at his restaurant this summer without proudly mentioning that his daughter had been hired as a teacher.

Members of the community are strongly encouraged to attend the Village Council meeting.  Most meetings are devoted to the minor business of zoning this or that, but the Martin Luther King memorial project offers an opportunity to make history.

Technorati Tags: Martin Luther King, Winnetka, North Shore, Desegregation

The world, or at least the North Shore, is divided between Starbucks people and Caribou Coffee people. 

Starbucks people don’t drink skim milk—they drink nonfat milk.  Starbucks people are comfortably multi-lingual when ordering a cup of java.  Starbucks people were the first to concede the tip jar and the notion of a coffee chain having its own music, movies, and wedding registry.  Starbucks people leave the engine running while they dash into line.  Starbucks people used to feel hip.

“I haven’t had my Starbucks this morning,” a friend said to me, with the rueful sigh of a junkie who loves and hates his addiction.

Starbucks was founded in Seattle in 1972 when Americans were turning away from coffee.  The world coffee market was on the brink of collapse.  Juan Valdez, of the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia, was looking pretty grim and shopworn.  The little cafe on Pike’s Place in Seattle took cheap coffee and made it expensive.  It’s the American way, n’est-ce pas? 
 Goddess or just an emblem of the Evil Empire? You decide.

But for every Darth Vader, there’s a Luke Skywalker and here it’s Caribou Coffee. 

Caribou Coffee people want everything their Starbucks neighbors are getting but they’re still smarting from when the barista chastised them for saying Medium.  In a Coca Cola versus Pepsi world, Caribou Coffee people drink Pepsi.  Burger King versus MacDonald’s?  They’re going with Whopper.  Caribou people licked Elmer’s Glue off their fingers in Art and were the first among their peers to steal their older brother’s dope.

Newlyweds John and Kim Puckett hit on the notion of opening a competitor to Starbucks when they were on an Alaskan wilderness trek in 1990—Caribou corporate mythology makes it sound like a Delphic experience.  But it doesn’t seem like such a huge leap to go up against Starbucks when you remember that Starbucks only had 116 stores the year the Pucketts opened their first shop in Minnesota.  Send me into the Alaskan wilderness and I could come up with some ideas too.

And Caribou Coffee is not without its controversy.  The First Islamic Investment Bank owned a big chunk of the company.  The bank, like many Muslim businesses, has a Shari’ah board to ensure that all its practices are in accordance with the Koran.  Their Shari’ah board leader was Dr. Yusuf Abdullah Al-Qaradawi who holds decidedly anti-American, anti-Israel views.  In the fall of 2001, the Glencoe and Highland Park stores were targeted for a boycott and there were picketers outside every day–employees were scared to come to work and business fell so precipitously that both stores were closed and have never reopened.  The First Islamic Investment Bank said goodbye to Dr. Al-Qaradawi, Caribou worked to repair its image, but there is—many years later—nary a Caribou in Highland Park or Glencoe. 

The Galactic Empire Starbucks hasn’t seen its competitors—Caribou, Intelligentsia, Tim Horton’s, the Juan Valdez cafes—unite in a Rebel Alliance.  Every competitor has its political correctness, its determined hipster vibe, its product spin-offs.   And maybe that’s what protects Starbucks—every coffee action is just a reaction to the Green Goddess of the Bean.  We who purchase our Northern Lite Turtle Lattes at Caribou aren’t fooling anyone. 

 Kathy at Caribou Coffee serves up my morning joe

Who could have imagined a world in which buying a Mr. Coffee and a tin of Folger’s would become the ultimate act of rebellion? 

Technorati Tags: Caribou Coffee, Starbucks, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, coffee, Juan Valdez