Marion Illinois History Preservation

1973, Gent’s Addition Series, Part 5 of 6

Posted on February 23, 2014 by wcihsFebruary 23, 2014

Clara Kirk Sees Gent’s Addition as a neglected part of Marion

“Discrimination, Hate: Two-Way Street”

Words are easy to speak; songs are easy to sing. A popular song begins “Love makes the world go round, love makes the world go round.” Ministers preach these words. People’s actions often mock them.

Clara Kirk lives by them. Miss Kirk spent 41 years of her 69 years teaching primary grades. Before her retirement in 1969, she taught 30 years in Douglass School, Marion’s only all black school. After the school was abolished in 1965, she spent the last four years of the career at Washington School. Continue reading →

1973, Gent’s Addition Series, Part 4 of 6

Posted on February 22, 2014 by wcihsFebruary 23, 2014

New, more aware generation growing up in Marion Gent’s Addition

Young Black sees some adults as race’s big problem

“I am a citizen of Marion, a citizen that lives in Gent’s. I don’t consider myself a black man, just a man. Just Donald Allen, not black Donald Allen.”

But the community of Marion, Allen feels, has not let him or other young blacks drop the added labels of definition. Not that he is ashamed of his race, simply prouder of being a man. Continue reading →

1973, Gent’s Addition Series, Part 3 of 6

Posted on February 22, 2014 by wcihsFebruary 23, 2014

80 Year Resident says he’s proud of Marion

But complains about jobs

Eighty years in one place tends to mellow problems.

Perhaps it’s an understanding that comes from not only hearing about changes but living through them.

Or perhaps the years simply blur the contradictions into accepted reality. Continue reading →

1973, Gent’s Addition Series, Part 2 of 6

Posted on February 21, 2014 by wcihsFebruary 23, 2014

Marion Pastor Maintains

“Psychological walls” Mark Gent’s

The Rev. Robert Buchanan, pastor of the Bethel AME Church, Marion, doesn’t like the psychological walls around his home.

He lives on Monroe Street in the heart of Gent’s addition, but the barriers to which he refers don’t surround a circumscribed area. They surround a people. His people.

“Gent’s Addition is a ghetto. It didn’t have to be at first, but restrictions both inside and out have sustained the old ghetto way of life.

By a ghetto, the Rev. Buchanan means “a place where low-income people live in sub-standard housing without the aid other parts of the city receive.” Continue reading →

1973, Gent’s Addition Series, Part 1 of 6

Posted on February 21, 2014 by wcihsFebruary 23, 2014

Gent’s Addition is the Heart of Marion’s Black Community

Is it a ghetto surrounded by psychological barriers?

This is the first in a series of six articles by Sandy Blumenfeld about Marion’s “community within a community,” Gent’s addition, the heart of Marion’s black community.

A community within a community, a fixed area within an expanding city. Continue reading →