What high school did you go to?
No other question better captures the spirit of Black Chicago — no matter age or social scenario.
Chicago is a big small town, and making who-do-you-know connections is a standard icebreaker. Finding out where someone attended high school is shorthand for learning about class, education status, neighborhood and social circles. At times, this is an accurate assessment, but it also can tumble into stereotypes about what is considered a “good” public school.
High school pride and rivalry run deep in Black Chicago. (I hear asking someone about home parish is the white Catholic equivalent question in some circles.) Even alumni with advanced degrees lean into braggadocious high school smack-talking. Whitney Young claims superiority for counting the country’s first Black first lady among its alumni. That’s nice and all, but as a Morgan Park alum, I think claiming Mae Jemison — the first Black female astronaut — is more impressive. I can sense the smirking already from alumni at other schools as they read this column and start namedropping their famous alum. Wendell Phillips, with its well-oiled alumni club, immediately comes to mind. Nat King Cole, Gwendolyn Brooks and Sam Cooke walked those Bronzeville halls.
Back in the payphone days of my adolescence, Whitney Young and Kenwood were the “it” schools for academics and fashion. But that reflects my social network because King vs. Westinghouse, both sports powerhouses, ranked just as important in other networks. What comes to mind when you think about those schools in the 1980s and 1990s? You’re probably putting people in categories and boxes.
Today, social media has snuffed the surprise of showing up at your 20th class reunion and seeing former classmates. Instagram already kept you in the loop. In its place are well-attended summertime all-class reunions. They are daylong picnics in parks, forest preserves or other grassy open spaces. Each class has a tent. There’s food, music and matching T-shirts. Every year Hyde Park alum, much to the chagrin of CVS and Simeon, jump on Facebook to profess its picnic is the biggest and best.
A year ago my friend and online provocateur Brian Foster, class of ’90 WYHS, gloated on Facebook: “I love this time of year when all the high schools do their reunions and start talking about who has the best picnics. I tell you right now, it will never be Whitney Young. Too many of us moved out of state for our careers. I have too many competing priorities, but most of your school still is on the same block they grew up on or take that Saturday off from UPS. Of course, your joint is cracking. Enjoy.”
Welp.
The post went viral, and local websites picked it up. Chicago Public Schools alum from all over the city lambasted Brian; some of the responses teetered on threatening. His statement was a jerk move. But because I know him, I knew not to take him seriously. The hornet’s nest he stepped into with the post unleashed high school emotions. I’m not talking about John Hughes’ movie plots, but segregation, inequities, snobbishness and assumptions.
“There’s a level of pride that folks that go to Kenwood or Morgan Park or Whitney Young have that’s the same as somebody that went to Julian, CVS or Dunbar. Everybody’s got pride in their school. We ride with it. It’s mostly in fun,” Brian told me recently.
“But I think that [my post] hit home with a lot of people, because it felt like a dig at where their lives have gone, like they’re not being successful because they went to this certain high school and maybe they didn’t go to college or maybe they picked up a trade,” he said. “Somebody that is driving a CTA bus is no better or worse than somebody that’s a brain surgeon. In my book, both professions are needed. But we know that in our society, especially in Black bougie circles, these blue-collar jobs can be looked down upon.”
As an olive branch, Brian decided to make the rounds of various all-class picnics this year and rate them in Facebook posts. He likes trouble.
“Part of it’s a little bit of mocking of myself,” he said. “And then a little bit of it is, I want to experience some of this for myself. Is your picnic this whole experience?”
So far, Kenwood received a “B.” Hyde Park a “B+,” which some old heads took umbrage with as being too low of a score. Pretty hilarious and confirming how high school love can feel cultish. But to Hyde Park’s credit, Mayor Brandon Johnson, who’s not an alum, attended their picnic and posted about the experience online.
Regardless of the school, all-class picnics are cool reminders that relationships go back decades even if you’re not close to all your classmates. Life didn’t end at high school; it connects folks who knew you way back when you were walking to lunch off campus or sitting in the stands at a football game.
Last weekend, Brian dissed the Morgan Park Mustangs for not having enough people at its picnic and ending before sunset. A “D” rating. I shook my head and read the comments clapping back at him when he called the picnic “whack.” A former classmate basically called him a hater.
Brian responded, “Why does my opinion matter to you?”
She wrote back, “You’re right.”
Natalie Y. Moore is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University.