These carved granite fragments are from the Illinois Central Station which stood at the southwest edge of Grant Park for more than 75 years. Bradford Lee Gilbert, a prolific architect of American railroad buildings, designed the massive Romanesque style structure. Completed in 1893, the station accommodated visitors who thronged to Chicago to attend the World's Columbian Exposition. The station possessed special significance to more than 500,000 African-Americans who left the rural south to settle here between 1916 and 1970. Considered Chicago's "Black Ellis Island," the building represented the hope of a new life.
"One-Way Ticket"
by Langston Hughes, 1949
I pick up my life
And take it with me
And I put it down in
Chicago, Detroit,
Buffalo, Scranton,
Any place that is North and East—
And not Dixie.
I pick up my life
And take it on the train
To Los Angeles, Bakersfield,
Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake,
Any place that is
North and West—
And not South.
I am fed up
With Jim Crow laws,
People who are cruel
And afraid,
Who lynch and run,
Who are scared of me
And me of them.
I pick up my life
And take it away
On a one-way ticket—
Gone
up North,
Gone out West,
Gone!
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