Conrad Worrill, champion of black struggle, ‘ultimate teacher,’ has died at 78

Chance the Rapper paid tribute to the Chicago educator and activist, calling him a ‘legend’ and posting: ‘Your activism and organizing efforts will not [be] forgotten.’

SHARE Conrad Worrill, champion of black struggle, ‘ultimate teacher,’ has died at 78
Conrad Worrill.

Conrad Worrill.

Bob Black / Sun-Times file

Conrad Worrill, one of Chicago’s best-known political activists and a champion of the black struggle, died Wednesday at 78. He’d been diagnosed with cancer, friends said.

Mr. Worrill was a key figure in the election of Mayor Harold Washington and backed economic empowerment, the dismantling of educational inequities and reparations for slavery.

During his 40-year career at Northeastern Illinois University, where he was a professor, he educated people on black history and helped build the Jacob H. Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies, where he taught students and served as director.

He saw the people of the African diaspora as a pan-African source of power and pride.

“The goal of the center was to preserve the rich history of African people and to teach it from our own perspective and not the perspective of others,” he told Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell when he retired in 2016.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson paid tribute to him on Twitter, writing: “#DrConradWorrill, my brother beloved; a civil rights leader, track star, a moving force in Mayor Harold Washington’s campaign and who led the drive for a track and field stadium on the South Side. He meant so much to so many.”

Chance the Rapper called him a “great Chicago legend” and tweeted: “Your activism and organizing efforts will not [be] forgotten.”

“He was a dad to so many in the community,” said Ken Bennett, the rapper’s father, who was an aide to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Mr. Worrill wanted African Americans to “run businesses, educate people, give back at every level,” said Cliff Rome, a friend who’s the owner of Peach’s restaurant, 4652 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

“He was a link to our history,” Rome said. “He was the ultimate teacher.”

Andrea Evans, director of the Carruthers Center on Northeastern’s Bronzeville campus, said she learned from Mr. Worrill that African American legends including W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington had visited the center at 700 E. Oakwood Blvd. He also told her how strategy was mapped out for Washington’s election, sometimes at the King Drive mansion of activists Lu and Jorja Palmer.

“The education I got from him, I never learned as a resident of Chicago, as a student at Chicago universities,” Evans said.

Young Conrad attended Hyde Park Academy High School, where he was a track star and, Evans said, “He remembered seeing Herbie Hancock in the hallways.”

He remained an avid runner and was influential in the development of the new Gately Indoor Track & Field facility in Pullman, according to Ken Bennett.

“He was able to convince Rahm” to back it, Bennett said. “He told him, ‘You’ll get more scholarships out of providing a state-of-the-art indoor track — more scholarships for students to get in to college — than baseball, basketball or any other sport combined.

“He was an influence not just on me and my mom’s generation as far as social activism but also my kids’ generation,” Bennett said. “My children, Taylor Bennett and Chance the Rapper, he was very supportive of their activism, and they always honored his.”

Friends called him “Baba” — father.

“As much as people knew how much he loved his people and the community, I don’t think they could imagine his deep love and compassion for his family,” said his daughter Femi Skanes.

And though he sometimes “had a gruff kind of exterior,” Ken Bennett said he also had a piercing wit and was a skilled raconteur.

He spun detailed and vibrant stories of early 1950s-era Bronzeville, then the epicenter of black life in Chicago. His father, Walter F. Worrill, was an executive at the YMCA at 3763 S. Wabash Ave. and had grown up in California with Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line in Major League Baseball.

“Everything I am,” Mr. Worrill used to say, “I owe to my daddy.”

When his father invited the baseball legend to make an appearance at his Y, “It was thousands and thousands of black people on the streets of Wabash, from 39th to 36th Street,” he said.

His paternal grandfather, Oscar Worrill Sr., came north after drawing the attention of revenue agents — and competing white moonshiners — for brewing some of the smoothest homemade spirits in Prohibition-era Covington, Georgia, Mr. Worrill once said.

He received a bachelor’s degree from George Williams College, a master’s from the University of Chicago and a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin and was chairman emeritus and a leader of the National Black United Front and a board member of the Black United Fund of Illinois.

In addition to his daughter Femi Skanes, Mr. Worrill is survived by his wife Talibah, daughters Michelle Lanier, Sobenna Worrill and Kimberly King, brother Oscar and seven grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.

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