Calvin Wesley News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

No business, and especially no Black-owned business on the South Side of Chicago, makes it 50 years without an interesting history behind it. Wesley s Shoes, 1506 E. 55th St., one of the city s premier independent footwear sellers, owned and operated by native South Sider Bruce Wesley, is no exception. His father, Alvin Wesley, founded the store in Roseland after moving to Chicago from Donaldsonville, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. He d always tell the story that he had no shoes when he was young, Wesley said. Not content to work in sugarcane fields for for the rest of his life, the elder Wesley joined the Army, becoming a first sergeant. He migrated north in the late 1950s and took odd jobs before working in a shoe store owned by Harry and Joe Divine, second-generation Jewish merchants who owned stores across Chicago, including Hyde Park.

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