Fast Man With a Flash | Maclean s | July 15, 1947 archive.macleans.ca - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.macleans.ca Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Sun-Times file
The Chicago Board of Health was established in 1833 to provide the expert medical advice needed to fight the cholera epidemic at a time when there was no Department of Public Health to set policy.
That board has remained largely unchanged ever since, with outdated rules and members who serve indefinitely, some since the 1990s.
On Thursday, the City Council’s Committee on Health and Human Relations approved Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to start over in a way that would mandate diversity and guarantee a range of expertise needed to meet the public health challenges laid bare by the coronavirus.
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.