Mayor Brandon Johnson promised during his first month in office to “rebuild the social contract” with Black Chicago, beginning with the actual construction of a permanent memorial to former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge torture victims that was promised in 2015.
The “social contract” remains a work in progress, but the memorial is finally underway.
With another heartfelt apology to more than 125 Burge torture victims, Johnson joined those survivors, their families and attorneys Wednesday to break ground for the $4.7 million memorial in the Washington Park neighborhood.
The City Council promised to create that lasting tribute on the South Side as part of the 2015 agreement that authorized $5.5 million in reparations to 57 victims. But it was Johnson who finally delivered on that promise.
The mayor also committed $1 million to the memorial and convinced the City Council to further subsidize the $4.7 million cost by selling city-owned lots in the 5500 block of South Martin Luther King Drive for $1.
“The city of Chicago—we are grateful for your survival. But, we deeply, deeply apologize for the torment and the torture that you and your family experienced,” Johnson told the survivors.
Johnson said Black Chicagoans, many from public housing communities, had “years of their lives stolen from them” by Burge and his midnight crew, “much like our ancestors were stolen from the continent of Africa.”
That’s what drives his continued push for reparations for Chicago descendants of African-American slaves.
“Make no mistake about it. The torture that was carried out by Jon Burge is the same torture that was administered against those of us who were descendants of the formerly enslaved, and that harm has rippled through families leaving entire generations to carry the weight of trauma and injustice,” he said.
If there is such a thing as closure for torture victims, it happened in 2015, when Chicago became the first major city to dole out reparations to
remove, what then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel called, “this stain” on the Chicago Police Department.
Wednesday’s groundbreaking was another powerful step in that catharsis.
It was worth the wait for Anthony Holmes, who had his wrists and ankles shackled to a chair before being electric shocked into confessing to a 1972 murder he did not commit and spending more than 30 years in prison.
Testifying at Burge’s 2010 federal perjury and obstruction of justice trial, Holmes described having a suffocating plastic bag pulled over his head during hours of abuse and enduring racist slurs during hours of interrogation.
“The memorial means everything to me because it is about truth. It is about the torture Burge and his men committed and everything that the survivors suffered,” Holmes said Thursday.
“Chicago has finally heard what we had to say when no one would believe us for a long time. The memorial is the city’s way of admitting what happened to us.”
At one point, Holmes appeared to choke up and had to be encouraged to continue by the applause of the assembled crowd.
“I’m good, ya’ll. It’s just that, when you go through so much, this is the result of it. Finally, we get somebody to believe it,” he said.
Holmes thanked Johnson for “giving his word that he would help us” and honoring it and Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) for welcoming a memorial to her South Side ward that nobody else wanted.
“We didn’t get no help until they came. Now, we got the help, and we [are] winning. We ain’t got nothing to be sad about or sorry about and the hurt we suffered and been through—it’s all being rectified,” he said.
Gregory Burns was similarly beaten with a flashlight, suffocated and threatened with a gun placed in his mouth before confessing to a 1983 murder that forced him to spend seven years in prison.
Holmes said the memorial will “stand as a permanent reminder of the suffering survivors endured, the resilience we showed and the responsibility we all share to ensure” the ugliest chapter in the history of the Chicago Police Department “never happens again.”
“For years, people refused to believe us. They questioned our stories, denied our experience. That disbelief [caused] another kind of pain. But today, our truth is being recognized. Our voices are finally being heard. And that recognition is healing,” Burns said.
“This memorial is about more than remembering the past. It’s about educating future generations…and inspiring people to stand up against injustice wherever they see it.”
Jen Ash, executive director the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Foundation,
described the nation’s first memorial to police torture victims as the “final unfulfilled promise” made by the City Council in the 2015 reparations ordinance.
“If I learned anything when I joined this movement in 2014, it is this: Justice doesn’t end when legislation passes. We continue to fight for justice until promises made become reality,” Ash said.