Kindred Spirit

Poet Gwendolyn Brooks -- born in Kansas but raised in Chicago -- understood the cultural sleight-of-hand needed by the black man trying to cross over, trying to get a seat at the table. Part of her poem "Gay Chaps at the Bar" envisions a group of black men and their crossover struggles:

We knew how to order. Just the dash

Necessary. The length of gaiety in good taste . . .

When to persist, or hold a hunger off.

Knew white speech. How to make a look an omen.

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who had attended Chicago's Englewood High School, set "A Raisin in the Sun" in her home town. Before the 1959 Broadway opening, Hansberry wrote a letter to her mother: "Mama, it is a play that tells the truth about people, Negroes and life and I think it will help a lot of people to understand how we are just as complicated as they are -- and just as mixed up -- but above all, that we have among our miserable and downtrodden ranks people who are the very essence of human dignity. That is what, after all the laughter and tears, the play is supposed to say."

The drama, which starred Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil, arguably was the first one on Broadway to cross over, to lasso whites and blacks into the theater all at once.

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There he goes, another Chicago man seeking the hearts of America, trailing complicated ghosts.