The Chicago Reporter

Dressed in a black-and-white robe, the Rev. B. Herbert Martin stood in the pulpit and looked out at the racially mixed crowd of nearly 1,500 at his Progressive Community Church, 56 E. 48th St., in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood.

It was April 4, 1997, and Martin, a 56-year-old African American, was hosting a prayer vigil.

Two weeks earlier, Chicago and the nation had learned that a 13-year-old African American youth named Lenard Clark had been attacked and severely beaten as he rode his bicycle through the racially mixed Armour Square neighborhood on the city's South Side. Police charged three white youths with the crime, and racial tensions in the area were running high.

Martin–"former chairman of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and once executive director of the Southside Branch of the NAACP–"preached about the need for healing and reconciliation, and spoke about the power of forgiveness. Eighteen months later, on Oct. 15, 1998, he delivered that same message in Cook County Criminal Court, testifying at a sentencing hearing for Frank Caruso Jr., 19, an Armour Square resident who on Sept. 18 had been convicted in Clark's beating.



At the hearing, Martin recalled a letter he had written to the court asking that Caruso be shown "leniency and mercy," according to court transcripts. Growing up in the 1950s in Mississippi, Martin said he learned firsthand of "bigotry and racism" as the victim of a racially motivated beating. "I learned to forgive my enemies, therefore having power over the enemy," he added.

But today, little more than two years after the Clark incident, the debate over Martin's actions still simmers. African American community activists say Martin and several other black leaders committed a cardinal sin by embracing the Caruso family. They charge that Caruso supporters were motivated less by spirituality, and more by profit and political connections to whites in Bridgeport.

Martin "has to live in the black community, his church is there," said Zakiyyah S. Muhammad, a member of Village Vanguard, a community organization formed after the Clark beating to hold black leaders accountable. "This is going to haunt him–"people aren't going to forget it."

Martin scoffs at the charges, but acknowledges that the Clark incident may have derailed efforts to establish job opportunities for blacks and attract economic investment to their neighborhoods through partnerships with local whites–"including Caruso's father, Frank Caruso Sr.

Racial Clashes
Martin's relationship with the Caruso family and other whites in the Bridgeport-Armour Square neighborhood predates the Clark beating by at least a decade, The Chicago Reporter has found.

"I didn't want years of community understanding and work to just go down the drain over this incident," Martin told the Reporter. "Let's not let this –¦ destroy all the work that was done."

Columbia College History Professor Dominic A. Pacyga, who has authored several books on Chicago neighborhoods, describes Bridgeport as a "community with a racist history."

"Bridgeport has always been known for various kinds of racial clashes. It's always been a kind of racial combat zone. [What happened to] Lenard Clark was tragic but [not] surprising," Pacyga said.

Armour Square runs south from 18th Street to Pershing Road and west from Federal to Stewart streets. Bridgeport is bounded by Stewart on the east and the south branch of the Chicago River on the west, and runs north from Pershing Road to near 26th Street.

The race problem was caused in part by the city's "segregated housing pattern," Pacyga said. Because blacks lived so close to Bridgeport, residents feared "black residential encroachment."

Armour Square, 30 percent white in 1980, had dropped to 18 percent white by 1997. Bridgeport changed from 77 percent to 47 percent white in the same period, shows data from the U.S. Census and Claritas Inc., an Ithaca, N.Y.-based marketing research firm.

But while the black population in Bridgeport remains less than 1 percent, the Asian population–"mostly people of Chinese descent–"rose from 1.7 percent in 1980 to 20 percent in 1997.

Martin said he visited Bridgeport for Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, during the 1983 mayoral campaign. In 1982, Martin was appointed pastor of Progressive, and Washington joined the mostly black congregation of about 2,200.

Martin's powerful eulogy at Washington's funeral in November 1987 attracted the attention of Dominic DiFrisco, a founding member of the Old Neighborhood Italian American Club, a non-profit civic organization created in Bridgeport in 1981.

"He gave the most beautiful and magnificent eulogy I had ever heard in my life," said DiFrisco, director of public affairs at Burson Marsteller, a Chicago-based public relations firm. "It was a throwback to the old orators."

DiFrisco introduced himself to Martin, and the two men struck up a friendship. DiFrisco, who was also then president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans–"an umbrella group of more than 70 Chicago-area civic organizations–"began introducing Martin to his Italian American friends.

"I longed for a relationship between my community and the African American community," DiFrisco said. "I thought the time had come to try and understand each other's common problems, hopes and dreams."

Bridgeport resident Pat Arizzi, then executive secretary of the Old Neighborhood Club, "became like the Mother Teresa of Bridgeport," Martin recalled.

Arizzi recalls accompanying Sherry Caruso, Caruso Sr.'s wife, to collect clothing and food for Martin's church during the late 1980s. "I went door to door with Sherry on blocks [in Armour Square and Chinatown] where we knew everybody and told them there was a church in need."

Some clothes were donated to poor children living in the nearby Robert Taylor Homes public housing development–"giving them something "nice" to wear to church on Sundays, Arizzi recalled.

Club members donated clothing, gifts and helped stock a food pantry run out of Progressive, DiFrisco said. And in the 1980s and 1990s, "we stood in line–"me, Caruso and his son [Frank Jr.], passing out bags of groceries," Arizzi said. Martin said Caruso Sr. also donated playground equipment to the church's day care center.

Caruso Sr. said his friendship with Martin grew out of their charitable work together. "This is not something that just happened because of Frank Caruso Jr.," he said in an interview last fall.

Gloria Allen West, a 58-year-old resident of Robert Taylor, has been a Progressive member for more than 10 years. "It's about community to community, not Mr. Caruso and Rev. Martin. It's about a whole bunch of people bringing together love," she said. "This church has been going to Bridgeport long before [the Clark beating] happened [and] trying to bridge the gap."

The relationship "went virtually unnoticed by people in our community and by the media," Martin said. "We knew each other at a level that the rest of Chicago did not know."

Arizzi, who calls Caruso Sr. her best friend, said the relationship with Martin contradicted stereotypes about Bridgeport. "No one wants to believe–"God forbid–"[Martin and other blacks] were friends with white people," she said.

Drawing Board
Over time, Martin said he began envisioning a broader relationship, with white tradesmen helping young blacks become electricians, plumbers and carpenters.

"We had a lot of things on the drawing board," he said. "We were dreaming of how the wealth of Bridgeport could be used to bring affordable housing to [neighboring] Grand Boulevard." But these plans came crashing down on March 21, 1997, when Clark and his friend Clevon Nicholson, then 12, were attacked as they rode their bicycles through the area. Clark was brutally beaten.

Last October, Caruso Jr. was sentenced to eight years in prison for aggravated battery and a hate crime. The other defendants, Victor Jasas, 18, and Michael Kwidzinski, 21, entered plea agreements; each was ordered to perform 300 hours of community service.

When the younger Caruso was arrested, Arizzi called Martin. "Within 15 minutes he was at my house," she said. "Fifteen minutes later, he was at Caruso's."

Martin recalled: "When I went to their house, they [the Caruso family] were totally devastated," he said. "[It was] purely a pastoral visit at the onset. We prayed together."

Martin publicly expressed sympathy for the Carusos, and organized three prayer vigils, including the April 4 gathering at Progressive. His efforts won support from some black leaders, including Prince Asiel Ben-Israel, international ambassador of the Original African Hebrew Israelite community, an Israel-based group that promotes a back-to-Africa spiritual movement. "I support the energy, the effort, that Rev. Martin put in to bringing healing to this very difficult situation," he said.

And the Rev. Floyd Davis, then president of the Southside NAACP, also stood by Martin. "When the Lenard Clark incident happened, my main objective was to keep any type of violence from happening," said Davis, pastor at Pilgrim Baptist Church, 3301 S. Indiana Ave.

Critics charged events like the prayer vigils were staged to help influence Caruso Jr.'s trial and reduce his sentence.

And there was fallout. Davis said he resigned from NAACP last September because the organization opposed his support of the Carusos. The NAACP "should stand for equal rights for all ethnic groups, not just blacks," he said.

"We were somewhat dismayed by the stance he took, and we didn't know why," said Joan M. Hill, current NAACP president. Davis resigned when the organization called a special board meeting to ask him about his position, Hill said.

Activist Muhammad sat in on Caruso's entire trial, she said, and later criticized Martin on "The Cliff Kelley Show," a morning program on WVON-AM, a black-owned radio station.

WVON President and General Manager Melody Spann-Cooper said Martin's plea for Caruso triggered "the biggest division in the black community since Harold Washington's death, when Eugene Sawyer and Timothy Evans ran for mayor. It was so amazing how many of our callers were against the alliance."

"There's not that much relationship in the world to protect a white boy who almost beat a black boy to death," Muhammad said. "I think because Caruso has donated to Reverend Martin and his congregation, Reverend Martin felt compelled to help Caruso."

"[Martin] overextended himself because this man had backed him financially," she added. But Martin reiterated there were no financial motives behind his friendship with Caruso.

After hearing Muhammad on the radio, Paris Thompson, co-founder of Community of Men, a community group, called WVON and announced he would demonstrate every week at the churches and businesses of Caruso's black supporters.

Martin, Thompson said, "sold the community out when he chose to support a white man who beat a black boy within an inch of his life. –¦ And everyone who supported his actions were sell-outs," he said. "Here you have a preacher who was Harold Washington's minister running around with a known gangster. I don't quite understand that."

In 1997, Caruso was identified as having ties to organized crime in documents filed by attorneys for the Laborers International Union of North America, during hearings on the influence of organized crime in its Chicago local.

In February 1998, the International removed the leadership of its Construction & General Laborers' District Council of Chicago and Vicinity, and appointed a trustee. Caruso was a delegate to the district council until he resigned in April 1995, the documents show.

Caruso declined several requests for comment. "Frank Caruso, to my knowledge, has no connection to the Mafia," Martin said.

On Oct. 13, 1998, two days before his son's sentencing, Caruso Sr. received the Dantrell Davis Memorial Award in a ceremony at the Inner City Youth Foundation Inc., 4500 S. Michigan Ave. The non-profit serves as an "alternative to prison for non-violent offenders," according to documents filed with the State of Illinois.

Caruso, honored for helping bring peace and healing to the two communities, accepted a plaque from Annette Freeman, who established the award to commemorate her son's death. The 7-year-old boy was killed by a stray bullet during a gang-related shooting on Oct. 13, 1992, as he walked to school in the Cabrini-Green public housing development.

Martin now has doubts about the future of race relations in the area. "I fear if we don't work diligently at this problem, nothing will change. People think that because the Caruso boy went to jail we got justice. The effects have been treated, but the cause has been left untouched."

For more information on the Lenard Clark case and the Bridgeport-Armour Square area, visit the following Web sites:

A political history of Bridgeport.

Digital City Chicago's neighborhood profiles and maps of Armour Square, Bridgeport and Grand Boulevard.

"Hidden Tragedy in Clark's Coma is Separatism," Chicago Maroon, April 11, 1997.

"Beaten Teenager Heads Home," Associated Press, May 2, 1997.

"Defendant Sentenced in Lenard Clark Racial Beating," CNN Chicago, October 12, 1998.

"Chicago Trial Puts Focus on Racial Tensions," Nando Times, April 18, 1998.

Mayor Richard M. Daley's Letter to Chicagoans: "Lenard Clark Attack Shows Need to Stop Racism Early."

Contributing: Rebecca Anderson and Pamela A. Lewis. Dwayne Ervin, Danielle Gordon, Kareem R. Muhammad, Natalie Pardo and Cedric L. Stines helped research this article.