EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

Meet the people who live
on Martin Luther King Drive
by Peggy Boyer Long

The moment Judy Spencer spotted the lady in the gold hat, she took off, equipment flying. "I just knew I had to get that photograph," she says. Little wonder. Even in black and white, the glorious detail in the hat, and the personal dignity of the owner, reflects individual artistry in Sunday finery. "She was halfway down the block. But when I finally caught up, she let me take the picture."

The story is fitting. If the portrait tells us something about the woman who wears the hat, it also says much about the woman who aims the camera.

Judy Spencer specializes in capturing the beauty in people's lives. Her true talent is an ability to sweep just about everybody into the creative effort. Resistance is nearly always futile. Folks who are caught off guard end by embracing Spencer, opening themselves to her camera. The result is a collaboration between photographer and subject that manages to reveal a good deal about the lives of some of the people who call Illinois home.

Here at the magazine, we've had plenty of opportunity to witness the effects of that dynamism. Spencer has photographed for our pages families of migrant workers, prison guards, even politicians. So when she asked us a year and a half ago whether we might want portraits of people who live and work along Springfield's Martin Luther King Drive, we said yes. Sight unseen.

Spencer began the project on January 20, 1997, the national holiday set aside to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Her goal was to celebrate the people who are living, three decades after his death, along the street named for the slain civil rights leader. Poet Deanna Blackwell joined the project early, adding her distinctive voice. Blackwell is a graduate student in African-American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Over the course of the year, they met many of the residents of that mostly black neighborhood. Through their work, we feel we've come to know them, too. Beginning on page 14, we introduce them to you.

A few are standouts. We began the task of sifting through photographs and poetry last fall. And some of the folks were hard to forget: the bride who allowed Spencer and Blackwell to watch as she got ready to take her vows; the twins in their too-big-for-awhile best clothes; a mother sharing a moment with her young son. And Georgia, who didn't ask to have someone tugging on her, hair: don't you know who I am? I used to walk through/ town with my head/ reared back and laughing/ at the sun.

The project was a collaborative effort of photographer and poet, too. And their work will be shown throughout the month at Fusion Gallery in Chicago. Thanks to free-lance designer Daisy Juarez for her work on these pages.

And special thanks to the people on Martin Luther King Drive.

4 / January 1998 Illinois Issues