Dave Larsen’s historical fiction book, “Green Street in Black and White: A Chicago Story,” speaks about social issues in ways nonfictional accounts can’t. Larsen, who’s retired as executive director of the Chicago-based Bright Promise Fund for Urban Christian Education, was a recent guest on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast,” hosted by Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe. Listen to their 52-minute conversation here.
Published in April, Larsen’s book follows Erik Pedersen and his friends, the Green Street Boys, who were growing up in the early 1960s in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. The boys confront prejudice, discover solidarity and witness the cracks in their seemingly ordinary world. As families leave the neighborhood as part of white flight, Pederson is thrust in a moral conflict that challenges his understanding of right and wrong.
Larsen’s book includes real events from the author’s childhood on Green Street, including riding in an uncle’s Chicago police car, a church hiring a seminary intern to track where Black families were moving, and a tragic shooting.
Catoe and Doong opened the episode with this question for Larsen: How do the themes and experiences that inform your book, such as reckoning with change, racism and the importance of community, relate to the justice issues of our country that we are currently facing?
“That’s a great jumping-off point,” Larsen told the hosts. “People who’ve read the book say to me this resonates with a lot of what we’re dealing with today,” including opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion; book-banning; the rewriting of history; and police justice. “I think of the fact that white flight still happens in some forms in the Chicago area,” Larsen said. “I know of some churches who have moved four, five or even six times from the South Side of Chicago to further-out suburbs and beyond that into northwest Indiana.”
“A lot of that has to do with changing neighborhoods, and Christians and others unable to learn how to live with people unlike themselves,” he said. “That’s part of the dilemma of the book for Erik Pederson,” who along with his friends “are trying to make sense out of why churches and schools are leaving the area and their parents are talking about moving when they live in the neighborhood, feel safe and don’t see anything wrong, even though all of them would say they don’t know a Black kid in the neighborhood, never met them and don’t know what this is all about.”
A Black pastor in the book speaks about parishioners who “came north for the jobs to flee persecutions and lynchings and Jim Crow laws,” Larsen said. “Those are refugees, I think. It’s the difference between nomads and refugees, and I think there are parallels today.”
While researching the book, Larsen came across church council minutes he found “quite disturbing. I recognized the names of heroes as I was growing up who made some pretty racist decisions along the way.”
Faith communities “had a lot of sway when it comes to segregation and redlining,” Catoe said. On the podcast, “we’re not shy about talking about how faith has been used to justify a lot of this stuff.” Catoe asked Larsen how he has seen that change over the years.
One person who read the book is the author and editor of children’s books. “He told me, ‘Children’s books typically end on a hopeful note. Do you think your book ended on a hopeful note?’ I had to say, ‘I’m not sure.’”
“I intentionally left it with Erik Pederson wondering how to put this all together in his mind for his future,” Larsen said. “He and his friends loved the neighborhood … and yet his church and his family were being uprooted. Do I see any change today? I think there are hopeful signs today.”
New editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” are released every Thursday. Go here to listen to previous episodes.
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Jill Chancellor, Reference Archivist, Presbyterian Historical Society, Interim Unified Agency
Cathy Chang, Interim Unified Agency
Let us pray:
Sovereign God, help your church in every corner of the earth to be committed to and effective in ministries. Amen.
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