I think his decision was based on two things. The location was at an elite white society church for the region, and reinforced his status in larger society. He was one of the most powerful and influential Americans of the 20th century, after all.
This is true. He also lived a more integrated life than most of the Chicago black elites. The church he chose to have Linda's wedding was only a block away from where they lived in the Gold Coast.
What was/is that circle's relationship with white high society in Chicago? Completely different worlds? On the outside, it appears that the Black elite resented being snubbed for the white elite, in that instance.
(LOG mentioned family and circle being angry at him for choosing Princeton for undergrad rather than the traditional elite HBCUs......I see this as being similar)
Completely different worlds. Which is why I laugh at folks who say that the black elites/boule are looking for white acceptance because, at least in Chicago, the black elites never really integrated and so there were no white people around to glean acceptance from. The South Side of Chicago gets a bad rap nationally. But the truth is, the South Side is a very large area, and the areas that the black elites populated had better ameninities than most other historic black communities in the United States. For one, the grandest housing in the city is on the South Side in the Bronzeville and the Hyde Park-Kenwood communities, where the black elites lived. They have one of the top education institutions in the world, the University of Chicago, in their back yard. One of Chicago's top prep schools, the Lab School, is there. The South Side had riding stables, beaches, harbors with all-black yacht clubs (the oldest black sailors in the country came out of these yacht clubs), golf courses, country clubs, tennis clubs, ski clubs...the South Side had it all in terms of ameninities so there was no immediate desire to go North and intermingle with the white elites. To this day, when I socialize with some members of the Boule, for instance, when they ask where do I live, and I tell them the North Side, the response is always a jokingly "oh, so you up there with all them white folks." So they had it all on the South Side, and because of the historic segregation, they've remained, for the most part, there, because they had access to what some would consider elite ameninities.
So then, the question becomes, why do you need to choose things on the North Side, when we have everything over here? And our things have relevance to us.
It's almost like the side eye many of us give when we find out a well-to-do black person pledged a white fraternity. Is it because they were trying to make a statement of status? Couldn't be that because we have fraternities that have a long history of being dominated by upscale blacks. Same with our churches and other black institutions. Or when blacks try to buy homes in Nantucket instead of the Vineyard, and specifically the Oak Bluffs area. Our things have relevance to us, why seek out things that are not in step with our history, position, and sense of place?
So the black elites couldn't fathom why another upscale black person would make some of the choices JJ made unless JJ was just an outsider and not really part of the group.
The black elites do the same thing that the broader black community does in ascribing black authenticity to certain things. No different in that regard.
And , something that came up recently about denominations and social class. Whatever religious tradition his family came out of in Arkansas, might not have been what he followed during his rise and reign in Chicago. He might have been a member of a high profile church, but that wasn't really his family tradition, so overlooking a society church wasn't a problem.
They were Baptist I believe.
He flouted and laughed at the rules. When I say his money bought his way in, I mean that he went from a position where his recent lineage, skin color, religious affiliation would have been barriers to those circles........to a level where those people had to acknowledge and pander to him. It wasn't like a super high achiever begrudgingly being let into the circle, it was a man pole vaulting his way over the entire circle.
This is true.
...........
Lol, I don't know how we turned a thread about Reginald Lewis into one about JJ.
Though, I'm sure that's what he would've wanted.
