Chicago Local News by John W. Fountain

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John W. Fountain biography

A native son of Chicago’s West Side, John W. Fountain is an award-winning journalist, professor, and author of the memoir True Vine: A Young Black …Read More

Dear mama, speak truth to your wayward sons

“As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one’s aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and …Read More
Don’t give up — hope doesn’t have to die in the ’hood

Disclaimer: I am not a “Super Negro.” I was born a son of the ghetto, joint heir to poverty, the firstborn of a 17-year-old black mother married to a black male, sometimes mechanic, 22. My father was an alcoholic. This was how he lived. It …Read More
We, African Americans, continue to fail ourselves

“…The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people.” — Mis-Education of the Negro, Carter G. Woodson Amazing to me still, nearly 80 years since Carter G. …Read More

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Let’s hope Dist. 227 learns from ridiculous and costly legal battle

Nearly two years, more than $100,000 in legal fees and apparently 14 brand new toilets later, the Rich Township High School District 227 school board appears to have finally come to its senses. And yet, the whole mess still stinks. The south suburban school board …

Tebow inspires in sport of shameless celebration

LOL! “Tebow is puttin’ it on ’em . . . In Jesus name!” I thumbed a Facebook posting quickly on my handheld while watching the Broncos-vs.-Steelers game, giddy over the success of the young NFL quarterback who has taken a ribbing for his open — …

How Muhammad Ali made this little kid feel big

In a treasured photograph, I stand smiling widely next to the champ, my brown fist to his face, his to mine. I wear a dark suit. The champ wears a white shirt, striped tie and his signature lip-biting glare. Meeting him years ago, he seemed …

Even hair weaves call for honesty

A-weave-e-derci! It’s been an unbeweavable year. This despite the heat I took this summer for having the audacity as a man — no less a bald black man — to dare speak my mind about the explosion of hair weaves of assorted varieties worn by …

The children die, their blood cries, under a school-day sun

There are children here, though scarred and battered. Big dreams shattered. Big-city tattered. Ghetto fractured. And sometimes, all that matters here is getting home safe each day, under each new school-day sun. Escaping bloody pools that run, sometimes like rivers here, on the darkest side …

Tying my son’s shoes, worried if I have cancer

I knelt on the office floor of my son’s school, tying his shoes tightly, a lot on my mind. Yet, all I could do was wait. My boy had called home earlier. He’d forgotten his saxophone and needed it for practice after school. The secretary …

School district’s lawsuit isn’t about the children

So here we go again: Marching to court to witness a cadre of mostly white, well-paid lawyers argue about the future of mostly black children because of a lawsuit brought by a stubborn, predominantly black school board that contends the district doesn’t have enough green …

Sizing up Occupying nephew on Thanksgiving

It was a strange number calling from some corner of “Occupy” New York: “Hey Unc!” a familiar voice rang. “Hey, man,” I said to my nephew. “Did you get the ticket?” he asked, his enunciation ever prim and proper. “Not yet,” I said regarding the …

When basketball returns, we just might not care

Hey, NBA, what if fans lock out? Let’s say you eventually settle this billions-of-dollars beef between players and owners and spiff up your stadiums in preparation for the resumption of play, welcoming at long last the faithful fans back to their NBA dens. Except, none …

In too many communities, church is not healing force

This is the fourth and final part of a series, “Letters to a Pastor.” Dear Pastor, It’s just after 4 a.m. I write to you with tears in my eyes, depleted and heavy with the burden of feeling compelled to say publicly what so many …

In time of crisis, where are the good shepherds?

This is the third in a series, “Letters to a Pastor.” It began with an essay John wrote years ago critical of the church in the black community. Dear Pastor, I hear you, man. . . . But the people perish. And yet, the clergy …

The pain of ‘church hurt’ is all around, Dear Pastor

This is the second in a series, “Letters to a Pastor.” It began with an essay John wrote years ago critical of the church in the black community. A pastor offered a spirited defense. Now John responds. Dear Pastor, First, please accept my apology for …

A black pastor’s lament: ‘Must we do it all?’

Today’s column is an excerpt from a letter from an anonymous pastor I received years ago in response to a critical essay on the black church published across the country and also in this newspaper. October is National Pastor Appreciation Month. This is the first …

Abandoned by my church: I love God, but the black church has failed me

This column by John Fountain originally appeared in the Aug. 7, 2005, Chicago Sun-Times. Sunday morning arrived, like so many before, with a mix of sunlight and chirping birds outside my bedroom window and a warm greeting from my tiny son, lying beside my wife …