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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Craig Dudnick grew up in Evanston, Illinois, but his perspective on the town remained pretty narrow until he moved back years later. Living in the basement of an elderly friend who needed help, he was told numerous stories about the racial history of Evanston - how the town developed and became what it is today. A history that he hadn’t heard or seen anywhere else, Dudnick took it upon himself to share this side of Evanston with the world. This resulted in his documentary, "Evanston’s Living History," which was shown at the Dover Library last week.
Beginning in Abbeville, South Carolina, the film follows one of its prominent citizens, Anthony Crawford, and his family, who moved to Evanston after events which led to his lynching. “He was an emancipated slave and one of the best farmers in the area,” Dudnick explained. “Everything was fine until October 1916 when the famers were down in the square in Abbeville to sell cotton and the price of cotton started to drop. They told Mr. Crawford to get out of line to let the white farmers get the higher price. He refused, which leads to the altercation which leads to his lynching. They then announce that the African-American community has 24 hours to leave and most go to Evanston.”
Dudnick interviewed numerous members of the community in depth, including Crawford’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter, who still live in Evanston. After watching two documentaries following the same story, Dudnick knew what he had to do to make his telling the best it could be. “The director of the first one said they followed them from place to place for four months, and then it was done again but they only were with them for two weeks,” he said. “And that one is a string of clichés, but the first one is a revelation. It’s so moving and so touching. So I had in my mind, if I have the chance to do a documentary, I have to do it in depth, where you get a chance to make the people three dimensional and not just stereotypes.”
The history relayed by those Dudnick interviews is extraordinary. Despite facing abject racism, which Dudnick describes as “more subtle than the south but just as brutal,” the African-American community came together to shape and change the community rather than fight fire with fire. Slowly but surely, Evanston gained its first African-American police chief, fire chief, and even mayor. “This is the national story, this horrendous racism, but this group transforms. They don’t meet fire with fire. They transform the community, and I think that’s the national process,” Dudnick said.
The most troubling part of the story is how little this history is known. “This history doesn’t exist outside of this building, it’s not in the history books. You know, if you’re in this community, this is what you’re taught at home and then you go to the school and they don’t acknowledge any of it. Then you don’t respect the school, and that’s a problem,” Dudnick explained. He also reached out to Evanston High School, which had no interest in the documentary. Despite being disheartened by this, the film has been added to such prominent libraries as Harvard, and of course the Dover Library.
While it may not be in history books, Dudnick’s telling brings these stories to light as they never had been before.
