“Welcome to Bronzeville,” the young Black woman said.

So began an evening with Pete Buttigieg.

The rising Democratic presidential candidate of the 2020 race on Tuesday, August 20, appeared on stage in Black Chicago, at a prominent Black venue named after the city’s first Black mayor, on a street named after the world’s most famous Civil Rights leader, in a predominately Black neighborhood.

But inside the Harold Washington Cultural Center on King Drive in Bronzeville sat very few Blacks. The facility’s auditorium holds 1,000 people. Out of the packed, standing room-only crowd, I counted 13 Blacks. Oh wait, it was 14. One was 25 minutes late.

The predominately White crowd traveled across one of the most segregated cities in the country, past the de facto ethnic border of Roosevelt Road, to hear a young, White mayor from a small town speak about his blueprint to change America.

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