With the recent appearance of poet and publisher Haki Madhubuti in the city and his message that Bobby Sengstacke, the noted photojournalist, had joined the ancestors, Chicago was definitely on my mind. So much so that it sent me swirling back to several of my visits there and brief conversations with Dempsey J. Travis, a veritable walking encyclopedia of Chicago’s history, particularly the impact of African-Americans on the city.
Born Feb. 25, 1920, in Chicago, Travis at the age of 5 had launched his business ambitions by passing out advertising cards for a local barber. Told to pass out the promotional material in front of the shop, Travis, ever the wanderer, ventured away from his post and was struck by a car. It took a while for his injuries to heal, and the accident taught him a lesson about being careful, even when passing out flyers.
In 1939, he graduated from DuSable High School, where among his classmates were the jazz great Nat King Cole, comedian Redd Foxx and publisher John H. Johnson. Perhaps because of Cole’s prowess, Travis desired to be a pianist, but the Depression and a subsequent stint in the Army, particularly in a segregated unit, put some more realistic things on his mind. He was shot three times by the military police, who fired on a crowd of Black soldiers. Luckily, he survived, but one of his friends died after a bullet went through his head.
From this dangerous beginning as a child and later in the military, it was time for much less perilous challenges, and he attended Roosevelt University and received his bachelor’s degree in 1949. At Roosevelt, Harold Washington, author Frank Landon Brown and Gus Savage, a future U.S. representative, were among his classmates. It was a momentous graduation, and later that year he formed the Travis Realty Corporation and was its first president. This venture planted him firmly in the city’s real estate development realm, especially on the city’s South Side, where the African-American community was predominant.
While managing his company, he was also the president of Sivart Mortgage Company, and by 1960 Travis founded the United Mortgage Bankers of America as well as the Dempsey Travis Securities and Investment Corporation, where he served as president until 1974. And if running businesses were not enough, he was back in school, where he acquired an advanced degree in Mortgage Banking from Northwestern University in 1969.
The same year he got his degree in mortgage banking, Travis founded the Urban Research Press. It was established as a forum for the publication of African-American fiction and nonfiction. His books were among the forum’s best-sellers, and in each of his seven books he provided a detailed analysis of a particular topic germane to the African-American experience. One that stands out is his book on jazz during the post-World War II period that was published in 1983. Jazz was a subject that almost preoccupied him as much as his entrepreneurial passions. Noted jazz authority and radio commentator, Richard Steele, said of Travis, “I first met Dempsey Travis in the late ’70s and I was a bit intimidated by his presence. He had a hearty laugh and a wicked sense of humor, but he was also a bare-knuckled brawler when it came to business and politics.”
Steele continued, “I was very careful not to offend. Jazz music was where we found common ground. He was a former musician and self-styled jazz historian. I was a young disc jockey at the time and had the good fortune of occasionally filling in for famed jazz radio personality Daddy-O Daylie. He and Dempsey were good friends and that gave me credibility. Each time I interviewed him on my own radio show, he talked about why he decided to write books about his own people. One of his most memorable quotes was, ‘If we don’t tell our own story, we may look up one day in the distant future and Duke Ellington will be white.’”
Travis was not only interested in protecting jazz, but also with the publication of his autobiography, he staked out a territorial concern about the broad parameters of African-American history and culture, especially on his home turf in Chicago.
“My father, Louis Travis, arrived in Chicago in 1900,” Travis related in his autobiography published in the early 1980s. “He found a city that had little experience with racial animosity. With only a small Black population, Chicago was still fairly open in its dealings with Blacks. All that, though, was beginning to change as the importation of Southern Blacks into the city accelerated. Where Blacks and Caucasians had been able to live and work together in relative harmony, white folks would begin to perceive Blacks as a threat, and housing segregation by race and class would become rigid and cruel as the numbers increased.”
The turbulent race relations reached a fever pitch by the 1960s, and Travis became an ardent participant, totally committed to the reform of social injustice in the city and elsewhere. When Dr. King marched in Chicago in 1960, Travis was among the coordinators of the event. In this capacity, he was also president of the Chicago branch of the NAACP. He was at the core of several presidential elections, particularly those in which Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were the candidates. For his dedication he was given vital roles in these administrations.
This political experience, combined with the various fights he had in business, none more exacting than the restrictions imposed by redlining, prompted Travis to throw himself wholeheartedly into the campaign to get Harold Washington elected as the city’s first African-American mayor.
“He was like one of those waves that just keeps crashing against this hard rock of resistance to change,” recalled documentary film producer Jeff Spitz, who interviewed Travis for his Emmy Award-winning film about the integrated Roosevelt University in a segregated city. “He crashed against those rocks for a long time and he eroded some of the worst resistance.”
According to Travis’ longtime friend, Timuel D. Black Jr., professor emeritus of social sciences at the City Colleges of Chicago, “There had been Black realtors, but not any that had been as extensive as Dempsey.” The awards and honors of his remarkable odyssey include his listing in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Finance and Industry and Who’s Who in the World. In the 1970s, Ebony magazine cited him among the “100 Most Influential Black Americans.”
Of all the tributes and salutes, it’s hard to say which he enjoyed most, although he must have been deeply honored when Black Enterprise magazine chose him for the “First Annual Finance Achievement Award” in 1975 by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller at the White House.
Travis was 89 when he died July 2, 2009.