History in Oakland

Social reformer Hannah Solomon founded the National Council of Jewish Women.  In 1897, she created the Bureau of Personal Service, providing help for immigrants and delinquents.  An elementary school named in her memory opened on the north side in 1957.  When she founded the national council of Jewish women, she resided at 4060 S Lake Park Avenue in the Oakland neighborhood of Chicago.

King College Prep opened in 1971 at 4445 South Drexel Boulevard, and it is one of the Chicago public school system's nine selective enrollment schools.  Its approximately 900 students must apply to the school and are accepted according to their academic achievement and test scores.  King is home to the Jaguars and has produced numerous "Mr. Basketball" titleholders for the state of Illinois.  The school's most notable alumnus is Academy Award-nominated actor Michael Clarke Duncan, who starred in The Green Mile, Friday, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Armageddon.  Professional basketball players Rashard Griffith, Thomas Hamilton, and Marcus Liberty also attended King.  

The Strode Hotel, though neither a club nor a theater, once served as home away from home for jazz legends Sonny Stitt and Freddie Webster.  On April 1, 1947, Webster (a trumpeter whose sound was admired and emulated by both Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis) injected himself with a lethal dose of heroin and died at the hotel that was located here at the Southeast corner of Oakwood and Drexel, but has since been demolished.  In his autobiography, Miles Davis claimed that the heroin was laced with poison by someone that Sonny Stitt physically assaulted in order to support his addiction and that Stitt passed this particular dose along to Webster.

On June 22, 1956, tenor saxophone legend Sonny Rollins recorded “Strode Rode” as a tribute to Freddie Webster.  The song was the third track on his “Saxophone Colossus” LP, widely considered to be one of the most formidable jazz albums ever.  On “Strode Rode,” Rollins leads with a solo, yields to pianist Tommy Flanagan, and then returns for a series of four-bar solo exchanges with drummer Max Roach in a classic example of the hard bop style.  The playing on this song is nothing short of exceptional.