Katanya Raby said she didn’t know the late civil rights leader Al Raby as the “big, larger than life person that the rest of the city saw him as.”“For me, Al Raby is my grandpa,” said Katanya Raby, CEO and co-founder of the Al Raby Foundation.But to many, Al Raby is known for orchestrating a school boycott of nearly 300,000 students to protest school segregation in 1963, bringing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Chicago in 1966 to protest poor housing conditions for Black Chicagoans, and serving as the campaign manager for Mayor Harold Washington’s historic 1983 election as the city’s first Black mayor.On Friday, Al Raby’s legacy was memorialized with a street dedication and the proclamation of February 19, 2027 as Al Raby Day. While announcing the proclamation, Mayor Brandon Johnson encouraged Chicago residents to spend that day learning about Raby’s life and to build upon his legacy.“I followed the example of Al Raby in demanding an education system that offers every child and every educator and every family a chance to succeed,” Johnson said.More than 100 people filled the Grand Ballroom in Woodlawn as “golden oldies” of the 1960s boomed through speakers. Guests sat at round tables adorned with black cloth and decorated with “Al Raby Ln” cookies and round-lapel pins bearing his face.Libations, an ancestral recognition ceremony, were offered by Pilar Audain, a Chicago-based healer and peacemaker. Then Chicago poet and author Leslé Honoré performed an original poem highlighting Raby’s life. Johnson and former Governor Pat Quinn offered remarks and reflections on Raby’s life, and Sherman ‘Dilla’ Thomas shared a mini-history lesson on Raby’s work on the school boycott.The block-long stretch of Cottage Grove Ave. between 63rd and 64th streets is now Al Raby Lane. The sign can be found on the northwest corner of 64th Street and Cottage Grove Ave. In this file photo from Aug. 13, 1966, Al Raby, right, is pictured with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., center, during a news conference. King said that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley could do more “to deal with problems we confront in the Negro community.” King asked for efforts to retain peace in the black Southwest Side where a disturbance started when police turned off a fire hydrant. Charles Knoblock/Sun-Times Media Raby’s organizing around Chicago public education was motivated by the conditions he witnessed as a teacher.He had had enough of stuffing his students into the “Willis Wagons” and expecting them to learn. The wagons were mobile classrooms that then-Chicago Public Schools Supt. Benjamin C. Willis used to address overcrowding in majority-Black schools instead of allowing Black students to attend underutilized white schools. At the time, the district had yet to desegregate the schools to comply with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which established that racialsegregation of public schools was unconstitutional.In response, as leader of the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, Raby organized what is known as “Freedom Day,” on October 22, 1963, a day when nearly 300,000 students, most of them Black, stayed home from school to protest segregation and the poor conditions in Black schools, and for the district to get rid of Willis.Over the next 25 years, Raby would continue his civil rights work. In addition to his work with King and Washington, Raby ran the Peace Corps in Ghana, as it became a newly independent country during the Carter administration.History we can’t forget Katanya Raby said her grandfather practiced humility that drew people to him.“It wasn’t about making himself the star of the show. It was about getting the work done,” she said. “He’s not listed on many of these organizations’ founding documents because that wasn’t his goal. His goal was to make sure that the organization could get off the ground.”Because of the impact of their work, Katanya Raby says that the legacy of her grandfather and his contemporaries needs to be remembered.“It’s important for us to preserve history of folks like my grandfather,” she said. “Black folks’ history, in these spaces, has really made a mark on the way the city looks, the way it operates, the way that our communities have developed, and we can’t forget that.” Katanya Raby, granddaughter of Al Raby, speaks about her grandfather’s legacy at the Grand Ballroom at 6351 S. Cottage Grove Ave.Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times Katanya Raby says the Al Raby Foundation plans to tell his story in a holistic way so that libraries, research institutions, and schools have accurate information that hasn’t been edited.“We’re learning new things all the time about Al, and we want to make sure that what we’re learning and the story that we’re telling about our loved one, this man who was loved by the city of Chicago, is information that we as Chicagoans, can be proud of,” she said. ...read more read less