West Garfield Park business owner chooses to stay despite the violence
Marie Henderson, 73, owns Out of the Past Records, and has lived in West Garfield Park since the 1950s— one of the stores she and her husband owned burned during the rioting after Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968. Henderson raised five children and still lives a few blocks away from the store. The business is the last of more than a half-dozen she and her late husband once owned.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Walk under the tattered canopy that reads Out Of The Past Records and you are greeted in the small foyer by portraits of some of the shop’s best customers. Marie Henderson said the family business had its beginnings in the 1960s with her husband’s photography studio.
Marie Henderson, 82, owner
Out Of The Past Records, 4407 W. Madison
We had a wig store, we had a jewelry store, then we had records. So eventually we narrowed it down to just records and variety stuff.
When I came to Chicago it was 1955, my first year in high school. It was fascinating. The problems we have now, we didn’t have them.
Madison and Pulaski was like State Street. We had all the stores. In 1963 when we opened, you had Three Sisters (a clothing store), Thom McCann (a shoe store), all kind of stores. …
We used to go into Garfield Park, we used to take our kids over there to the bridge to see the goldfish in the water. Garfield Park had a beautiful flower rotation out there, where you see open spaces now. It was really nice. …
I raised five kids in the neighborhood, and I own my own home. And then I have family, my aunt is across the street. Then I got neighbors, what’s left. There’s about six or seven of us on the block.
Sometimes it’s kind of hard to think about it because when I first moved there in 1963, it was beautiful. It was all homeowners. We used to have block club parties for the kids. Kids played in the neighborhood, they were free. …
After Martin Luther King got killed, they rioted and they burned everything down. They burnt the studio down. … Then after the riot, everything started to shut down.
I had a store in the 3900 block (of Madison), and I sold it a few years ago. At that time my husband got sick ... and I didn’t have the time to run that store, and besides, it had gotten real bad down there. …
The bank moved, then some of the stores moved, the doctor’s office. The dentist. We have a lot of seniors in this neighborhood, and they have to go downtown to try to find somewhere to buy groceries because they closed the Aldi’s down.
On my block of Monroe, it’s always action. They shoot. It’s regular. We hear it a lot at night, maybe every week.
Marie Henderson owns Out Of The Past Records at 4407 W. Madison St. in West Garfield Park.| Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
I’m surprised it’s kind of quiet now. A couple of weeks ago someone got killed over by Madison and Pulaski. Some boy ran into a store or something and got shot. …
It bothers me a lot. I have cameras on my house, to try to keep an eye on things. The graystone buildings, we still have a lot of them. They’re beautiful. Some are well taken care of, some of them are not. …
I don’t see any sense in moving. My kids are trying to get me to move. They say if it gets any worse, mom, you’re going to have to move. My aunt, her kids are telling her the same thing.
Why should I have to move when I own my home, pay taxes? Somebody that’s out doing wrong, they get to stay?