Social media storyteller and Chicago historian Sherman “Dilla” Thomas’ study of Martin Luther King Jr. began in the early 1990s when he would overhear his brother recite King’s last sermon in Memphis.
Overhearing King’s speeches, beyond just “I Have a Dream,” sparked a never-ending curiosity for Thomas.
“It made me want to do a deeper dive on King,” he said. “Growing up, I studied King a lot. Not just ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ but I studied a lot of stuff. I studied the fact that he was a bookworm, and he took the entrance exam to Morehouse College and was accepted at 15 years old.”
Thomas was Northwestern’s keynote speaker on Tuesday at the Galvin Recital Hall for its annual Martin Luther King Jr commemoration. Many in the Northwestern and Evanston communities attended, despite the subzero temperatures.
Thomas’ content includes videos on TikTok about Chicago’s history, public figures and neighborhoods. From the South Side, Thomas also runs Chicago Mahogany Tours, which focuses on the “preservation and dissemination of the rich history and culture of the city of Chicago.”
NU’s Interim Chief Diversity Officer Michelle Mannon, Provost Kathleen Haggerty and Medill School of Journalism Dean Charles Whitaker gave remarks while senior lecturer and Director of Audio Programming Natalie Moore moderated the discussion.
Undergraduate Angelena Brown also sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the Black national anthem, before Thomas was introduced.
King’s legacy in Chicago
When King visited Chicago in 1966, he was voted as one of the top 10 most hated men in America, according to Thomas.
Then-Mayor Richard J. Daley invited King to stay at the Palmer House hotel in downtown Chicago. But King declined the offer and opted to stay in an apartment at the corner of 15th Street and Hamlin Avenue in the Lawndale neighborhood.
“He engages the people. He becomes neighborly. He visits the local stores, but he also starts the march,” Thomas said.
King would later start a housing movement known as the Chicago Freedom Campaign, which protested racist housing practices. He organized a march through Marquette Park.
During his time in the city, King said Chicago was “probably the most racist place he had ever been,” Thomas said.
“This is the person that lived his entire life in the South via legal segregation, yet when he arrived in Chicago he thought it was the most racist place he had ever seen,” Thomas said.
Thomas said that King worked to end racial inequality everywhere he went and was met with tension everywhere he went but persisted because “we all want the exact same things.”
King’s legacy continues today, and Thomas encouraged the community to learn more about people before passing judgment.
“I don’t expect people from Evanston to drive down to Englewood and coach Little League and save all the little Black boys and girls. … I do expect you not to repost a negative thing about a people that you haven’t given a chance — to read about, to learn about, to research about,” Thomas said.
“Because if you cut us all open, we all bleed the same, and that should tell us everything we need to know about Dr. King’s legacy.”
Thomas’ impact on advancing social justice
With more than 400 videos on Chicago history and about 300,000 views across several social media platforms, Thomas is achieving his goal of making history accessible to all.
Subjects like AP African American studies are restricted in some states. The U.S. also saw a huge wave of bans on books about race, gender and sexuality in 2024.
When Thomas visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, he recalled the first exhibit saying “they banned the books to hide history.” He connected this idea to how his storytelling is a form of activism.
“Kids can have access to YouTube and Instagram. They can watch my page and learn [that the] first person to ever slide down the pole was a Black firefighter,” Thomas said. “If I do anything else but make history accessible to all, then I start to fall backwards.”
Chicago’s TikTok historian talks making history accessible at NU’s MLK commemoration is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.