I grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama. At that time, blacks could not go to the downtown hotels or restaurants. We could work there and serve white customers, but never think of being a customer. When Nat King Cole would come to Birmingham for a concert, he could not get a room at a hotel, he had to stay at a friend’s home. As a high school student, I marched with Dr. King when he came to Birmingham.

During this time, King realized that mothers and fathers and other older people were not going to lead the struggle, and just Dr. King standing on the street corner by himself would have done nothing. So, whenever he was coming, his organizers sent buses to the high schools to transport students to the marches. Here we were, all these school kids full of energy, we had no idea exactly what we were doing, we were the army behind him. Dr. King’s philosophy was not one of anger and confrontation, but one of compassion and understanding.

I graduated Tennessee State Nashville in 1968 and moved to Chicago where I taught in Chicago Public Schools for 30 years. I saw the neighborhoods on the South Side and the West Side of Chicago fall apart, witnessed what Dr. King taught us to fight for fall farther away. After I retired, I took some culinary classes, moved to Evanston in 2004, and started working at Northwestern in September 2007.

We are all one family down here. Like in Birmingham in the 1960s, we are not asking for the world, we are asking for basic dignity and respect. I enjoy what I do, and am very happy to be working here, and every day have a line at my station. I like the people I work with, two or three of my old students work on the third floor of Norris.

This is not so much for me, it’s for the people that I work with, the people behind the wall that you all never see. They’re back there getting the grease off the floor — we’re talking about people making $8 an hour. These are people that take the dirt off the lettuce, they trim the tips off the carrots. When you go to the bathroom, you never think about cleaning it, but just before you went in there, there was someone who went in and cleaned it.

These are the same people who on their days off cannot bring their sons and daughters to Northwestern to show them where they work because if they do, their kids will ask for a slice of pizza, and they can’t afford it. They come to work with a tooth ache because they cannot afford to be off. They work Tuesday to Friday with pain, and Saturday they go to the dentist. And the dentist says that he can pull the tooth, but it will cost a $100 co-pay. And that’s money that needs to be in the pantry.

So we fight for a living wage. People won’t talk about it because they’re too embarrassed, but there are people that I work with who’s families are separated, their kids living with church members, family or friends in the neighborhood, because they cannot afford to pay the rent.

I understand that these are tough times, that people are having to drop out of school, but when you think about people that are losing their homes, they never dream of owning a home, they’re just struggling to pay the rent.

This would make me feel as good as I feel when I go back to Birmingham now, and go to the Alabama Theater and the Empire Theatre where I could not go when I was a kid. I may never retire, but I would love to come back to Northwestern ten or fifteen years from now and see workers being paid a living wage. People say that we’ll never get there, but they said the same thing about Dr. King.

Maurice Nix
Deli Chef and Server

Maurice is well known among students as the “Sandwich Guy” at Norris.