AA Rayner and Sons

The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.SUBSCRIBEJuly 7, 2015 / 9:12 AM GMT / Updated July 7, 2015 / 9:15 AM GMTBy Tracy JarrettThere were more than 2,000 shootings in Chicago last year, and the city is on pace for more this year. The violence worsens in the summer months: over the holiday weekend, dozens of people were shot and nine died in the gunfire. Beneath the sobering figures are personal stories, both of fear and resilience. NBC News' Tracy Jarrett spent time in Chicago to hear them. Part 2 in a series.CHICAGO — At A.A. Rayner & Sons funeral home in Chicago, Charles Childs is used to planning celebrations of long lives. His biggest concern traditionally has been timing the stop lights as he leads grieving families in a procession to the cemetery.These days, though, he has to worry about arranging a police presence to control the large, often emotional crowds that show up for the funerals of young people whose lives have been cut short by gun violence.Rayner & Sons is a predominantly black funeral home founded in 1947 on the city's South Side. It handled the funerals for Emmett Till, the 14-year-old slain in Mississippi in 1955 after reportedly flirting with a white woman, and Mayor Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor.Childs is the president of the funeral home and has been in the business for 40 years. He used to see one or two violence-related funerals a year. Now, he says he directs one or two every month.So he has to take into consideration all sorts of things that he otherwise wouldn’t — avoiding certain gang colors, navigating a tricky route between the service and the cemetery and hiring cops to keep the peace.At these funerals for interrupted lives, the mood is as much tense as somber. Eulogies must be delicately written for “kids who may have been doing things they shouldn’t have been doing,” Childs said. The smallest thing can turn grief to violence.“It could be something so minor, like somebody stepping on somebody’s foot or no...

By Chinta Strausberg, Chicago CrusaderFuneral services for Lerone Bennett, Jr., who died on February 14, 2018 at the age of 89, are scheduled for Saturday, February 24, 2018, at the St. Columbanus Catholic Church, 331 E. 71st St., Chicago, IL, where he was married, according to his daughter, Joy Bennett. The wake and funeral are 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., respectively.Visitation was scheduled Friday, February 23, 2018, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the A.A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home, 318 E. 71st St.A prolific and talented writer, historian and author, Bennett was also a founding sponsor of the Washington D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial Project Foundation and was a founding board member for the National Museum of African-American History Culture.Mr. Bennett’s 50-year journalism career included the role as executive editor of Ebony. His books and articles delved into the history of race relations in the U.S., but he also focused on the current social maladies in which African Americans continue to fight for parity and equity.Born on October 17, 1928 in Clarksdale, Mississippi to Lerone and Alma (Reed) Bennett, as a youth, his family moved to Jackson, MS. It was there while attending Jackson’s public schools that Bennett discovered his passion and talent in journalism.Bennett attended Morehouse College where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1949. He always considered Morehouse the center of his academic development, according to his daughter. After graduating, Bennett was hired at the Atlanta Daily World where he became the city editor until 1953.He began working as an associate editor for Jet Magazine in Chicago and a year later he became an associate editor at Ebony. Bennett was promoted to senior editor of the magazine in 1958 and retired as executive editor Emeritus in 2005.  His comprehensive articles became one of the magazine’s literary hallmarks.His career as an author began with a series of articles that were originally published in Ebony including the book, “Before the Mayfl...