10th funeral in less than a year for a young black man killed on the streets of the South Side

10th funeral in less than a year for a young black man killed on the streets of the South Side, the Rev. Corey Brooks decided he had had enough.

All the men and boys were under 25. The last one was 17. During that funeral, gunfire erupted outside the church as rival gang members refused to allow the living to mourn — or the dead to rest — in peace.

Angry, frustrated and heartbroken, the minister hit the roof.

On Nov. 22, Brooks rode a rented construction lift to the top of a vacant two-story motel that once was a den of drug dealers, addicts and prostitutes across the street from his church on South Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. He pitched a green tent on the windswept roof and vowed to stay until he received enough contributions to buy the building, raze it and replace it with a community center. He envisions a place where young people from feuding pockets of the surrounding neighborhoods can learn to live together.

Brooks did not budge for 11 days and nights, even delivering his Sunday sermon via video stream to parishioners inside his New Beginnings Church.

On the 12th day — Saturday — Brooks descended from the roof shortly after dusk. The reason: He needed to provide comfort to another mother who had suddenly lost a son.

Brooks had been in his tent around 5:30 p.m., reviewing notes for his second sermon from the rooftop. He planned to preach about Nehemiah, who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in less than two months, a task expected to take two years.

He intended to tell his congregation that the plan to raise $450,000 for the hotel conversion project could be achieved. “Even though we have a large goal in front of us, if Nehemiah could accomplish it in 52 days, then surely we can do the same thing,” he said.

Then Brooks’s cellphone buzzed. A friend of the Fisher family was on the line, saying Dale Fisher had been killed.

“The reason I came down,” Brooks said, “is the same reason I went up: violence and a distraught mother.”

He hurried across town to the morgue in the basement of John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital. The slight, childlike body of a 16-year-old boy lay on a gurney. Dale was encased in a white body bag zipped to his neck. Only his head and face were visible to his family, weeping on the other side of the viewing glass. His eyes and mouth were partly open, as if, Brooks said, “he died calling out for his mother.”

Within three hours, the 42-year-old minister was back on the roof, praying harder for peace, and renewing his vow to stay.

Like other activist Chicago clergy, such as the Rev. Michael Pfleger and the Rev. Gregory Livingston, Brooks wants to take the pulpit to the streets and raise awareness of slaughter in the city.

He said his Woodlawn neighborhood was being stalked by a serial spirit killer called “No.”

“No competitive sports programs, no social things, no conflict resolution, no jobs,” Brooks said. “All of that breeds hopelessness, which in turn causes what we’re seeing — murder.”

The police later said Dale’s death was a drive-by shooting in the 6200 block of South St. Lawrence Avenue, as he walked home around 4 p.m. The shooting occurred about 10 blocks from Brooks’s rooftop camp.

William Thompson, a pipe fitter who lives on South St. Lawrence, heard shots and rushed outside. The boy was lying on the sidewalk. “He had two bullet holes on his side here and here, and another on his chest,” Thompson said, his finger drawing across his chest from the left side to the right. “He was struggling for his life; then he died.”

Thompson said he was contemplating selling his building and moving to the suburbs. “I can’t stop thinking about that kid,” he said. “I was up all night.”

Brooks was also shaken. Before the shooting, representatives of four street gangs from around his church had agreed to ride the construction lift to his tent and surrender as many as 20 guns. A fragile peace was in the works, brokered by Brooks and an aide, Undra Colbert, 44, a former gang leader and former prison inmate.

“All it takes is one knucklehead kid to set everything back,” Brooks said. “Now they’re probably going to feel I’m up here on a roof, and I’m bringing a lot of attention and still stuff is happening. I understand their feeling.”

Brooks dispatched Colbert and an assistant pastor to the hospital to see what the Fisher family needed. At first the boy’s mother, Romana Fisher, resisted having him come off the roof. But the preacher persisted.

“I can always go back to the roof,” he recalled telling himself. “But I can never replace this moment, to help somebody hurting, somebody in need.”

Dressed like an outdoorsman in his parka and ski pants, 12 days’ worth of beard growth on his face, Brooks walked into the hospital around 6:40 p.m.

Down in the morgue, Fisher had just identified her son’s body. Minister and mother stood hugging in the barren corridor. The mother told him she recently had pulled her son out of his Hyde Park high school because gangs were after him.

“I was looking for an alternative school to send him,” she said, sobbing into Brooks’s chest.

Upstairs, Fisher introduced Brooks to her adult daughter. “You did her boyfriend’s funeral last year,” Fisher said.

Brooks followed the mother home, where she stood in the middle of her son’s bedroom. “He was a good, humble kid,” she said softly.

Brooks wrote down a telephone number and a name, Cassandra Pharrow.

“Call her,” he told Fisher. “She can help you get through this.”

Pharrow belongs to Brooks’s church. Two years ago, he officiated at the funeral of her 29-year-old son, Jason Cole, a college graduate shot in the head while hanging out with friends in a south suburb.

Now Pharrow counsels other mothers of murdered children sent to her by Brooks, at least eight of them so far.

“When mothers say, ‘I feel like I’m going crazy,’ I understand,” Pharrow said. “I felt like I was going crazy. But I tell them you’re not going crazy, that it’s O.K. to be angry, to wonder why God did this.”

On the wall of Dale’s bedroom hung a T-shirt with a picture of a smiling teenager on the front. Airbrushed on the bottom was Tu Tu, the teenager’s nickname. Across the top was scrawled RIP — rest in peace.

Tu Tu was one of Dale’s best friends. His real name was Carlton Archer. He was 17 when he was shot to death on Nov. 11, about a block from where Dale was gunned down on Saturday.

Brooks stared at the T-shirt.

“I did his funeral,” he said. “That’s the funeral where they did the shooting outside. That’s the funeral that made me go up on the roof.”

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