Good Friday Welcome to Prairie Fire.

I'm Sarah Edwards.

I'm here at the Rose Bowl, which is a really popular place to see local music here in Champaign Urbana.

Now we have places here where we can see big time artists and bands.

But it really is local musicians playing places like this, that make up the musical heart and soul of communities big and small throughout the state of Illinois.

So we thought we'd introduce you to a man who has spent many decades of his life as a local music star here in central Illinois.

But as a black entertainer, it hasn't always been easy.

Tanisha Spain introduces us to Kandi foster in the house don't you ever deal with the times and bad Gerald foster grew up in a close knit neighborhood in Danville, Illinois, the son of a Navy men and a glamorous mother who was a popular local singer.

I used to sit there and come down there, downstairs bedroom and watch him rehearse.

I remember she had one.

Oh boxes that you had to wind up and play the record.

She just walk around and she was rehearsing.

I just thought she's having fun verse and then she found out she was rehearsing.

And I'm saying like, Oh, man, this is interesting.

His Auntie offered piano lessons, but he played hooky.

Instead, he immersed himself in everything from Opera to do wop and blues singing on the street corner with friends to impress the girls.

He was too shy to talk to that told me I had a good voice.

Right there you're created a monster.

Soon he was putting together singing groups, and at some point, his bandmates suggested a nickname to fit their cool lead singer.

Gerald would forever be known as candy foster sports and blues.

You gotta have nicknames.

Yeah.

Candy moved to Champaign in 1959 when he was barely 20 when he wasn't working at restaurants and hotels to support his growing family.

He was performing with his band called the soul brothers on what was known in the black community as the Chitlin Circuit.

The Gitlin circuit was a old saying that they come up with for low price entertainment sometime No, no price.

So they had to go through the back door as a black man or black entertainer that could play in different hotels and clubs, and little towns and play in a little motels.

And the bars and taverns.

They get bands like Soul brothers are willing to travel, go to Charleston, Mount Vernon, all around different places, and sharecroppers, and guys that couldn't go to the fancy places, but they wanted to come out and party on weekends to win the Vietnam War got underway, shoot air force base in Rantoul became an important training center.

Foster was recruited by top brass just not in the way he expected.

They didn't train me was set up for basically everybody but black kids didn't like that music at all.

You know, that wasn't a thing.

And it just kept waiting on something to happen and it wasn't happening.

So you know, like anything else?

They probably had enough.

Next thing I know, I was getting a phone call and they say you still got your band, right?

Yeah, we still got the soul brothers.

Can you get them up here tomorrow can you get so yeah, so we started blend Just about every other night, we I got to end up being one of the favorites on the base.

I played all kinds of bases all around the Midwest and out in Michigan.

It was like a holiday When soul brothers came to town and an Air Force Base.

That was kind of my way of feeling like I was doing what I'm supposed to do, you know, giving back as his career grew foster open shows for many big names who came through Illinois opened up a show for BB King and Bobby blue bland, and I got chance to hang out with them and they both had big old buses and stuff like that.

Whatever thing the whole works, and I was like, a kid wouldn't do Tori I run around.

Man.

His appearance with BB King led to a lifelong friendship with the King family.

I got this phone call.

And the lady said, Are you the famous Candy Foster are sick?

Well, I'm Candy Foster.

She said that they told me if I was in trouble and I had I needed a band you to want to call and I said Well who is it?

She said I'm surely keen.

You want to be the keys door?

And I said well, I'll make a few phone calls make long story short, I got her a band and she never did forget that every two or three months is a surely man.

Morning In a career spanning more than 65 years, Kandi Foster has established himself as the guy to call in central Illinois for the best in r&b and soul hits his latest band shades of blue is the biggest of his career some of the bad leaders around here but saying well falsely UK damn no seven eight piece band make any money you can't do that.

Horn sections.

BACKUP SINGERS as a dream world well, I know who it is but that's what I want.

When anyone what do you do or you know oh you saying what do you do?

I sing with Candy Foster and shades of blue.

It's always a explosive response.

They're impressed by that.

Oh, cuz everybody knows candy.

I'm not the best singer around and I'm not trying to be the best thing around because No, I'm not going to be there.

But what I am trying to do is entertain and if you're gonna call me anything that's what do you need to call me i entertainer.

You put in your way you feel it, how you feel about stuff.

That's but stepping in that date in the soul.

This meat Okay, now I'm talking to you.

A good gig is to people.

It's like sports or anything else.

The more that people get involved, the more you get involved, even in his late 80s.

Foster is big on getting involved.

He raises money for many charitable organizations and has established the Kandi foster scholarship at Parkland College.

He's a father of 14 and a grandfather of 30, maybe 40 grandchildren.

He's kind of lost count.

I love them all, you know, way on holidays by the house he did.

We had to hold hands to to different room.

That's family love there.

You know, it will make them who they Mama was.

They brothers and sisters.

And that's where we look at one thing he does know, he's not stopping anytime soon.

I've heard people ask him, How do you how do you keep moving?

You know, I you?

How do you have all this energy on stage?

How are you doing all of this?

And the first thing he says is don't stop moving.

I feel real comfortable.

When I'm doing music.

The way Candy Foster does a lot was I got dead.

I mean, I'm happy we'll have more music from Candy Foster later in our show.

Now, about a year and a half ago, I was driving with my mother through the countryside when she pointed to a house in the distance and said, You know, I think that was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

And I was really embarrassed to admit that I know nothing about the history of the Underground Railroad in Illinois.

So what better month and Black History Month to educate ourselves?

History Historian Eric Robinson gives us a tour of some notable stops in Southern Illinois.

In the 21st century, we must understand that institutions evolve.

And it's definitely true.

And you talk about slavery, and its interaction with the Underground Railroad.

Now, as we understand it, the Underground Railroad existed whenever there was slavery.

So you can go back to the 1620s, and find the presence of underground railroad activity.

But if it evolved into an institution, it developed over time.

And so by the time we're in the 1850s, really, by the time we're past 1800, and the development of cotton gin, the value of the slaves were going up, because the need for the labor was going up.

People were making money out of cotton, and out of sugar.

And so it's in this type of circumstance, that people found it necessary to escape.

And they found it necessary to escape through the Underground Railroad.

You're near Illinois, two parts of the state touch slave states.

You're how riverbank touches the state of Kentucky.

The Mississippi touches the state of Missouri, and both Kentucky and Missouri had slaves.

When slaves in Kentucky in Missouri, generally speaking, came from Maryland and Virginia, places that groove tobacco, and they were coming to Louisville, and St. Louis, primarily be sold to planters who would take them down south grow cotton and sugar.

This proximity was one of the things that facilitated the escape of slaves.

The Illinois free black community was just our short riverboat cross away.

They weren't in love Georgia, Illinois.

And sometimes we would plan instead to escape to Alton, from places like Alton, that went along the Illinois River towards Chicago.

They were heading in the 1850s for Canada.

Why?

Because Canada was some particularly safe place for free blacks.

The Canadians, like the Mexicans, like most people in North America did not allow a North American to bring slaves back from their territory, they would escape and leave relatively free.

Illinois was a free, free state.

That's quite true.

But it was not a pro Civil War state.

Most of Illinois population was situated in Southern Illinois, and southwestern Illinois.

And they're very much against the idea of fighting a war to free slaves.

And all you have to do is look at the Illinois River.

And if you go up the Illinois River, you're generally going and then Northeastern direction.

Well, it seems that that was how escaped slaves escaped.

Most free black communities along the Moines River were rural areas.

Most of them are gone.

Most of these rural areas cease to exist during the Great Migration.

But what these free black communities were were in the middle of nowhere, they were in middle of swamps, woods.

And they would, they would come into these areas.

And they would live as free people, such as what existed in penal colony near Edwardsville, Illinois, the no man's land that was between Madison St. Clair counties called American bottom.

Why?

Because it was a wetland.

And that was in the middle of no place and you can stay there and you can live fairly unbothered by people looking for runaway slaves.

It also found the locations of the AME churches, the African Methodists were active in helping facilitate escapes.

Some groups were identifiably active in the Underground Railroad, such as the Quakers Society of Friends, such as the Anabaptist, Mennonites and Amish.

And I think I think we should be aware that for many of the people who are active in helping slaves escape, they did not want people to know you ran the risk of being lynched.

So in that regard, is dangerous for people to know that you are helping slaves escape.

It's not something you can boast about.

Certainly not in a place with As much important area as central Illinois was an area that was so heavily Copperhead, and such as Eastern Illinois, and Southern Illinois, you didn't use that at all.

In the 1850s, every state in the union, with the exception of Maine had some restriction or another, or Negro activity.

Illinois required under the black codes that all negros had to post a bond.

Small amount $500 $500 was like an annual income under the black codes, no Negro could testify against any white person.

Period.

End of statement.

If I had children, they couldn't go to school.

We couldn't congregate.

This considered illegal unless it was religiously oriented.

That's why a lot of the organizing of free blacks occurred in churches, religious services.

The locations were unremarkable at the time period.

But we noticed what they are now.

They were locations that had secret rooms, secret chambers.

In the 1860s, when the destination the desire was to get away from the bushwhackers in Missouri, escaped slaves would use one building that we're familiar with the old ins apartments, the units apartments, the story where they hit escape safe seem to have been in the coal shed and go from there to Union Baptist Church.

I had seven sons George Street, and from there, up to the topic house and from there, down to the railroad track leading to Brighton Illinois.

The Cheney mansion in Brighton Illinois, where the jersey County Historical Busey is now located.

I discovered our had a root cellar underneath one of the floors.

So type of place where hide escapes lives.

One side, because it is historically significant as this founding location of the anti slavery Society of Illinois, once the old Brockhaus escaped slave coming through there in the 1820s 1830s was trying to get into the Salou neighborhood of wandering for Township.

That SLU community connected with wood station, which is in foster Township and the foster township connection, went up to Brighton.

And then it got from there, the stagecoach stop at the edge of town that went to Jacksonville, and in Jacksonville.

It was through the presses of the Yale band that established Illinois College that would help escaped slaves get someplace where they would be free.

Sometimes they'd go to Springfield and get up to get up to Chicago.

In most cases, the methods of identifying an underground railroad station house died with the conductor.

Most of the time, you wouldn't know the house at all.

Just an old house, but it has stories with.

Check out our website for more stories and a map of stops on the Illinois Underground Railroad.

Now we wanted to tell you about something really cool happening at Illinois public media.

We recently launched a new radio station to amplify black voices across the public media landscape in Illinois.

It's called Illinois soul and it took about a year to plan.

Here's more about the project and what you can expect when you Welcome to Illinois Soul Illinois Public Media's all new tune in.

station highlighting black experiences celebrating Black Culture, elevating black voices and showcasing black music.

A common thread that you hear from people, especially people moving into this town is you're trying to find your people and there's not any media platform to help you Do that African Americans listen to radio more than any other demographic, they want to hear r&b They want to hear Neil's so they want to hear smooth jazz.

So we are delivering all those things.

And we're gonna marry those with high quality black NPR news talk shows, we plan to get to the heart of things happening in the black community in central Illinois, going beyond the headlines, whether we're talking about education, politics, or even the environment.

And we also have a wonderful local Community Affairs magazine called dialogue.

And each week, it will feature a different guest, local, sometimes national, and it'll also have entertainment guest as well.

News brews and beats was a special event.

And it talked about the impact of gun violence and what Champaign was doing to help combat it.

It was a safe space to have difficult conversations, those quarterly shows help to launch Illinois.

So what I hear pretty much every day is thank you.

I hear thank you all the time.

I hear people say it doesn't feel like champagne anymore.

It feels like a new champagne, you know, where they're being seen.

And they're heard and they're celebrated.

What makes it unique, not only is the format which doesn't exist anywhere in the country, but you will also not only hear Illinois soul, but you will see Illinois, so.

So we have several signature events lined up throughout the year.

We are currently partnered with Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, we do film screenings at the Virginia theater and putting together the Illinois so community advisory board helped us to find out what the needs are in the community, what the expectations are in the community.

And our purpose for doing all of that was to build the trust in the community to let the community know that we respect them.

And to let them know that we're in this for the long haul.

You know, this is just phase one.

And we have much much more coming up.

We've had radio stations before, right?

But they've been away from us for a long time.

Not often enough to we have media that is about four and contributes to African American education, communication, and more importantly, values our voice now we have some a radio station who's going to fill in the gaps and there's going to be something for everyone.

If it's a dream come true.

You know, I'm a local girl from the north end, whose loved radio all her life.

I'm just delighted to support and give and serve a community that has certainly given to me.

You can find Illinois soul on 101.1 FM and 90.9 HD two, or you can stream it at Illinoissoul.org.

And the new Illinois public media app will be rolling out in a matter of weeks so you'll be able to stream a stare to thanks for being with us.

We leave you now with more of Candy foster in the shades of blue right here at the Rose Bowl.

Alright try one or $2 He had to concede last he said he had me man.

All right.

But if you want to do a lady a favor oh here here's what I want you to do breakout through dollar bag lead to dollar you got to break out up front was going to back to the casino last all her man she said Don't you know his Sabri.

Got caught up over here.

Got Karla business Money that dog got in the machine.

Give it up a candy fun goes to bow I want to thank you for my $2 Oh somebody's bringing it back by suit machine workout shoes you got it you