As an addendum to Clarence Page’s excellent commentary of Sept. 24 (“Racial politics isn’t what it used to be,” Op-Ed), I should like to point out that the first big-city mayor to practice “transracial politics” was Harold Washington.
With Mayor Washington, racial politics was never an end in itself. That was a fixation of the news media, much of his opposition and also some of his supporters. He appointed African-Americans to top positions in his administration, to be sure. But he also engaged an Italian-American as fire chief, a Norwegian-American as head of Streets and Sanitation and a Polish-American as a prominent adviser for police, fire and gang matters.
In addition, in 1985 this African-American mayor reached out to cultural and political leadership in the Polish, Puerto Rican, Italian, Mexican and German communities, to name a few of the larger ones, and invited them down to City Hall for a handshake, a photo opportunity and a bite to eat, to which they all agreed. They came, they saw and they were conquered.
In Harold Washington’s 1987 primary battle with Jane Byrne, his support in some predominantly Italian and Polish wards increased by nearly as much as 600 percent from the 1983 primary.
In this 10th anniversary year of Mayor Washington’s death we should remember one thing: If “Irish politics” is a process rather than an ethnic or racial fixation, Harold Washington was the greatest “Irish” politician Chicago ever had.
