For the last decade, a color photo of Harold Washington, flashing that signature smile, has hung next to pictures of Annie Mae Carruthers’ family and near a statuette of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a wall hanging depicting the Last Supper in her South Side home.
“He is an icon,” Carruthers, 61, said from the kitchen. “He is on the level of Dr. King and President Kennedy to many blacks. He will always have that place.”
Ten years after his death, Washington’s place in Chicago and black political history seems secure, even if the African-American political community he galvanized has become fragmented and its power diminished. While past anniversaries of his Nov. 25 death have passed with little fanfare, the 10th is shaping up as an extravaganza, with dozens of events from gospel concerts to school plays and museum exhibits slated for the coming days.
But the legacy also has been built with brick and mortar in the intervening years. Construction of the Harold Washington Library Center was completed in 1991 and two educational institutions have been renamed in his honor: Harold Washington Elementary School and Harold Washington College, part of the City Colleges of Chicago.
At these places, as in Carruthers’ home, the memories of Chicago’s first black mayor never are far from the surface–and don’t need anniversaries to be invoked.
Students at Harold Washington School, 9130 S. University Ave., learn the “Harold Washington Creed,” which promotes social consciousness, community service, integrity and self-esteem.
On the first floor of the school sits a small museum separated from the bustle of hallway traffic by a gate. The midnight-blue Cadillac that Washington drove is parked in the center of the museum space. The walls surrounding the car are covered with black-and-white photos of the mayor at campaign rallies, talking with Britain’s Prince Charles and taking the mayoral oath of office.
“The 10th anniversary celebration is different for us because we incorporate his life and works in everything we do every single day,” said Principal Sandra Lewis, who fought to rename her school in honor of Washington in 1993. “At this school, Mayor Washington is about more than a month or so of celebration and song. He is in our walk and talk around here.”
Students often spread the gospel of Harold to their friends.
“It surprises me when someone, no matter how old they are, doesn’t know who Harold Washington really is,” said Deshaia Moss, 13, an 8th grader. “Yes, he was the first black mayor, but there was so much more about his personality and what he wanted for this city that people just don’t know about.”
The students have put together a skit to celebrate his life and are offering free tours for other schools to help teach their peers about Washington. A student choir even sings the mayor’s favorite song, “Chicago,” for curious visitors.
Washington surely would have appreciated that his influence is being felt by a younger generation. Once, when asked who would follow him into office, the late mayor pointed at a crowded sidewalk full of children and said, “He or she is out there, somewhere.”
That “somewhere,” right now, still seems like a distant place. For all the celebrating of Washington’s life that is taking place this month, the anniversary is a painful reminder of how his death left black politics in Chicago without a galvanizing figure, without a strong political apparatus and without much hope of retaking the 5th Floor at City Hall.
Washington suffered a heart attack while seated at his desk on the morning of Nov. 25, 1987, leaving Chicagoans and much of the nation in mourning.
Only days after Washington’s death, a fractured City Council scrambled to elect a successor. Eugene Sawyer, a black alderman from the 6th Ward, was the eventual choice. However, many of the black aldermen had split their allegiances between Sawyer and another African-American, Ald. Tim Evans (4th), Washington’s floor leader.
The chasm between black aldermen grew during Sawyer’s tenure. And much in the same way that a duel of egos put Washington into office when then-Mayor Jane Byrne and then-Cook County State’s Atty. Richard M. Daley divided the white vote during the 1983 primary, a divided council and black electorate brought Daley to power during a special election in 1989.
In 1991, when the regular election came around, the black community was still frustrated and weak because of the infighting, and Daley won easily.
“I think the black community was (discouraged) by the fact that our black elected officials could not come together and bring them another good candidate,” said Ald. Percy Giles (37th), who had sided with Evans. “We splintered our allegiances so much after Dec. 2, 1987 (when the council elected Sawyer). We still haven’t recovered.”
“We blew it big time,” said Bob Storman, a Chicago public relations specialist who worked with many of the aldermen and the mayor during Washington’s administration. “Harold Washington was looked upon as being the strongest black mayor in the country. But when he died, we (blacks) were in such shock because we had not come down off the high of him being elected. We thought he would live forever, and we didn’t have a crisis plan.
“When Richard J. Daley died, there was still that Daley machine. They knew how to deal with what was going on, and there was a clear chain of command that they followed.”
In a sense, though, the inability to find a suitable successor to Washington over the years underscores the remarkable nature of his rise to the mayor’s job and his accomplishment in office.
His half-brother, Ramon Price, believes all the fanfare associated with the anniversary doesn’t do his memory complete justice.
“Yeah, I’m glad that everybody is celebrating Harold, but we don’t need any more parties or luncheons or receptions,” said Price, a curator at the DuSable Museum of African-American History. “I think we need to focus more on meaning. Harold had a vision for this city that I’m not too sure many people know about anymore.
“So much of what he had done in government has been undone. It’s hard to watch all this happen. So while all the parties are fun and good, we need to see more of a tangible meaning of his life that goes on every day.”
Washington had jumped into the 1983 mayoral contest somewhat reluctantly. He made a bargain with a group of black political leaders who had gathered in the basement of longtime activist Lu Palmer’s South Side home that if they could raise $50,000 and register 100,000 voters he would run. The group raised nearly $200,000 and registered 200,000 voters.
Once in office, what made Washington popular was that he possessed the charisma to solidify the many cliques of African-Americans in Chicago, drawing them to the polls in numbers not seen since. Yet he also was politically savvy, opening the doors of City Hall to other minority groups, other outsiders and the so-called “lakefront liberal” whites, giving them something they had never had before–an equal seat at the table of government.
Washington rode into office with brazen disregard for what many of City Hall’s old guard regarded as tradition.
The bitter battles that ensued became known as “Council Wars,” pitting Washington and his 21 council allies against then-10th ward Ald. Edward Vrdolyak, a leader of the bloc of 29 white aldermen who opposed the mayor at nearly every turn.
The initial objection to Washington’s administration was a fear of change, according to those aldermen who served during his tenure.
However, Ald. Bernard Stone (50th), who was among the opposition, said that by the time Washington was re-elected in 1987 he had erased that initial fear. Washington, whose route to City Hall wound through the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives, had accomplished what he had set out to do: Take the cloak off of government and start healing the city’s warring factions.
“Politically he represented a reform type of politician that wasn’t driven by patronage–either pinstripe or ward patronage,” said U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who is helping to organize many of the commemorative events and–not coincidentally–is angling to unseat the current Mayor Daley in the next election.
“His politics were driven by his view of government and that it should be open, fair, accessible and effective.”
Rush paid Washington another posthumous compliment. Could Rush have beaten Washington in a race–any race–for political office?
His answer: “Not on my best day, and not on his worst.”
