Mention the name Anthony Beale to those with knowledge of local politics, and the response is always, “Oh, yeah, the guy who beat the Shaws.”
That’s because in 1999 Beale broke the hold that brothers Robert and William Shaw had on South Side and south suburban politics, particularly in the 9th Ward.
“It was a very tough race to become alderman,” Beale says, sitting in his ward office on East 112th Place. There is a large fish tank nearby and on the wall a picture of Muhammad Ali defeating Sonny Liston.
“That picture came from a resident, the first present after I got elected. There is a lot of symbolism in that,” says the 38-year-old alderman, whose ward includes the neighborhoods of Roseland, Rosemoor, Pullman and West Pullman (to see a ward map, go to www.cityofchicago.org and click on the “Your Ward and Alderman” link).
He has always been a neighborhood kid, one of the five children of a father who was a Chicago police officer (now retired) and a mother who was a state trooper (now head of operations for Illinois State University).
A talented athlete at Corliss High School, Beale won a baseball/basketball scholarship to downstate Blackburn College. But he didn’t graduate, returning home when his mother became ill. He went to work at Allstate for 12 years, rising from mailroom worker to systems analyst.
Over the years his brothers and sisters moved away from the neighborhood, but he was determined to stay. “I hold the deep belief that if everybody who cares moves, there will be nothing left to care about in the community,” he says.
“The thing that pushed me [into activism] was the fight to vote the ward dry,” he says. “I am not opposed to liquor, but there were 59 liquor stores in the ward and, with people hanging out getting into trouble, there was resultant crime. The stores had to be closed.”
One of the people he worked with in that successful effort was James Meeks, pastor of the Salem Baptist Church in the ward and an Illinois state senator. At the time Meeks said of Beale: “He’s a fresh face. He’s a change from career politicians.”
Indeed. “I had no political experience, no political connections,” Beale says. “Rev. Meeks gave me credibility when I decided that the best way to help my neighborhood was to become alderman.”
He had cashed in all of his vacation and personal time to campaign in 1999. “But then there was a runoff [against Robert Shaw’s son, Herbert], and Allstate refused to give me any more time off, so I quit. I mortgaged the house, took a loan out on both my cars.”
He won that runoff, was reelected in 2003 with 66 percent of the vote and plans to run again next year.
“When I first walked into City Hall, I didn’t even know where the bathroom was,” he says. “But I had a desire to learn, to find out the different avenues for funding and how to get some for my community.”
He is proud to have helped get millions of dollars for renovations at Altgeld Gardens, one of the country’s first public-housing projects. “There had been no capital improvements there since 1969,” he says. He loves the new baseball diamond behind Gwendolyn Brooks High School, where he is standing in Osgood’s photo.
“There is so much potential in this ward,” he says, citing the massive commercial-residential development of more than 200 acres on the ward’s eastern edge and the construction of more than 200 new homes.
“And the opening of a new grocery store on 115th,” he says. “That has been one of the greatest challenges, to convince stores, the big chains, to come into the heart of the African-American community. They stereotype our community. In some other wards it’s a no-brainer to get these stores. Here, it’s like pulling teeth.”
He and his wife, Dana, an auditor for the secretary of state’s office, live in his boyhood home with their two sons, 12-year-old Anthony and 10-year-old Darius. The alderman also has a teenage daughter from a previous relationship.
“And this is where I’ll stay to see my kids grow up and experience a brand new ward, a ward rebuilt” he says.
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rkogan@tribune .com
