Chicago is marking the centennial this week of the city’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington, 35 years after he died during his second term in office. Here’s a few things to know about Washington’s rise to legendary status.
Deep Chicago roots
Washington was born on April 15, 1922, at Cook County Hospital, grew up in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood and was among the first graduates of DuSable High School after it opened in 1935, catering primarily to Blacks whose families or ancestors had come to Chicago from the American South during the Great Migration.
After serving in the South Pacific during World War II, Washington attended Roosevelt College, now Roosevelt University, where he became student council president. Early political activism including efforts to outlaw restrictive covenants on property, preventing Blacks and other minorities from owning homes in white neighborhoods, and trips to Springfield to protest measures like “loyalty oaths” for teachers.
He rose through the Democratic machine’s ranks — then aimed to dismantle it
In the early 1950s, Washington, then a law student at Northwestern University, started working for 3rd Ward Ald. Ralph Metcalfe, a former Olympian who was later elected to Congress. Washington rose through the Democratic machine ranks, eventually winning election to the Illinois House in 1965, to the state Senate in 1976 and — despite a short stint in jail in the early 1970s for failing to file a tax return — to Congress in 1980.
But along the way, he increasingly asserted his independence against the machine and, as then-Mayor Jane Byrne steadily lost the support of many Blacks who’d backed her, Washington was encouraged to run for the city’s top job.
In a stunner, Washington won the Democratic primary, not only beating the incumbent but another opponent by the name of Richard M. Daley, son of the late mayor who himself had at times encouraged Metcalfe to dump Washington.
In the general election, Washington went on to defeat Republican Bernie Epton, despite Epton’s support from many high-ranking Democrats, some of whom tried to stoke racist fears in white neighborhoods about the prospects of a Black mayor.
In his “combative” inaugural address, the new mayor “proclaim(ed) the death knell of the Democratic machine,” the Tribune wrote at the time.
One of his main rivals remains on the City Council
Washington’s early years in office were marked by the racially heated “Council Wars” with old-line opponents who, embittered by his victory, formed a white majority at the City Council behind Ald. Ed Vrdolyak to thwart the mayor’s agenda.
This led to court battles and an “alternative” city budget. And in September 1983, “one of the most tumultuous council meetings in years, Vrdolyak questions Washington’s manhood and the mayor threatens to punch him in the mouth,” the Tribune reported two years later.
After that, the Tribune also noted, Vrdolyak lowered his profile in the Council Wars, “letting his ally, Ald. Edward Burke, take the public lead in challenging the mayor.”
In 1984, for example, Burke attempted to remove Washington from office when he failed to file an ethics form on time.
Burke is now the longest-serving alderman on the council. But in 2019, shortly after marking 50 years on the council, he was charged with attempted extortion. He is still awaiting trial.
Washington died in office
Washington didn’t merely die while holding office — he died in his office at City Hall. He was at his desk, talking with an aide, when he slumped over with a heart attack. It was Nov. 25, 1987, the day before Thanksgiving and less than a year after he’d won his second term in office. He was 65.
His death stunned the city, and an estimated 200,000 people, some who waited for hours, paid respects when his remains lay in state at City Hall.
It also set off a bitter fight over his successor: A week after Washington’s death, Ald. Eugene Sawyer was chosen as acting mayor at the end of an all-night City Council meeting that saw, as the Tribune reported at the time, “raw political power playing at its ultimate, complete with death threats, insults, shouting, arm-waving, boasts and bravado in the chamber.”
Many Washington supporters wanted a different Black alderman — Timothy Evans, who is now chief judge of Cook County Circuit Court — to be the next mayor. And hundreds protested against Sawyer at City Hall that night, viewing him as an “old-line politician and an unworthy heir to the political mantle” of Washington, the Tribune wrote. Someone scrawled on the door to Sawyer’s ward office: “You’re a traitor to Mayor Washington’s dreams.”
At one point, Ald. Richard Mell, a Sawyer supporter, famously stood on a desk in the council chambers and shouted as he sought recognition.
Sawyer would serve until the special election in 1989, when he lost in the Democratic primary to Richard M. Daley. In the general election, the son of the former mayor defeated Evans, who ran with the Harold Washington Party, and Vrdolyak, the Republican candidate.
