Harold Washington taking the Oath of Office 30 years ago today, on April 29, 1983.
Harold Washington was sworn in as Chicago’s first black mayor 30 years ago today. His impact was outsized for his relatively short tenure. To commemorate the anniversary, I thought I’d pull together some articles that help shed light on his politics, personality, and how his time in office shaped Chicago today.
The Elections
Let’s start with Mike Royko’s column, published in the Sun-Times the day after Washington won the contentious Democratic primary in 1983. It includes one of the great ledes in Chicago journalism history—”So I told Uncle Chester: Don’t worry, Harold Washington doesn’t want to marry your sister”—and an apt description of Washington’s empathy:
First, Washington was born in an era when they still lynched people in some parts of the United States. By “lynched,” I mean they took a black man out of his home, put a rope around his neck and murdered him by hanging. Then they went home to bed knowing they were untouchable because the sheriff helped pull the rope. Washington suffered through it. God knows how he did that. I think that most of us–white, privileged, the success road wide open to us–might have turned into haters. Washington didn’t turn into a hater. Instead, he developed a capacity for living with his tormenters and understanding that in the flow of history there are deep valleys and heady peaks.
Winning Chicago’s Democratic primary is tantamount to winning election in normal years, but 1983 was not a normal election. Four years ago, Alex Kotlowitz and WBEZ’s This American Life—which devoted a full-hour show to Washington in 1997—revisited the unlikely, spirited, and (unintentionally?) race-baiting campaign of Bernie Epton, Washington’s Republican rival:
Additional information @ http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/April-2013/Harold-Washington/
