The Bridge: The Life And Rise Of Barack Obama Part 6

By the time Obama came to Chicago, he had become comfortable not only with his given name but with his racial ident.i.ty in particular. What his work on the South Side was bringing him was something larger--a deepening connection to an African-American community. He was no longer a student trying to make friends in the Black Students a.s.sociation. This was life, daily and natural contact, whether at home in Hyde Park--a more middle-cla.s.s, integrated, university-town environment--or farther south, among the poor and the dispossessed.

"Barack simply believed that he'd been black all of his life," Mike Kruglik said. "Part of it was, as he told me, that while all these people were thinking about his being biracial or asking was he black enough--all that stuff--when he walked down the streets of the South Side no one asked that question. No one asked that question when he tried to hail a taxi in New York. Now he was a black community organizer in a black community with the purpose of creating an organization to give black people a voice. There was a synthesis of how he identified himself culturally and being a community organizer. Being a community organizer helped him create a black community. Before that, he'd had a romantic idea of a black community and found that there really was no community as he'd imagined it: the community was fragmented and largely destroyed. He had to re-create that community. I heard a lot of those things coming out of his mouth. There was this organic feeling about him, of being a serious young man helping people fight for their community. And he willed willed himself to be part of the community and then defend it." himself to be part of the community and then defend it."

One of his black colleagues in organizing, John Owens, had grown up in Chatham on the South Side, and he was fascinated by how "open-minded" Obama was about questions of race. "He was concerned about being fair about whites as well as about blacks, whereas the average African-American who grows up in the community, the concern with being fair is usually with your own. He always wanted to be even-handed in his a.n.a.lysis of things. In that regard, he was able to have stronger relations.h.i.+ps with whites more than the average African-American."

Obama's early impressions of Chicago were best expressed in a long, handwritten letter to his old friend Phil Boerner: Phil--My humblest apologies for the lack of communications these past months. Work has taken up much of my time and the free margins I devoted mostly to catching my breath. Things have begun to settle into coherence of late, however, so hopefully you'll be hearing more from me in the future.Now, what's your excuse?Chicago--a handsome town, wide streets, lush parks, broad, lovingly crafted buildings, Lake Michigan forming its whole East side, as big and mutable as an ocean. Though it's a big city with big city problems, the scale and impact of the place is nothing like NY, mainly because of its dispersion, lack of congestion. Imagine Manhattan shrunk by half, then merged with the boroughs into a single stretch of land, and you've got some idea of what it's like. Five minutes drive out of the Loop (the downtown area) and you're in the middle of single story frame houses with backyards and tall elms.The layout influences the people here. They're not as uptight, neurotic, as Manhattanites, but they're also not as quick on the pick-up. You still see country in a lot of folks' ways--the secretary in a skysc.r.a.per still has the expression of a farm girl; the sound of crickets on a hot Southern night lies just below the surface of the young black girl's words at a check-out counter. Chicago's also a town of neighborhoods, and to a much greater degree than NY, the various tribes remain discrete, within their own turf, carving out the various neighborhoods and replicating the feel of their native lands. You can go to the Polish section of town and not hear a word of English spoken, walk along the Indian section of town, colorful as a bazaar, and you'd swear you might be in a section of New Delhi.Of course, the most pertinent division here is that between the black tribe and the white tribe. The friction doesn't appear to be any greater than in NY, but it's more manifest since there's a black mayor in power and a white City Council. And the races are spatially very separate; where I work, in the South Side, you go ten miles in any direction and will not see a single white face. There are exceptions--I live in Hyde Park, near the Univ. of Chicago, which maintains a nice mix thanks to the heavy-handed influence of the University. But generally the dictum holds fast--separate and unequal.I work in five different neighborhoods of differing economic conditions. In one neighborhood, I'll be meeting with a group of irate homeowners, working-cla.s.s folks, bus drivers and nurses and clerical administrators, whose section of town has been ignored by the Dept. of Streets and Sanitation since the whites moved out twenty years ago. In another, I'll be trying to bring together a group of welfare mothers, mothers at 15, grandmothers at 30, great-grandmothers at 45, trying to help them win better job-training and day care facilities from the State. In either situation, I walk into a room and make promises I hope that they can help me keep. They generally trust me, despite the fact that they've seen earnest young men pa.s.s through here before, expecting to change the world and eventually succ.u.mbing to the lure of a corporate office. And in a short time I've learned to care for them very much and want to do everything I can for them. It's tough though. Lots of driving, lots of hours on the phone trying to break through lethargy, lots of dull meetings. Lots of frustration when you see a 43% drop-out rate in the public schools and don't know where to begin denting that figure. But about 5% of the time, you see something happen--a shy housewife standing up to a b.u.mbling official, or the sudden sound of hope in the voice of a grizzled old man--that gives a hint of the possibilities, of people taking hold of their lives, working together to bring about a small justice. And it's that possibility that keeps you going through all the trenchwork.Two other guys on our staff, both white, in their late thirties, do the same thing in the white suburbs. What draws the two areas together is a devastated economy--the area used to be the biggest steel producer in the U.S., and now closed down mills lie blanched and still as dinosaur fossils. We've been talking to some key unions about the possibility of working with them to keep the last major mill open; but it's owned by LTV, a Dallas-based conglomerate that wants to close as soon as possible to garner the tax loss.Aside from that, not much news to report. My apartment is a comfortable studio near the Lake (rents are about half those in Manhattan). Since I often work at night, I usually reserve the mornings to myself for running, reading and writing. I've enclosed a first-draft of a short story I just finished; if you have the patience, jot some criticism on it, let George mark it up, and send it back to me as soon as possible, along with some of the things you guys may have written.It's getting cooler, and I live in mortal fear of Chicago winters. How's the weather over there? I miss NY and the people in it--the subways, the feel of Manhattan streets, the view downtown from the Brooklyn Bridge. I hope everything goes well with you, give my love to Karen, George, Paul, and anyone else I know.Love--Barack Obama had arrived in Chicago in June of 1985, two years after Harold Was.h.i.+ngton won election as the city's first black mayor. To the African-Americans of the city, this was an epochal breakthrough, a seeming end to traditional white machine rule and what was commonly called the city's "plantation politics," and they were always ready to talk about it. Obama could walk into his barbershop or the Valois cafeteria and get a quick seminar on Was.h.i.+ngton's victory. He saw the campaign posters everywhere, tattered and yellowing but still displayed in shop windows. He saw the portraits in the South Side barbershops next to King and Malcolm and Muhammad Ali. Obama joined Was.h.i.+ngton's admirers and followed the daily drama of the Mayor's battles with a City Council that was still packed with old machine-style aldermen, the most famous of whom was "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak. in Chicago in June of 1985, two years after Harold Was.h.i.+ngton won election as the city's first black mayor. To the African-Americans of the city, this was an epochal breakthrough, a seeming end to traditional white machine rule and what was commonly called the city's "plantation politics," and they were always ready to talk about it. Obama could walk into his barbershop or the Valois cafeteria and get a quick seminar on Was.h.i.+ngton's victory. He saw the campaign posters everywhere, tattered and yellowing but still displayed in shop windows. He saw the portraits in the South Side barbershops next to King and Malcolm and Muhammad Ali. Obama joined Was.h.i.+ngton's admirers and followed the daily drama of the Mayor's battles with a City Council that was still packed with old machine-style aldermen, the most famous of whom was "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak.

There is no telling how Obama might have developed had he answered an ad to work in some other city, but it is clear that the history of African-Americans in Chicago--and the unique political history of Chicago, culminating in Was.h.i.+ngton's attempt to form a multiracial coalition--provided Obama with a rich legacy to learn from and be part of. "The first African-American president could only only have come from Chicago," Timuel Black, one of the elders of the South Side and a historian of the black migration from the South, says. Tim Black came to Chicago from Alabama with his family as an infant, grew up on the South Side, and went on to write and a.s.semble have come from Chicago," Timuel Black, one of the elders of the South Side and a historian of the black migration from the South, says. Tim Black came to Chicago from Alabama with his family as an infant, grew up on the South Side, and went on to write and a.s.semble Bridges of Memory Bridges of Memory, a two-volume oral history of the black migration and African-American life in the city. For decades, Black has been a college teacher, political activist, and resident sage of the South Side, and he is one of the elders Obama sought out when he was an organizer. They met for the first time at a student hangout near the university, Medici on 57th, where Obama quizzed him for hours about the history of the migration and the political and social development of the South Side. Obama was not only fascinated by the history of black Chicago; he also chose to enter that history, to join it. Chicago was where he found a community, a church, a wife, a purpose, a political life--and he was absorbed in its past. "He soaked it up," Black said. "He made it his own."

African-Americans have lived in the lakeside portage that became Chicago for more than two centuries. According to legend, the Potawatomi Indians, who first lived there, had a saying: "The first white man to settle at 'Chickagou' was a Negro." A French-speaking black man, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, was the first permanent settler, arriving in "Chickagou" at the end of the eighteenth century. in the lakeside portage that became Chicago for more than two centuries. According to legend, the Potawatomi Indians, who first lived there, had a saying: "The first white man to settle at 'Chickagou' was a Negro." A French-speaking black man, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, was the first permanent settler, arriving in "Chickagou" at the end of the eighteenth century. Until the Civil War Until the Civil War, blacks were officially banned from settling in Illinois, yet in the eighteen-forties and fifties pro-slavery polemicists called it "the sinkhole of abolition" because so many escaped slaves kept arriving via the Underground Railroad.

The Great Migration of African-Americans to Chicago began around 1910; the migration was a process that came in bursts, peaking in the nineteen-forties and fifties, but did not entirely end until the nineteen-seventies. In all, it raised Chicago's black population from a marginal two per cent to thirty-three per cent, transforming the politics and culture of the city. In the South, boll weevil infestations put cotton farmers out of work and, later, mechanization transformed cotton cultivation forever; at the same time, in the industrial North there were thousands of jobs available in the slaughterhouses and the mills and the factories, not least because the Great War and then the Immigration Act of 1924 shut off the borders to Europeans while so many whites were being s.h.i.+pped off to war. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 also sent hundreds of thousands of black sharecroppers looking for work and a place to live. Throughout the migration, the most important of the black newspapers, the Chicago Defender Defender, a weekly edited by Robert S. Abbott, a Georgia native, published milk-and-honey appeals to Southern blacks asking them to question their conditions in the South and come North for a life of freedom and plenty: Turn a deaf ear to everybody.... You see they are not lifting their laws to help you. Are they? Have they stopped their Jim Crow cars? Can you buy a Pullman sleeper where you wish? Will they give you a square deal in court yet? Once upon a time we permitted other people to think for us--today we are thinking and acting for ourselves with the result that our "friends" are getting alarmed at our progress. We'd like to oblige these unselfish souls and remain slaves in the South, but to their section of the country we have said, as the song goes, "I hear you calling me," and have boarded the train singing, "Good-bye, Dixie Land."

Trainloads of black families arrived every day at Illinois Central Station. Between 1916 and 1970, half a million blacks arrived in Chicago from the South. A Black Belt began to take shape on the South Side, a triangle running between Twenty-sixth Street on the north and Fifty-fifth Street on the south, from State Street to Lake Michigan. It was a huge, dense neighborhood that came to be known as Bronzeville. To some extent, the Defender's Defender's boosterish appeals were genuine. Blacks really did find greater opportunity in Chicago and, in a world of de-facto segregation, Bronzeville became a lodestar of black life in America, a "parallel universe," as Timuel Black calls it, of "parallel inst.i.tutions": black churches, theaters, nightclubs, and gambling parlors known as "policy wheels." boosterish appeals were genuine. Blacks really did find greater opportunity in Chicago and, in a world of de-facto segregation, Bronzeville became a lodestar of black life in America, a "parallel universe," as Timuel Black calls it, of "parallel inst.i.tutions": black churches, theaters, nightclubs, and gambling parlors known as "policy wheels." John (Mushmouth) Johnson John (Mushmouth) Johnson became Chicago's first black gambling czar and he, in turn, helped Irishmen like "Hinky d.i.n.k" Kenna and "Bathhouse John" Coughlin develop their careers as the political bosses of the First Ward. became Chicago's first black gambling czar and he, in turn, helped Irishmen like "Hinky d.i.n.k" Kenna and "Bathhouse John" Coughlin develop their careers as the political bosses of the First Ward.

Still, many whites in Chicago resisted the influx, the expansion of Bronzeville, by every means possible. Between July, 1917, and March, 1921, a bomb went off in a black-occupied house roughly every three weeks. The community a.s.sociation in Kenwood and Hyde Park determined that blacks could not move east of State Street and "contaminate property values." Real-estate tyc.o.o.ns ran scams that played on white fears. resisted the influx, the expansion of Bronzeville, by every means possible. Between July, 1917, and March, 1921, a bomb went off in a black-occupied house roughly every three weeks. The community a.s.sociation in Kenwood and Hyde Park determined that blacks could not move east of State Street and "contaminate property values." Real-estate tyc.o.o.ns ran scams that played on white fears. One of the major white real-estate One of the major white real-estate barons, Frederick H. Bartlett, handed out leaflets to whites in Douglas, Oakwood, and Kenwood reading, "Negroes are coming. Negroes are coming. If you don't sell to us now, you might not get anything." And so whites suffering from "n.i.g.g.e.r mania" sold cheap and the realty companies, accepting tiny down payments, sold the same houses for double and triple the price to newly arrived blacks. Realtors would sell to whites promising that there was a restrictive covenant and they could be a.s.sured of having no black neighbors. At the same time, black resentment of white racism was growing; black soldiers who had fought in Europe and returned home only to be treated once more as inferior beings helped stoke a growing sense of militancy. barons, Frederick H. Bartlett, handed out leaflets to whites in Douglas, Oakwood, and Kenwood reading, "Negroes are coming. Negroes are coming. If you don't sell to us now, you might not get anything." And so whites suffering from "n.i.g.g.e.r mania" sold cheap and the realty companies, accepting tiny down payments, sold the same houses for double and triple the price to newly arrived blacks. Realtors would sell to whites promising that there was a restrictive covenant and they could be a.s.sured of having no black neighbors. At the same time, black resentment of white racism was growing; black soldiers who had fought in Europe and returned home only to be treated once more as inferior beings helped stoke a growing sense of militancy.

The event that ignited the long saga of racial conflict in Chicago came on the afternoon of July 27, 1919. A black teenager named Eugene Williams went swimming in Lake Michigan and floated across an imaginary line marking Twenty-ninth Street, and into a "white area." A group of white youths stoned him to death. As a group of blacks tried to get care for Williams, they grabbed George Stauber, one of the white youths, and tried to get a white policeman to arrest him. The officer refused and a fight broke out, setting off four days of violence, spreading into the taverns and the pool rooms, from one neighborhood to the next. Members of Irish "athletic clubs," armed with clubs and other weapons, went out looking for "jigs" and "smokes"; to their surprise, the blacks fought back, even torching houses near the stockyards and the railroad. The August 2nd issue The August 2nd issue of the of the Defender Defender described "a blaze of red hate flaming as fiercely as the heat of day"; the paper wrote about streets and alleys filled with abandoned corpses, mobs controlling whole areas of Chicago, city police unable, or unwilling, to regain the upper hand, a metropolis consumed with fear, violence, and rage: "Women and children have not been spared. Traffic has been stopped. Phone wires have been cut." Spearheading the riot was a white gang in the Irish neighborhood of Bridgeport known as the Hamburg Athletic Club. One of its members--and one of its eventual leaders--was a teenager named Richard J. Daley. When the battles were finally over, thirty-eight men and boys had been killed--twenty-three of them black. described "a blaze of red hate flaming as fiercely as the heat of day"; the paper wrote about streets and alleys filled with abandoned corpses, mobs controlling whole areas of Chicago, city police unable, or unwilling, to regain the upper hand, a metropolis consumed with fear, violence, and rage: "Women and children have not been spared. Traffic has been stopped. Phone wires have been cut." Spearheading the riot was a white gang in the Irish neighborhood of Bridgeport known as the Hamburg Athletic Club. One of its members--and one of its eventual leaders--was a teenager named Richard J. Daley. When the battles were finally over, thirty-eight men and boys had been killed--twenty-three of them black.

That summer, the Jamaican-born poet Claude McKay, who was living in Harlem, published a sonnet called "If We Must Die" about the lynchings and race riots raging throughout the country. The opening lines reflected the sense of outrage and determination among black men and women in places like Harlem and the South Side: Claude McKay, who was living in Harlem, published a sonnet called "If We Must Die" about the lynchings and race riots raging throughout the country. The opening lines reflected the sense of outrage and determination among black men and women in places like Harlem and the South Side: If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot.

Throughout Chicago, the borderlines between white neighborhoods and black remained tense for years after the 1919 riot. The Property Owner's Journal The Property Owner's Journal, the Kenwood and Hyde Park a.s.sociation's official publication, issued a warning that reflected the depth of hatred and foreboding: Every colored man who moves into Hyde Park knows that he is damaging his white neighbor's property. Therefore, he is making war on the white man. Consequently, he is not ent.i.tled to any consideration and forfeits his right to be employed by the white man. If employers should adopt a rule of refusing to employ Negroes who persist in residing in Hyde Park to the damage of the white man's property, it would soon show good results. into Hyde Park knows that he is damaging his white neighbor's property. Therefore, he is making war on the white man. Consequently, he is not ent.i.tled to any consideration and forfeits his right to be employed by the white man. If employers should adopt a rule of refusing to employ Negroes who persist in residing in Hyde Park to the damage of the white man's property, it would soon show good results.

Chicago's blacks sought refuge in the Republican Party. Partly out of loyalty to the party of Lincoln, they voted for William Hale Thompson for mayor. During his three terms--from 1915 to 1923 and then from 1927 until 1931--Mayor Thompson, dubbed Big Bill and Bill the Builder, welcomed blacks into his coalition. He gave so many city jobs to blacks that his opponents took to calling City Hall Uncle Tom's Cabin. During his political races During his political races, Democratic Party campaign workers were sent out on the streets with calliopes to play "Bye, Bye, Blackbird" and to distribute leaflets showing Thompson piloting trainloads of blacks from Georgia with a caption reading, "This train will start for Chicago, April 6, if Thompson is elected."

The pioneer black politician of the South Side was a well-to-do businessman--a contractor, decorator, and real-estate broker--named Oscar Stanton De Priest. Born to former slaves in Florence, Alabama, De Priest won election as an alderman in 1915 but stepped down two years later when he was indicted on a Mob-connected corruption charge; with Clarence Darrow as his attorney, De Priest was acquitted. In 1928, running in Chicago's first congressional district as a Republican, De Priest became the first black member of the House of Representatives since Reconstruction.

With the rise of Franklin Roosevelt, blacks in Chicago began to s.h.i.+ft their loyalty to the Democratic Party and to a new mayor, Anton Cermak, who built the foundations of a political machine that ruled the city for half a century. Cermak was mayor only between 1931 and 1933, but he helped bring Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, Czechs, Italians, and blacks into city government. He even helped bring in the lower-cla.s.s Irish from Bridgeport and Back of the Yards. On February 15, 1933, at a public ceremony, in Bayfront Park, in Miami, Cermak was shot in the chest while shaking hands with President-elect Roosevelt. The bullet was most likely intended for Roosevelt. Cermak's supposed last words to F.D.R.--"I'm glad it was me instead of you"--are inscribed on a plaque in his honor at Bayfront Park.

White ethnic politicians dominated the Chicago machine, but someone needed to control the black South Side. A get-along pol named William Levi Dawson, who had switched from the Republicans to the Democrats, soon became the boss of what was called the "sub-machine"--a black extension of City Hall. Dawson was born in Albany, Georgia. His grandfather had been a slave, his father a barber. When his father's sister was raped by a white man, and he retaliated, he was forced to head North. Young Dawson graduated from Fisk in 1909 and worked as a porter and a bellhop. Fighting in France in the First World War, he was ga.s.sed. Along the way, he lost one of his legs in an accident.

A mild but clever man with a neat pencil moustache, Dawson returned to Chicago and went to work in a ward political office on the South Side. As a local politician and then as a congressman, his priority was to bring relative economic and political well-being to the black neighborhoods of the South and West Sides. Any talk of ideology and reform, of civil rights and empowerment, seemed to him an indulgence, the self-defeating radicalism of young hotheads. In Congress, he stood in direct contrast to Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of Harlem, who was a militant and flamboyant spokesman for civil rights. Dawson was tied to the leading ministers, the Defender Defender, the ward leaders--Chicago's parallel universe of black inst.i.tutions. He was a master at defusing any rebellion in the ranks. When the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P. denounced Dawson for failing to speak out about the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, he fought back. He had had his loyal precinct captains run for delegate positions to the local N.A.A.C.P. convention; they won, and he took control of the organization. In 1956, he opposed a federal bill to end segregation in the schools because he feared a loss of federal funding. And, in 1960 And, in 1960, he advised the Kennedy campaign, "Let's not use words that offend our good Southern friends, like 'civil rights.'"

Dawson believed that he was acting in the tradition of Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, waging winnable battles and leaving the rest for another day. The advice he gave to Kennedy was, in his mind, hardheaded politics, a way to win votes among Southern congressmen for concrete aid to the poor. The social realities of black Chicago in the post-war era, however, were extremely complex, and not something that Dawson's old-fas.h.i.+oned att.i.tude to power was capable of dealing with. Accommodation was winning very few battles.

Even so, the South Side was one of the most culturally vibrant black communities in the country. With the ferment of the Harlem Renaissance a memory, the South Side was arguably the capital of black America. Joe Louis lived there. The Defender Defender, which, in 1956, began to publish a daily edition, was there. Joseph H. Jackson, the pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church and the head of the conservative National Baptist Convention, was there. All the best blues performers, gospel singers, jazz musicians, and actors came to the Savoy Ballroom and the Regal Theater. Chicago was home to establishment figures like Dawson and Jackson, but also to a range of political radicals, religious leaders, and cultists, including Elijah Poole, who, as Elijah Muhammad, moved the headquarters of the Black Muslims from Detroit to the South Side. Richard Wright, who had come North Richard Wright, who had come North from Mississippi to Chicago as a young man, insisted that life was so hard on the South Side that no one should be surprised at what political ferment might one day arise there. "Chicago is the city from which the most incisive and radical Negro thought has come," he wrote in his introduction to from Mississippi to Chicago as a young man, insisted that life was so hard on the South Side that no one should be surprised at what political ferment might one day arise there. "Chicago is the city from which the most incisive and radical Negro thought has come," he wrote in his introduction to Black Metropolis Black Metropolis, St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton's cla.s.sic 1945 study of the South Side. "There is an open and raw beauty about that city that seems either to kill or endow one with the spirit of life. I felt those extremes of possibility, death and hope, while I lived half hungry and afraid in a city to which I had fled with the dumb yearning to write, to tell my story. But I did not know what my story was."

By the nineteen-forties, the rise of a distinct, heterodox, and growing black population on the South Side inspired the white press to publish countless scare headlines. The white neighborhoods on the South Side built "improvement a.s.sociations" designed to prevent the influx of blacks. White taverns installed locks and buzzers to keep out blacks. A black Chicagoan had to be careful not to wander into the wrong neighborhood lest he ignite a riot like the one near the lake in 1919.

Even after the 1948 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Sh.e.l.ley v. Kraemer barred state enforcement of restrictive covenants and promised an end to housing segregation, Chicago remained one of the most racially segmented cities in the country. (It remains so, today.) When, in 1951 When, in 1951, a black family moved into an apartment in the white working-cla.s.s town of Cicero, thousands attacked the building for several nights in a row until the National Guard was ordered to end the violence. Mayor Martin Kennelly, a son of Bridgeport and a product of the machine, sent police to the South Side to raid the policy wheels, and Bill Dawson decided to a.s.sert his will. The Cook County Democratic Central Committee had to decide whether to re-anoint Kennelly as its mayoral candidate in the 1951 election. Furious with City Hall's a.s.sault Furious with City Hall's a.s.sault on the policy wheels, Dawson sent word from Was.h.i.+ngton that he opposed Kennelly's nomination. Dawson told Kennelly, "Who do you think you are? I bring in the votes. I elect you. You are not needed, but the votes are needed." The Central Committee decided on a compromise: it would allow Kennelly one more term and then, in 1955, turned to another son of Bridgeport, Richard J. Daley. on the policy wheels, Dawson sent word from Was.h.i.+ngton that he opposed Kennelly's nomination. Dawson told Kennelly, "Who do you think you are? I bring in the votes. I elect you. You are not needed, but the votes are needed." The Central Committee decided on a compromise: it would allow Kennelly one more term and then, in 1955, turned to another son of Bridgeport, Richard J. Daley.

At first, Mayor Daley built on Cermak's principle of machine politics that an effective organization would come not merely from the Irish base but from a coalition of all ethnic groups and the effective use of patronage systems. For Daley, blacks were a dependable source of support. They were crucial to his first election. And yet Daley could not tolerate a wholly independent sub-machine. Almost immediately after taking office, he undermined Dawson, taking away his right to appoint the committeemen in his wards.

Daley's ruthless efficiency could not be doubted. Through a web of loyal aldermen, committeemen, and precinct workers, he dispensed thousands of jobs---forty-five thousand at the machine's peak. He was so intimately involved in the city's workforce, it was said, that he could greet many of the forty thousand employees by name. Daley was shrewd enough to bridge a political culture that ranged from buffoonish ward hacks to independent liberals like Governor Adlai Stevenson and Senator Paul Douglas. While more than a few members of the machine over the years took bribes or committed other crimes, Daley lived modestly, went to Ma.s.s every day, and showed at least a grudging respect for some of his political foes. Still, as the radio broadcaster and oral historian Studs Terkel once said of Daley Studs Terkel once said of Daley, "He's marvelous when it comes to building things like highways, parking lots, and industrial complexes. But when it comes to healing the aches and hurts of human beings, he comes up short." This was especially so in the case of race.

Daley had inherited ugly, racist sentiments about black men and women. When he became mayor, his antipathy to blacks showed itself gradually at first, and then, for many, wholly eclipsed his better qualities. However delusionally, he thought of himself as fair-minded and believed that blacks would a.s.similate and advance in much the same way that other ethnic groups had. His condescension was brutally offhand. When a young man from South Carolina When a young man from South Carolina named Jesse Jackson moved to Chicago after making a name in the Southern civil-rights campaigns, Daley offered him a job--as a toll-taker on the highway. named Jesse Jackson moved to Chicago after making a name in the Southern civil-rights campaigns, Daley offered him a job--as a toll-taker on the highway.

Daley enforced policies of de-facto segregation, not so much because of closely held theories of black inferiority as because of his view of political power and how to retain it. In the late fifties and sixties, he built a series of vast housing projects--Henry Horner Homes on the near West Side; Stateway Gardens on the South Side; Cabrini-Green on the near North Side; and the twenty-eight sixteen-story towers of the Robert Taylor Homes. To isolate Robert Taylor and Stateway from any white neighborhoods, he routed the Dan Ryan Expressway so that it locked in the separation of the races.

Beginning in 1959, when the League of Negro Voters ran an independent candidate for city clerk, there were signs of some resistance to Daley in the black community. At a national convention of the N.A.A.C.P. in 1963, in Chicago, Daley was booed off the stage, mainly because he had so consistently opposed the integration of the public-school system. The half dozen blacks who won seats on the City Council by the nineteen-sixties, however, were so compliant that they were known as "the Silent Six." The most outspoken alderman on questions of race was Leon Despres, who was white; Despres was a leading example of the post-war liberal Democrats who kept their distance from the machine and called themselves independents. Some admiring blacks called Despres "the lone Negro on the City Council."

"Whenever I would raise a point about discrimination, segregation, oppression, civil rights, or an ordinance on those matters, which I increasingly did, Daley would always sic one of the 'Silent Six' to answer me," Despres said. One of the six, Claude W. B. Holman of the Fourth Ward, practiced a form of loyalty and devotion to Daley that seemed almost North Korean in its blind pa.s.sion. about discrimination, segregation, oppression, civil rights, or an ordinance on those matters, which I increasingly did, Daley would always sic one of the 'Silent Six' to answer me," Despres said. One of the six, Claude W. B. Holman of the Fourth Ward, practiced a form of loyalty and devotion to Daley that seemed almost North Korean in its blind pa.s.sion. Despres recalls Holman once telling Daley Despres recalls Holman once telling Daley, with the cameras on, "You are the greatest mayor in history--greatest mayor in the world and in outer s.p.a.ce, too."

Even as the civil-rights movement came to the forefront of American political life, doing battle and making advances in the South, black activists in Chicago like Willoughby Abner, Timuel Black, Albert Raby, and d.i.c.k Gregory could make little headway against Daley's implacable machine. "A good legitimate Negro "A good legitimate Negro wanting to go into politics in Chicago," Gregory said in the mid-nineteen-sixties, "not only has to run against a handkerchief-head Negro but also against a machine getting kickbacks from dope and prost.i.tution.... You have to respect Daley. He has a big job being mayor, governor, prosecutor, and president of the Chicago Branch of the N.A.A.C.P." wanting to go into politics in Chicago," Gregory said in the mid-nineteen-sixties, "not only has to run against a handkerchief-head Negro but also against a machine getting kickbacks from dope and prost.i.tution.... You have to respect Daley. He has a big job being mayor, governor, prosecutor, and president of the Chicago Branch of the N.A.A.C.P."

The most dramatic challenge to Daley's hegemony came in the mid-sixties, from Martin Luther King, Jr. After winning victories on the streets of Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham, after successfully pus.h.i.+ng Lyndon Johnson on voting rights, King and his lieutenants started debating where and how to bring the campaign North. Adam Clayton Powell, among others, was unenthusiastic about having the movement come to New York, and so King started thinking that Chicago, with eight hundred thousand blacks, might be the right choice. to Daley's hegemony came in the mid-sixties, from Martin Luther King, Jr. After winning victories on the streets of Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham, after successfully pus.h.i.+ng Lyndon Johnson on voting rights, King and his lieutenants started debating where and how to bring the campaign North. Adam Clayton Powell, among others, was unenthusiastic about having the movement come to New York, and so King started thinking that Chicago, with eight hundred thousand blacks, might be the right choice. At a downtown rally in 1965 At a downtown rally in 1965, King said: Chicago is the North's most segregated city. Negroes have continued to flee from behind the cotton curtain, but now they find that after years of indifference and exploitation, Chicago has not turned out to be the new Jerusalem. We are now protesting the educational and cultural shackles that are as binding as those of a Georgia chain gang.

Despite the warnings and the opposition of some members of his inner circle, King planted himself in Chicago and launched a bold, if vaguely conceived, anti-poverty and anti-discrimination plan. He rented an apartment in a grim building in Lawndale, on the West Side. "King decided to come to Chicago because Chicago was unique in that there was one man, one source of power," Arthur Brazier, the Pentecostal minister who worked with Saul Alinsky in Woodlawn, and then with King, said. "This wasn't the case in New York or any other city. He thought that if Daley could be persuaded of the rightness of open housing and integrated schools that things could be done."

Daley proved an elusive and stubborn foe. In the South, King had been helped by the grotesque dimensions and reliable brutality of his adversaries. Bull Connor, Jim Clark, and George Wallace were ideal foils for a movement steeped in the language of the Gospels and the tactics of Mahatma Gandhi. The moral contrast was, to millions of Americans, increasingly self-evident. In Daley, King faced a far craftier opponent, one gifted in the art of political manipulation, public compromise, and private deceits. And he was on his home turf.

At first, King's a.s.sociate Andrew Young said, "We didn't see Mayor Daley as an enemy. In 1963, he had held one of the biggest, most successful benefits that S.C.L.C. had ever had at the time of Birmingham. Mayor Daley and Mahalia Jackson put it together." Daley's fear now was primal: if the civil-rights movement succeeded in registering more voters, it might threaten his coalition and the very existence of the machine. "The machine had served the black community well, but its days were over and we were there to announce that," Andrew Young said. "But Daley wasn't ready to turn loose." Andrew Young said, "We didn't see Mayor Daley as an enemy. In 1963, he had held one of the biggest, most successful benefits that S.C.L.C. had ever had at the time of Birmingham. Mayor Daley and Mahalia Jackson put it together." Daley's fear now was primal: if the civil-rights movement succeeded in registering more voters, it might threaten his coalition and the very existence of the machine. "The machine had served the black community well, but its days were over and we were there to announce that," Andrew Young said. "But Daley wasn't ready to turn loose."

Daley could rely on more than just the compliance of a cadre of black politicians. Many black clergymen, for instance, realized that if they sided overtly with King against City Hall they might suddenly lose their patronage. Who would give jobs to their paris.h.i.+oners? Who would pick up the garbage, repair the roads, maintain electricity and sewage, and prevent crime in the neighborhood? King could not provide these things, but Daley could take them away. He had the capacity to make life miserable. Dorothy Tillman, who came to town Dorothy Tillman, who came to town with King and the Southern Christian Leaders.h.i.+p Conference, and who later became an alderman, said, "Chicago was the first city that we ever went to as members of the S.C.L.C. staff where the black ministers and black politicians told us to go back where we came from." with King and the Southern Christian Leaders.h.i.+p Conference, and who later became an alderman, said, "Chicago was the first city that we ever went to as members of the S.C.L.C. staff where the black ministers and black politicians told us to go back where we came from."

The Nation of Islam, under Elijah Muhammad, was a growing presence on the South Side, especially for disaffected young black men and women who had grown tired of the more obedient Christian ministers. But King could not expect any help from the Nation, which denounced integration. "If anything they were more zealous "If anything they were more zealous in support of segregation than Mayor Daley, since the mayor paid lip service to racial tolerance and the Muslims were black supremacists," Ralph Abernathy, King's closest adviser, wrote. "They would probably have joined us if we had proposed killing all the white people, but they certainly didn't want to listen to anyone preach the gospel of brotherly love." in support of segregation than Mayor Daley, since the mayor paid lip service to racial tolerance and the Muslims were black supremacists," Ralph Abernathy, King's closest adviser, wrote. "They would probably have joined us if we had proposed killing all the white people, but they certainly didn't want to listen to anyone preach the gospel of brotherly love."

The prospects for victory in Chicago were so grim that there was real division in King's own ranks. "I have never seen such hopelessness "I have never seen such hopelessness," Hosea Williams, a King adviser, said. "The Negroes of Chicago have a greater feeling of powerlessness than I've ever seen. They don't partic.i.p.ate in the governmental process because they are beaten down psychologically. We are used to working with people who want to be free."

Nevertheless, King organized a huge rally for July 10, 1966, at the city's main football stadium, Soldier Field. On a ninety-eight-degree day, with thirty-eight thousand people in the seats, King was driven to the speaker's platform in the backseat of a white Cadillac convertible. Members of the Blackstone Rangers gang hoisted a Black Power flag. Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Peter Yarrow performed. And King, introduced by a leader of the Chicago archdiocese, gave a speech that announced the movement's weariness with the status quo in Chicago and the other industrial cities of the North: Yes, we are tired of being lynched physically in Mississippi, and we are tired of being lynched spiritually and economically in the North. We have also come here today to remind Chicago of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. We have also come here today to affirm that we will no longer sit idly by in agonizing deprivation and wait on others to provide our freedom.... Freedom is never voluntarily granted by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.... of being lynched physically in Mississippi, and we are tired of being lynched spiritually and economically in the North. We have also come here today to remind Chicago of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. We have also come here today to affirm that we will no longer sit idly by in agonizing deprivation and wait on others to provide our freedom.... Freedom is never voluntarily granted by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed....This day, henceforth and forever more, we must make it clear that we will purge Chicago of every politician, whether he be Negro or white, who feels that he owns the Negro vote rather than earns the Negro vote.

King not only employed one of his favorite phrases--"the fierce urgency of now," a phrase that he had employed at the March on Was.h.i.+ngton three years earlier to signal an unwillingness to delay--but also recognized the growing appeal of a more radical Black Power movement and tried to suggest the moral interdependence of the races: "The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt. Any approach that overlooks this need for a coalition of conscience is unwise and misguided. A doctrine of black supremacy is as evil as a doctrine of white supremacy."

Then, after leading demonstrators on a long march downtown to City Hall, King, in an echo of Martin Luther nailing his ninety-five theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, attached a list of demands for equality in housing, employment, and education to the Mayor's door.

Daley did not deny King an audience. Rather, he invited him into his office and then, with a combination of courtesy and stubborn guile, he paid lip service to greater equality if King would, in exchange, end his demonstrations and leave town. Occasionally, Arthur Brazier recalled, Daley poked King by noting that he was the head of the Southern Christian Leaders.h.i.+p Conference, and saying, "So why are you here in Chicago? Why don't you go back South?"

King kept up the pressure, staging marches on the West Side, in black neighborhoods, where he was received warmly, and in white neighborhoods like Marquette Park, where he was greeted with shouts of "Go back to Africa!" and a rock that was hurled at his head, hitting him. "I've never seen anything like it "I've never seen anything like it in my life," King said. "I think the people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate." in my life," King said. "I think the people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate."

"I'd never seen whites like these in the South," Dorothy Tillman said. "These whites was up in trees like monkeys throwing bricks and bottles and stuff. I mean, racism, you could almost cut it, a whole 'nother level of racism from hatred. And the sad thing about it was that most of those neighborhoods we went to were like first- or second-generation Americans.... Most of them were fleeing oppression." in the South," Dorothy Tillman said. "These whites was up in trees like monkeys throwing bricks and bottles and stuff. I mean, racism, you could almost cut it, a whole 'nother level of racism from hatred. And the sad thing about it was that most of those neighborhoods we went to were like first- or second-generation Americans.... Most of them were fleeing oppression."

Roger Wilkins, a young African-American lawyer working in Johnson's Justice Department, was dispatched to Chicago to talk to both sides and report back to Was.h.i.+ngton. Wilkins discovered that the tactics that had worked for the S.C.L.C. in the South had been rendered toothless in Chicago. Wilkins visited King at his apartment in Lawndale--"It was ugly and the stairwells stank of urine"--and found him negotiating with leaders of two gangs, the Blackstone Rangers and the Devil's Disciples, to march nonviolently against Daley and partic.i.p.ate in various community programs. "The Illinois National Guard was out there in armored personnel carriers and these kids wanted to throw Molotov c.o.c.ktails and Martin was saving their lives," Wilkins recalled. "He wouldn't let them go. He was conducting a nonviolence seminar." After the gang leaders left, King told Wilkins what he was learning in Chicago was that, in Wilkins's words, "you can have all the rights in the world, but if you were impoverished, those rights meant nothing; and if you went to a terrible school, you were nowhere. Martin now understood that the whole system was out of balance and, the way it was tilted, poor black people fell off. What he wanted to do now was not just about race. It was deeply about poverty." Wilkins was among those who thought that if King hadn't been killed, less than two years later, he would have started an anti-poverty movement no less profound than the civil-rights movement he had led in the South.

Daley made promises that he broke and offered compromises that he had no intention of adhering to. Tired and temporarily defeated, King left Chicago. "Like Herod, Richard Daley was a fox "Like Herod, Richard Daley was a fox, too smart for us, too smart for the press ... too smart for his own good, and for the good of Chicago," Ralph Abernathy wrote.

King's trials in Chicago, however, along with the war in Vietnam, helped to radicalize him. He began to realize that the problem of racism was even more deeply rooted than he had imagined. Chicago, David Halberstam Chicago, David Halberstam wrote in a profile of King in wrote in a profile of King in Harper's Harper's, left him "closer to Malcolm than anyone would have predicted five years ago--and much farther from traditional allies like Whitney Young and Roy Wilkins." It was a defeat that led to his proposal, in 1967, for a Poor People's Campaign and a multibillion-dollar Marshall Plan for the inner cities.

When King was a.s.sa.s.sinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, there was rioting in Chicago. Whole blocks on the West Side, the more recent of Chicago's black enclaves, were leveled. At a press conference At a press conference, Daley betrayed how deep his antipathy toward the city's blacks now ran. He thought that the police had behaved with excessive restraint. Policemen should have had instructions, Daley said, "to shoot, to maim or cripple any arsonists and looters--arsonists to kill and looters to maim and detain."

It appeared that Daley, using both political guile and sheer brutality, had crushed the forces of reform that had "invaded" his city: the Woodlawn Organization, the S.C.L.C., the hippies, the Yippies, and S.D.S. Daley's victories, however, were far from permanent. Gradually, even some of the older, obedient politicians of the black sub-machine changed their minds.

Ralph Metcalfe, a silver medalist in the hundred-meter dash at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and a boss of the Third Ward, was a prime example. Metcalfe was Dawson's protege and his successor in Congress--a loyal member of the machine. When King came to Chicago When King came to Chicago, Metcalfe was among those black leaders who said that he wasn't wanted: "We have adequate leaders.h.i.+p here." In 1972, police pulled over a black dentist, a friend of Metcalfe's, and handcuffed and bullied him for no reason. Not long afterward, another black dentist who was driving had a stroke and hit a parked car; the police held him in jail for five hours and he went into a coma. Metcalfe asked Daley Metcalfe asked Daley to come to his office, but Daley refused; after these outrages, Metcalfe broke with Daley and the machine, saying, "The Mayor doesn't understand what happens to black men on the streets of Chicago and probably never will." to come to his office, but Daley refused; after these outrages, Metcalfe broke with Daley and the machine, saying, "The Mayor doesn't understand what happens to black men on the streets of Chicago and probably never will."

Richard J. Daley died, in 1976, after twenty-one years in office. Even his most loyal aides could not say that he had succeeded in holding off racial change in Chicago. "What Daley did was smother King "What Daley did was smother King," his press secretary, Earl Bush, told the Chicago Sun-Times in Sun-Times in 1986. "What Daley couldn't smother was the civil-rights movement." 1986. "What Daley couldn't smother was the civil-rights movement."

Daley was succeeded by Michael Bilandic, another machine politician from Bridgeport, who served ineptly until 1979, and then by Jane Byrne, who ran as a reformer in the city's first post-Daley election but, once elected, ignored her minority allies from the campaign and governed with an a.s.semblage of machine hacks. When it was time for her re-election campaign in 1983, she faced two opponents, the scion, Richard M. Daley, and Harold Was.h.i.+ngton, a congressman from the South Side. by Michael Bilandic, another machine politician from Bridgeport, who served ineptly until 1979, and then by Jane Byrne, who ran as a reformer in the city's first post-Daley election but, once elected, ignored her minority allies from the campaign and governed with an a.s.semblage of machine hacks. When it was time for her re-election campaign in 1983, she faced two opponents, the scion, Richard M. Daley, and Harold Was.h.i.+ngton, a congressman from the South Side.

Harold Was.h.i.+ngton started out as a cog in the machine--his father was a precinct captain in Bronzeville; his mentor was Ralph Metcalfe--but both as a state senator in Springfield and as a member of Congress, he became a favorite of liberal whites along the Lakefront and South Side blacks looking for an effective new generation of leaders.h.i.+p. Despite the shadow cast by Daley, there was a progressive tradition in Chicago politics: Ida Wells, Jane Addams, Saul Alinsky, Adlai Stevenson, Paul Douglas, the Independent Voters of Illinois, the various streams of black integrationists and more radical activists on the South Side. Was.h.i.+ngton, who was far more intellectual than he usually let on, was a student of his city's progressives, and he set out to win the mayoralty by drawing on those traditions and on his own deep experience in the maelstrom of Chicago politics.

In the Democratic primary, Was.h.i.+ngton's supporters hoped that Byrne and Daley would split the white ethnic vote and that Was.h.i.+ngton could succeed with a combination of blacks and just enough white liberals to win. In majority-black cities like Gary, Cleveland, and Detroit, a new generation of black mayors had already come to office. In Chicago, where African-Americans made up just forty per cent of the population, the demographics were less stark. Was.h.i.+ngton, using rhetoric that was echoed (if less bluntly) by Barack Obama a generation later, refused to a.s.sume the mantle of a racial candidate.

"I'm sick and tired of being called 'the black candidate,'" he said at the opening of a campaign office. "They don't talk about Jane Byrne as the white candidate. I don't even want to be called 'intelligent.' That's a put-down. It's manifestly obvious I am intelligent. Nor is it necessary to constantly refer to me as 'articulate.' Why don't they just come out and say I know what I'm talking about? Richard M. Daley believes he should be mayor simply because his father was. We don't have the divine right of kings in this country, I don't think." of being called 'the black candidate,'" he said at the opening of a campaign office. "They don't talk about Jane Byrne as the white candidate. I don't even want to be called 'intelligent.' That's a put-down. It's manifestly obvious I am intelligent. Nor is it necessary to constantly refer to me as 'articulate.' Why don't they just come out and say I know what I'm talking about? Richard M. Daley believes he should be mayor simply because his father was. We don't have the divine right of kings in this country, I don't think."

Was.h.i.+ngton did not start out with a great deal of national help. Former Vice-President Walter Mondale, who was hoping to upset President Reagan the following year, supported Daley; Edward Kennedy, an important figure for Illinois Democrats, supported Byrne. The only newspaper to endorse Was.h.i.+ngton was the Defender Defender. His fund-raising was limited and much of his gra.s.sroots support came from local churches.

Among the ministers who worked hard for Was.h.i.+ngton was the charismatic leader of the Trinity United Church of Christ on Ninety-fifth Street, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright and some of his colleagues collected names for a pro-Was.h.i.+ngton advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Defender Defender. The ad said that the black church The ad said that the black church "which stands firmly in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," and "stands on the shoulders of those African slaves who sang 'Before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave,'" could only support Harold Was.h.i.+ngton. To describe their point of view, the writers of the advertis.e.m.e.nt called themselves "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian"--a phrase that Wright eventually adopted as the motto of his church. "which stands firmly in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," and "stands on the shoulders of those African slaves who sang 'Before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave,'" could only support Harold Was.h.i.+ngton. To describe their point of view, the writers of the advertis.e.m.e.nt called themselves "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian"--a phrase that Wright eventually adopted as the motto of his church.

Was.h.i.+ngton crushed Daley and Byrne in the debates, and his strategy paid off with a narrow win in the primary. "You don't have to be blessed with a great imagination to see the parallels between Harold Was.h.i.+ngton in 1983 and Barack Obama in 2008," Clarence Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune Tribune columnist who covered both races, said. "In 1983, you had the strong female inc.u.mbent, Byrne; the populist of the bungalow belt, Richie Daley; and the black spoiler. The breakthrough quality for Harold Was.h.i.+ngton was his oratory. The morning after that first debate, after Harold won so decisively, you saw Was.h.i.+ngton b.u.t.tons all around town. And then, of course, the moment he won the Democratic primary a miracle occurred--half of Chicago went Republican overnight. And you had the black base asking if Harold was 'black enough' and whites thinking he was 'too black.' Sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?" columnist who covered both races, said. "In 1983, you had the strong female inc.u.mbent, Byrne; the populist of the bungalow belt, Richie Daley; and the black spoiler. The breakthrough quality for Harold Was.h.i.+ngton was his oratory. The morning after that first debate, after Harold won so decisively, you saw Was.h.i.+ngton b.u.t.tons all around town. And then, of course, the moment he won the Democratic primary a miracle occurred--half of Chicago went Republican overnight. And you had the black base asking if Harold was 'black enough' and whites thinking he was 'too black.' Sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?"

Chicago had long been a bastion of Democratic Party rule, but now, whites all over the city were newborn Republicans, and it barely mattered who the Republican nominee was. Racial animosities were so intense that nearly any sentient white Republican stood at least some chance of beating an African-American Democrat. The Republicans also had a point of attack: they were able to bring up, repeatedly, the fact that Was.h.i.+ngton had failed to file his income-tax forms for many years (although he paid the actual tax revenue); in 1972, a federal judge handed down a two-year sentence, then suspended all but five weeks of it.

Was.h.i.+ngton's Republican opponent, Bernard Epton, was from Hyde Park and had a reputation as a principled man. He was an early opponent of McCarthyism. He had marched with the sanitation workers in Memphis after Martin Luther King was there. As a state representative, he'd fought against racist real-estate practices. Epton ran for the Republican nomination with the expectation that (a) he would be running against Daley or Byrne and (b) that he would probably lose.

When Was.h.i.+ngton won the nomination, Epton said the right thing: "I don't want to be elected because I am white." But he rapidly betrayed himself. As his ambition intensified, he began to give himself over to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.-based Republican consultants who came up with a campaign slogan that appealed to racist instincts: "Epton for Mayor. Before It's Too Late." Some of Epton's supporters distributed leaflets saying they refused to vote for a "baboon"; others wore b.u.t.tons that were just white. On the streets of white ethnic neighborhoods On the streets of white ethnic neighborhoods there were leaflets describing Was.h.i.+ngton's "campaign promises": "Raise Whitey's Taxes!" was one. "Replace CTA buses with Eldorados!" was another. The leaflets had Was.h.i.+ngton moving City Hall to Martin Luther King Drive and relocating a city bureaucracy to Leon's Rib Basket. Another flyer implied that Was.h.i.+ngton was guilty of child molestation. there were leaflets describing Was.h.i.+ngton's "campaign promises": "Raise Whitey's Taxes!" was one. "Replace CTA buses with Eldorados!" was another. The leaflets had Was.h.i.+ngton moving City Hall to Martin Luther King Drive and relocating a city bureaucracy to Leon's Rib Basket. Another flyer implied that Was.h.i.+ngton was guilty of child molestation.

Leanita McClain, a black member of the Tribune's Tribune's editorial board, described in a column the vicious racial atmosphere during the campaign: editorial board, described in a column the vicious racial atmosphere during the campaign: The Chicago Tribune Tribune endorsed Harold Was.h.i.+ngton endorsed Harold Was.h.i.+ngton in a long and eloquent Sunday editorial. It was intended to persuade the bigots. It would have caused any sensible person at least to think. It failed. The mail and calls besieged the staff. The middle range of letters had the words "LIES" and "n.i.g.g.e.r LOVERS" scratched across the editorial. in a long and eloquent Sunday editorial. It was intended to persuade the bigots. It would have caused any sensible person at least to think. It failed. The mail and calls besieged the staff. The middle range of letters had the words "LIES" and "n.i.g.g.e.r LOVERS" scratched across the editorial.Hoping to shame these people, make them look at themselves, the newspaper printed a full page of these rantings. But when the mirror was presented to them, the bigots reveled before it. The page only gave them aid and comfort in knowing their numbers. That is what is wrong with this town; being a racist is as respectable and expected as going to church.Filthy literature littered the city streets like the propaganda air blitzes of World War II. The subway would be renamed "Soul Train." ... In the police stations, reports were whispered about fights between longtime black and white squad-car partners. Flyers proclaiming the new city of "Chicongo," with crossed drumsticks as the city seal, were tacked to police station bulletin boards. The schools actually formulated plans to deal with racial violence, just in case.

Haskel Levy, an aide to Bernard Epton, told him that he was becoming the unwitting tool of a racist campaign. But, instead of repudiating racism, Epton repudiated Haskel Levy. He threw Levy's coat into the hall and told him, "Get the f.u.c.k out!"

The erstwhile man of principle doubled down as he smelled victory. "I "I am not ashamed of being white!" Epton now declared. He told a crowd of Republicans in the Forty-seventh Ward, "Some of my great liberal friends feel they have to prove they are liberal by voting for a black who was sentenced to jail and who's supposed to run a city budget of two billion dollars plus. They call that liberalism. I call it sheer idiocy." Epton now seemed to relish his ability to rev up white crowds and their resentments. am not ashamed of being white!" Epton now declared. He told a crowd of Republicans in the Forty-seventh Ward, "Some of my great liberal friends feel they have to prove they are liberal by voting for a black who was sentenced to jail and who's supposed to run a city budget of two billion dollars plus. They call that liberalism. I call it sheer idiocy." Epton now seemed to relish his ability to rev up white crowds and their resentments. A young reporter for the A young reporter for the Tribune Tribune, David Axelrod, described Epton as "volatile and capricious, p.r.o.ne to inexplicable outbursts and fits."

Naturally, Harold Was.h.i.+ngton was furious. He accused Epton, who had once been a friendly colleague in Springfield, of unleas.h.i.+ng "the dogs of racism."

There was no doubt that Epton had done the unleas.h.i.+ng, but Was.h.i.+ngton used wit rather than anger to deflect the worst of it. When asked on a radio call-in show When asked on a radio call-in show if, as mayor, he would replace all the city's elevators with