The following excerpt is from the essay ''Harold Washington: the Enigma of the Black Political Tradition" by William J. Grimshaw. It is taken from a collection of essays entitled The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition, edited by Paul M. Green and Melvin Holli (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987). The book portrays the strong mayors of Chicago, from Joseph Medill to Harold Washington, who have used the power of the office to shape the city's politics over the last century. Editor Paul Green is director of the Institute for Public Policy and Administration at Governors State University. Melvin Holli is professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

The two most remarkable aspects of Washington's mayoral bid were the exceptional prominence of religious symbolism in the campaign — reflecting the religious roots of the black political tradition — and the extraordinary support Washington received from the traditionally machine-oriented poor black wards — an unprecedented phenomenon in mayoral politics.

Religious symbolism was present at the launching of the campaign. Washington threw his hat into the ring surrounded by a host of black ministers who offered up prayers for the candidate's success. One of the political reporters covering the event remarked that he had never seen a campaign kicked off this way: it resembled a religious revival meeting.¹

During the course of the primary campaign, a "truth squad" of Washington supporters emerged to prevent Mayor Byrne from using black churches for campaign appearances, contending that the conventional political practice desecrated the black church. Meanwhile, Washington rode the black church circuit hard, drawing upon the extensive clerical network he had formed over the years as a legislator.

Then came the mammoth rally at the University of Illinois Pavilion. Thirteen thousand Washington supporters rocked for four hours to the politico-religious cadences of a group of black elected officials from across the country. Organized by Sid Ordower, who had hosted a black gospel music show on local television for many years, the rally resembled nothing less that a religious revival meeting at full swing.

On the day of the primary election, the Chicago Sun-Times carried a photo of the candidate that evoked the campaign's religious crusade dimension. Washington was shown bowed down before his minister receiving a blessing before heading off to the final day of battle. From beginning to end, then, the Washington campaign displayed a meld of the political and religious. It was a religious movement as well as a political campaign and the moral dimension of the crusade resonated throughout the black community, producing an unprecedented number of campaign workers as well as voters. A majority of the Washington campaign workers in the poor Near South Side wards, where the author coordinated election day activities, had never before worked in a political campaign.

24/July 1987/Illinois Issues

Flushed with victory, a jubilant Richard J. Daley (1955-76) shakes hands in 1955 with the defeated and crestfallen Mayor Martin J. Kennelly (1947-55). Photograph Courtesy Chicago Sun-Times

The extraordinary transformation of the poor black wards was unprecedented in mayoral politics. Yet there was a clear basis for the political shift. During Daley's first decade as mayor, the poor black wards had been the machine's principal electoral stronghold. But, as we saw, a profound disillusion set in during the late 1960s, transforming the poor black wards into a lazy backwater of the machine; the machine was still supported by those who voted, but fewer and fewer blacks turned out to vote.

Thus, the problem for Washington was not so much to pull poor black voters away from the machine as to rekindle their faith in politics. This involved passing a qualification test — demonstrating that Washington possessed the capability to govern — and a "win-ability" test — demonstrating that he could actually win.

The first test was passed during the widely watched first television debate, which by virtually all accounts Washington won handily. Washington continued to demonstrate his superiority in the second debate, and he held his own in the other two debates. The debates were critically important because they transformed Washington from the black protest candidate into the most qualifed candidate. His standing in the polls rose steadily throughout the debates period.²

The second test was not actually passed until the waning days of the primary campaign. The turning point came at the huge and wild rally at the Pavilion. The rally was an extraordinary gamble that paid off. It violated the political advance man's basic rule that events should always be held in the smallest room [as] insurance against a low turnout. But the momentum from the debates was flagging, and the gamble had to be taken in order to catch the front-running Byrne. The rally struck like a thunderbolt, convincing those who were there and those who saw it on television and read about it in the newspapers that the impossible had suddenly become possible. Washington could actually win. His standing in the polls began to soar once again as the last of the doubters were swept up by the enthusiasm displayed at the rally. A simple comparison indicates the revolutionary effect that Washington's campaign had in the poor black wards. In 1977 Washington had carried four black wards (plus the racially mixed Fifth Ward), all of which were affluent wards south of the 63rd Street class divide. He fared poorly in all of the poor black wards, particularly in the so-called "plantation" wards on the West Side. Thus, we can gain a clear sense of the transformation that occurred in 1983 by seeing how Washington performed in these two areas (see table). The campaign did not entirely remove the effects of social class and attendant ties to the machine in the poor black wards; but it came remarkably close to doing just that. Turnout in the poor wards was lower in both elections, and Washington received a lower vote in the primary election in the poor wards. Yet when the voting pattern is viewed in historical terms, the differences become trivial. For the first time black voters, affluent and poor, spoke with virtually one voice. The election resolved the long-standing torn black political tradition.

NOTES

1. Basil Talbot. Chicago Sun-Times, n.d.

2. Polling in the 1983 mayoral campaign is discussed by a pollster, Richard Day. "Polling in the 1983 Mayoral Election." in Holli and Green. The Making of the Mayor, Chicago 1983 (Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdmans Pub. co., 1984).

William J. Grimshaw is associate professor of political science at Illinois Institute of Technology and has in print a number of studies including Black Politics in Chicago: The Quest for Leadership. 1939-1979 (1980).