By CHRISTOPHER R. REED

The election of Harold Washington as Chicago's forty-second mayor on April 12, 1983, was seen by many Americans as a personal triumph for a very political man and the not-so-political crusaders whose interests he championed. Overlooked on that election night were the equally significant victories, in run-off elections, of six black aldermen over well-entrenched, politically sophisticated, Democratic machine opponents. In two west side and four south side wards, the election of these candidates coupled with Washington's victory represented a resurgence of civic activism as a formidable force within black Chicago.

Media analysis of all the election victories revealed that these victories were the result of a broad based movement — nearly a crusade — rather than a finely tuned political campaign. Analysis tended to end at this point without examining the character and significance of the movement, or its historical antecedents. Further investigation might have revealed that these surprising electoral triumphs were part of an evolutionary process that restored civic values to black Chicago's politics in 1983. Through four successive periods, beginning in 1885 with the passage of the state's first civil rights law, to the present, a black civic movement has interacted with black and white political forces in a relationship that has determined the quality of life for Chicago's Afro-American population. This civic movement encompassed not only the traditional groups associated with civic betterment, like the Urban League and the NAACP, but also churches with a commitment to social justice, ad hoc and single-issue community and neighborhood groups like the Negro Labor Relations League, The Woodlawn Organization, the Midwest Community Council, the Task Force For Black Political Empowerment and newspapers such as the Chicago Defender and Chicago Metro News.

Activities on behalf of civil rights in the 1960s first brought wide attention to blacks' political efforts, but civic efforts within Chicago's black communities have always extended beyond the struggle to obtain full citizenship rights, which had been restricted historically by custom and political fiat. Black women's groups in the 20th century, led by such civic stalwarts as Ida B. Wells-Barnett and noted clubwoman Irene McCoy Goins, advocated the establishment of good government over self-aggrandizing politics. The Chicago Urban League, established in 1917, also joined this crusade. In the 1920s its executive secretary, T. Arnold Hill, left the organization to run for alderman as a reform candidate committed to eliminating vice on the south side, interestingly enough, one of the financial bulwarks of Black Belt politics. Before the Democratic National Convention in 1972 and again in the 1975, 1979 and 1983 mayoral races, the theme of reform government was evoked by civic and independent political groups in black Chicago and gained significant electoral support. These efforts went beyond race, including measures on behalf of women's rights beginning with the broadening of the franchise in Illinois in 1915 and continuing to the present, with support for measures like the Equal Rights Amendment and comparable worth. The purpose of black civic activism had been, of course, to insure that black Chicagoans could enjoy all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of full and equal citizenship. Drake and Clayton's Black Metropolis (1945), a poignant study of blacks in Chicago during the thirties and forties, described in detail the insidious limits placed on black access to employment, housing and personal mobility. Black Metropolis revealed how the city's ambience prevented blacks from realizing the American Dream and demonstrated that the worst features of racism in Chicago — including restrictive use of the franchise, corruption and waste, and bridled speech — were all fostered by political "bossism" and its creature, the machine.

While Chicago's black civic leaders, like Barnett and McCoy, dealt with absolutes in their pursuit of social justice and the public good, the city's politicians were more narrow and pragmatic in their efforts. Out of political expediency, the white majority simply ignored the wishes and needs of the minority, leaving blacks with little voice in the city's affairs. The deleterious effect of the political machine on the quality of life in black Chicago began with the emergence of Republican William "Big Bill" Thompson as mayor in 1915, and extended through the Democratic machines of Kelly-Nash (1933-1947) and Daley (1955-1976).

During the first period of black civic activism, which ran roughly from 1885 to the end of World War I, most efforts by blacks to improve civic life in education, politics, public morality and neighborhood upkeep found their expression outside the political realm. During those years, there were simply no white politicians sensitive to the interests of blacks, and there were no blacks in public office except for a lone state representative in Springfield (beginning in 1876 with the election of John W.E. Thomas) from the south side's third district and an infrequently elected county commissioner. Political historian Charles R. Branham has examined this period and found that not only was there no professional class of black politicians, but that those who did emerge starting in 1915 (with election of Oscar De Priest as alderman of the south side's second ward) came into office with ties to the civic, rather than political, tradition in the city. This tradition was rooted in the 19th century struggle which sought to eliminate slavery, extend citizenship and then protect those rights of citizenship.

Any black politician active during this period was expected to place the public good on an equal footing with the aggrandizement of his political organization. Within this context, state Rep. Thomas introduced and helped pass in 1885 the Illinois Civil Rights Act which provided for ''the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, restaurants, eating houses, barber shops, theatres and public conveyances on land and water. . . ."Passage of this law resulted in a sense of civic belonging that had long eluded blacks in Chicago since the enactment of the restrictive pre-Civil War Black Laws. By the 20th century Wells-Barnett provided social settlement services in the manner of Hull House's for blacks while supporting the election of a black man to represent the city's second ward knowing that his primary allegiance would be to the interests of the citizens of the area. From her organization base in the Negro Fellowship League, which was established in 1908, she could monitor politics while she worked to help newly arrived rural migrants adjust to the rigors of urban life.

The leading black politician of the period besides Alderman DePriest was Edward Wright, who in 1900 organized the Appomattox Club, a civic organization designed to replicate for his racial group those civic and political services provided by the leading white downtown club, the Hamilton.

By 1910, the Chicago NAACP was being formed and in its ranks were black civic leaders Wells-Barnett, Dr. Charles E. Bentley and Dr. George Cleveland Hall. Bentley, a graduate of what is now the Loyola University School of Dentistry, was the recognized "father of the oral hygiene movement" which brought needed dental services to the nation's school children. Hall was a surgeon who headed the all-black Provident Hospital. Among the whites were neo-abolitionists Jane Addams and Unitarian ministers Jenkin Lloyd Jones and Celia Parker Woolley. The activities of these groups and personalities were broad enough in 1910 to include protecting the rights of a Chicago newcomer, Pink Franklin, who was fleeing from what Arkansas whites planned to be his lynching once he was returned to the South. The Negro Fellowship League, Appomattox Club and Chicago NAACP coordinated their activities to stop Franklin's extradition by exhausting all the legal and political channels at their disposal, gaining the cooperation of a downstate sheriff as well as the governor's office.

The fragility of the cooperation between politics and civic forces was dramatized when Jane Addams of the Chicago NAACP joined the ranks of Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Party which was meeting in Chicago in 1912. Addams steadfastly remained with Roosevelt even after he purged blacks from the Southern delegations to appease white delegates' fears of too much black participation. Her act of political expediency caused a rift within the ranks of the Chicago NAACP as well as in the black Chicago neighborhoods. Significantly, Jane Addams' decision forecast the possibility of a clash between civic values and political pragmatism. In perspective, the Addams incident was equalled by the political chicanery of DePriest in the second ward aldermanic races of 1912 and 1914. In these elections DePriest rationalized his actions of opposing well-qualified blacks who might have won the alderman's office before he did by exaggerating his own importance to black political advancement.

The second period of black civic-political activity, marked by the emergence of professionalism in black politics, began with DePriest's election to the Chicago City Council in 1915. Following this political gain came Edward Wright's election as Republican ward committeeman in the second ward in 1920. From these First World War years to the end of the Second World War, a bond grew between black politicians and the Republican machine of Big Bill Thompson and, later, the Democratic machine of Kelly-Nash. Civic advancement for blacks, though, was slowed by the realities of practical politics. Issues of civic betterment were subordinated to the good of the party repeatedly during the period as black politicians developed their own ward organizations and grew corrupt in their own right.

Oscar DePriest personified this change in the course of his colorful career. He championed the cause of equal rights to insure his own individual advancement as a member of a minority as well as for the political support it could bring him. In 1928, DePriest and his wife formed a women's auxiliary to the NAACP called the Flying Squadron, which aided the fundraising activities of the Chicago branch. He was even considered by the Chicago branch as a worthy recipient of the Spingarn Award, the NAACP's highest honor. Ironically this occurred at a time when he was voting against federal aid to distressed Americans during the Depression and gouging black tenants in his rental properties.

DePriest was not alone in his failings and contradictions. No politician at that time, black or white, was overly eager to challenge the machine's calculated neglect of equal opportunities in housing, employment and education for blacks. Early in the second Thompson administration, for example, in 1919 and 1920, the homes of several black citizens were the targets of bombings. City government, including the police, appeared indifferent, and no bomber was ever brought to justice. Only through the persistence of a citizens' group, the Protective Circle,was any pressure brought to bear on municipal government at least to acknowledge that a threat to public safety existed.

By the late twenties, when the city was blanketed by restrictive covenants, which prevented blacks from purchasing homes in certain white neighborhoods, only the Chicago NAACP took an interest in investigating the issue, and even then it was organizationally too weak to do anything beyond making inquiries. By the mid-thirties, however, the NAACP mounted such a concerted effort against the covenants that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the covenant in the Woodlawn community as a legal instrument used to promote racial exclusiveness. This resulted in the famous Hansberry decision of 1940. In addition to the restrictions on available housing, the 20th century practice of price gouging in rental property continued to affect blacks adversely, particularly on the south side. During the late thirties and early forties, rents were so exorbitant that the Chicago Urban League declared the situation a municipal crisis.

The major voice in opposition to this exploitation in housing was Earl B. Dickerson, who had captured the second ward's seat as Democratic alderman in 1939. He owed his commitment to social justice to his civic involvement with both the Chicago NAACP and the Chicago Urban League. With the former, he personally helped bring the Hansberry case to the Supreme Court, and he served as Urban League president beginning in 1939. One of his main adversaries within the Democratic party, former Republican Alderman William L. Dawson of the second ward, also was active in behalf of tenants' rights in the thirties and provided militant support for his former constituents. Dawson during this period was a man whom W.E.B. DuBois described as placing race first and politics second, although Dawson later reversed these priorities and personified the changed nature of the relationship between politics and civics. Along with housing, employment was a major issue adversely affecting blacks in the twenties and thirties, and the two political machines never did provide blacks the reward of patronage usually associated with their strong party loyalty. Blacks, who during the twenties led all of the city's groups in voting percentages, had received certain high status political plums such as jobs in the offices of Corporation Counsel and State's Attorney. But this benefitted only the growing class of black lawyers at a time when the bulk of working-class blacks were excluded from a city work force that was predominantly white.

This pattern persisted even as blacks shifted slowly into the ranks of the Democratic party late in the thirties and more rapidly during the forties.

Activism within black communities to increase the availability of jobs originated through civic rather than political efforts sponsored by organizations such as the Chicago Urban League. Late in the twenties, the Urban League began a campaign to assure employment for blacks within their own neighborhoods that reached such significance that it inspired the local "Don't Spend Your Money Where You Can't Work" campaign of 1930 as well as other campaigns throughout the nation during the Depression. It was also the Urban League that organized the Negro Labor Relations League during the late thirties which worked to broaden employment opportunities among newspaper circulation managers, milk truck drivers, telephone employees and movie theater projectionists. When employment opportunities beckoned at the World's Fair in 1933 and 1934, the Urban League and the Colored Citizens World's Fair Council spearheaded activities to get more blacks hired, and they did so with a modicum of success. The Second World War brought extensive job opportunities for whites but not for blacks. To remedy this situation, the March on Washington Movement, a civic body with a strong Chicago component, threatened a massive demonstration in the nation's capital in 1941 to demand that newly created war work be available on an open basis to all citizens. President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt sufficiently pressured and responded favorably. The president established the Fair Employment Practices Commission with Chicago's Earl B. Dickerson as one of its first members, and in succeeding years various states formed their own commissions. During the post-war years, the task of Illinois' black politicians and civic leaders was to convince the state's economic leadership that fairness on the job site was more consistent with American values than was racial exclusion. This effort continued throughout the fifties and did not end until affirmative action became a reality in the sixties.

The subordination of blacks in housing and employment was duplicated in the city's educational system. Attempts to gain black representation on the school board were systematically turned down by the Thompson and Kelly-Nash machines. In the meantime, high administrative officials in the school system conveniently overlooked the classroom overcrowding that marked school life for black children.

The next period in the changing civic-political relationship occurred between the early fifties and 1983. In brought a waxing of political power and a waning of civic influences outside the political domain. The ascendancy of William L. Dawson, now a congressman since 1943, as the dominant political voice in the south side black communities suggested the degree to which civic improvement became dependent on political power. While Dawson was healthy physically and strong politically, the fates of his political forces as well as independent civic initiatives were protected from outside pressures such as the Daley machine's. Even though civic efforts were not enhanced by Dawson's interference in the NAACP election of 1958, they were not undermined to the extent that they would be by the mid-sixties when the strength of Richard J. Daley's machine became an overwhelming factor in controlling black Chicago.

In the last decade of Dawson's life (he died in 1970), the quality of life for black Chicagoans had deteriorated so much that the congressman was dubbed an "Uncle Tom" because he did not openly challenge the status quo. The rationale for his indifference to civil concerns was implicit in the remarks of one Dawson stalwart, quoted in The Nation in 1956: "I have never seen a political decision that Dawson made that he did not regard as in the political interest of American Negroes .... In dealing with problems there is never a 'correct' solution, only a series of alternatives. And these alternatives have produced considerable results for the Negro that other tactics would not have produced."

Unfortunately, the "considerable results" produced during Dawson's reign did not prevent housing discrimination, racial violence directed at blacks, school segregation, police brutality, and restricted job opportunities both in government and industry. As Dawson's power faded in the wake of Daley's ascendancy, an era dubbed as "plantation politics" began, when initiatives to improve the lives of blacks in Chicago were almost always decided by political expediency.

The collapse of civic power was analyzed by political scientist James Q. Wilson in his 1960 work, Negro Politics: The Search For Leadership. Wilson examined a once potent civic presence and found it completely neutralized by the Dawson machine by the end of the fifties. Gone was the militancy of an Urban League executive secretary, Sidney Williams Sr., in the late forties that led to a direct confrontation with the city's power structure over housing and economic exploitation. In its place was the assertiveness of NAACP President Willoughby Abner which provided fireworks between Dawson and the NAACP branch, but which eventually resulted in Dawson's interference in that organization's operations. The NAACP became less vociferous than previously but still remained a viable force of protest by negotiating covertly in the Dawson manner. Through interviews and analysis, Wilson postulated and proved a thesis that the needs of black Chicagoans were advanced or retarded by a political voice that related primarily to its own self-interest.

Civic-minded black Chicagoans were revitalized with the advent of the national civil rights movement of the sixties, and they challenged politicians to work earnestly to improve the quality of life under which they lived. In edition, the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), led by Albert Raby, Lawrence Landry and others, organized school boycotts in 1962 and 1963 to protest the quality of education and overcrowding of schools in the black areas. Supt. of Schools Benjamin C. Willis resisted change with the support of Daley and, for Chicago's blacks, immediately came as much a symbol of racial oppression as the southern polticians and administrators seen on nightly television. Bowing to community pressure, Dawson supported protest in 1962 but opposed it in 1963 when it became too politically embarking to the Daley machine. Later, Willis stepped down, but the problem of inferior education remained even as new schools were being built in black areas.

The Daley machine, under which the Dawson organization was now absorbed, had perfected the means of presenting black Chicagoans with the appearance of victory when, in fact, change had been avoided or delayed interminably. Such was the case in the early 1960s when Daley had the City Council push through an open housing ordinance. It was so ineffective that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., through CCCO's urging, saw fit to launch a housing crusade in the city in 1966. Following King's activities with the Chicago Freedom Movement, which the black politicians opposed, Daley signed a housing agreement which provided a remedy that was much too limited and tardy.

Political opposition to black advancement was most pronounced during this period, as the city's six black aldermen, all from the south side, voted consistently with the Democratic machine's program and against their communities' interests. They were derisively labelled the "Silent Six." Unfortunately, black displeasure was so enfeebled in 1967 as to be unnoticeable as Daley was reelected to a fourth successive term with overwhelming black electoral support that was dictated by the black politicians. Civic opposition to the Silent Six continued to build as did a smoldering sense of civic outrage, but a token mayoral challenge by entertainer-social activist Dick Gregory produced an equally token number of votes.

King's appearances in the city in 1965 and 1966 to direct protests illustrated clearly how wide the gap had grown between the political and civic leaderships. King was viewed as an outside threat to Chicago Democratic political authority by both blacks and whites in politics. Consequently, black machine stalwarts either ignored or undermined King's efforts.

The next decade brought a growing awareness that politics was not a useful vehicle for civic advancement as long as its leadership remained tied to the machine. John Stroger Sr., presently a Cook County commissioner, reflected in the seventies to political scientist Milton Rakove that "over the years a social revolution brought on new organizations promoting different political ideas .... Prior to the civil rights movement, the whole life of the community rested in the church and political organization." While the NAACP and the Urban League might be compromised, new bodies such as the CCCO emerged under young leadership to protest against social injustice.

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Accompanying the resurgence of strong civic activism was the rise of an independent force within the ranks of black Democrats on the south side and outside their ranks on the west side. Spurred by the political cover-up following the raid and killings at the west side headquarters of the Black Panther Party in December 1970, a revived political interest swept black neighborhoods in the city. To the surprise of most observers, it was manifested in extensive, open defiance of the Daley organization at the polls in 1972. No single explanation would suffice to explain this open political revolt. Importantly, 1972 was the year when civic opposition also rose against the Daley administration over the issue of police brutality involving middle-class blacks on the south side. One particular incident involved a personal friend of Dawson's successor in Congress, Ralph Metcalfe, formerly of the Silent Six. Metcalfe openly challenged Daley in open forums on this issue, and this growing discontent was further manifested in successive mayoral elections beginning in 1975. State Sen. Richard Newhouse, a relative newcomer to the city and always an independent, entered the race for mayor in 1975 when Metcalfe could not muster the courage to run. In successive races, the challenge continued as a combined civic and independent political effort that challenged the forces of incumbency. In 1977, following Daley's death in December 1976, Harold Washington ran for mayor with an unimpressive showing at the polls. In 1979, black civic and political discontent led to wholesale black support for the candidacy of Jane Byrne, who was then a symbol of reform rather than political expediency.

Other noticeable changes were evident following the deaths of the Panthers, Dawson and Daley. By 1980, two mavericks, Harold Washington and publisher-activist Augustus "Gus" Savage, won congressional seats in the south side's first and second districts without machine backing, bringing consternation to the machine. The following year, a community group organized by journalist-activist Lu Palmer, CBUC (Chicago Black United Communities), initiated a strategy to elect a black person from one of the city's black communities to the mayor's post in 1983. Using the slogan, "We Shall See In '83," as a rallying cry. Palmer used community forums to get out the message that the demise of "plantation politics" was long overdue, should be challenged immediately, and would be culminated in victory. While Palmer appealed to the working class, a middle-class group led by former Urban League executive secretary William "Bill" Berry and by Al Johnson, a civic-minded businessman, also considered running a black person for the mayor's seat.

The emergence of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity and formerly Operation Breadbasket) showed how populism and the middle-class' interest in civic betterment could be combined to improve the public good. By 1982, PUSH and other community activist groups, along with independent politicians, were able to defy the Byrne administration by assaulting its most grandiose circus, ChicagoFest. The boycott was conducted to punish Mayor Byrne, who had reversed herself on a commitment to civic betterment for all the citizens of the city. Developing a political astuteness rooted in expediency, she removed blacks from key positions in the Chicago Housing Authority and the Board of Education to please white ethnic voters in the northwest and southwest sides.

According to political historian Paul Kleppner, she was reverting to Daley's old tactics through such actions. Byrne also used union-busting against the Chicago Transit Authority, as well as the Chicago Fire Department, to exert her leadership. Both had sizeable concentrations of black workers who felt threatened in their pocketbooks.

On the eve of the mayoral campaign of 1982-83, civic-minded blacks were united as never before in the city's history. A third surge in the proliferation of organizations began. On the west side, the Midwest Community Council, two ministerial associations, the Westside Coalition for Unity and Political Action and others joined in a well-coordinated movement with the south side's CBUC, Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, PUSH, Task Force for Black Political Empowerment, a plethora of churches committed to social justice and activism and others. The manifestation of what revitalized civic force could accomplish in politics was at hand.

1983 brought in a new stage and marked the beginning of what have become halcyon days for the new civic-political alliance. The Washington constituency, which has the appearance of an independent political movement, is in reality a civic federation. Over the last four years it has held the forces of political expediency, white and black, in check. The strength behind Washington's assertiveness lies in a civic commitment that transcends politics. It is of such magnitude that every black alderman in the city is forced to do the mayor's bidding as long as it is consistent with the community's desire for open government, sensitivity to all neighborhoods, and a position on opportunity consistent with the American Dream. Even though affirmative action is anathema to conservatives, it enjoys constitutional and legal protection mainly because it is consistent with good American public policy.

As a result of the black civic ascendancy, not only the black politicians but also the white ones who had depended on blacks in successive stages of political cooperation, acquiescence, connivance and subordination are now themselves neutralized. The vaunted and corrupt Democratic machine that had worked so well, so long, for so few, appears finally to be in its demise. Whether Washington's period of rule is seen as reform is less germane to most of his black constituents as long as fairness and the public good take priority over political expediency. In his cabinet appointments and his basic approach to governing they see tangible evidence that the dream of equality may yet come true for blacks in Chicago, despite the city's disappointing history in racial relations.

Christopher R. Reed is assistant professor in the Black Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A historian by training, he has written several articles on aspects of 19th and 20th century black organizational life is currently writing a book on the history of the Chicago NAACP, 1910-1960.

This essay is made possible in part through the support of the Illinois Humanities Council.