Book Reviews                                                                  

William J. Grimshaw. Bitter Fruit: Black Politics and the Chicago Machine, 1931-1991. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Pp. 248 with tables, figures, maps, notes, references & index. $24.95 (cloth).

Pierre Clavel and Wim Wiewel (eds.). Harold Washington and the Neighborhoods: Progressive City Government and Chicago, 1983-1987. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992. Pp. 307 with notes, maps, table and index. $45 (cloth); $15.95 (paper).

As we assess the first hundred days of a federal administration elected to promote a "politics of change," the experiences of Harold Washington's years as Chicago's mayor take on a fresh significance.

Of the handful of "Council Wars" histories on the market, most are what reporters call "clip-jobs" — rewrites of newspaper articles strung together on a loose thematic thread. But there are two works that probe beneath the surface of the Harold Washington phenomenon which should interest anyone working to translate the "politics of change" into progressive government policies.

Bitter Fruit Black Politics and the Chicago Machine, 1931-1991 benefits from the insights of an author who is both a scholar and an insider. Illinois Institute of Technology social sciences professor William J. Grimshaw was also a political adviser to Harold Washington. His wife, Jacky Grimshaw, was a top mayoral aide. He warns that while his book is "as scholarly as I could make it," it is not a "journalistically balanced, or detached work." But his caution is generally misplaced; it is as a scholarly treatment that Bitter Fruit is most valuable.

Grimshaw surveys Chicago's recent political history from three loosely integrated perspectives — economic, sociological and political. Through this triangulation he clarifies many a political muddle of the past several decades.

In politics, traditional economic motives center on the spoils of victory. Organizationally, a political machine is a business enterprise whose purpose is winning elections. From the standpoint of the electorate, political support is just another sales transaction, a trade of votes for jobs and contracts. So what explains the endurance of the black "submachine," despite its scant rewards?

The sociological perspective takes a look at how things really are. It reveals a cat's cradle interplay of many interests which make the idea of a unitary machine hopelessly simplistic. Electorally, the sociological perspective suggests "a collective ethnic-cultural interest, as opposed to an individual economic interest," Grimshaw notes; it encourages "conceptualizing voting behavior" based on "some type of group interest: ethnic, racial, territorial, institutional, ideological belief, and so forth."

Yet another perspective, the political, focuses on the individual politicians' looking out for themselves. In this light, what seems to be the behavior of a single machine or a monolithic black political movement, or the invisible hand of an abstract political marketplace, can be seen, in part at least, as the net effect of the behavior of individual bosses and conteeological belief, and so forth."

Yet another perspective, the political, focuses on the individual politicians' looking out for themselves. In this light, what seems to be the behavior of a single machine or a monolithic black political movement, or the invisible hand of an abstract political marketplace, can be seen, in part at least, as the net effect of the behavior of individual bosses and contenders. "Sorting out these analytic distinctions in the messy real world of electoral politics is no simple task," Grimshaw acknowledges. But his effort to do so makes a significant contribution to the field.

In politics, traditional economic motives center on the spoils of victory. Organizationally, a political machine is a business enterprise whose purpose is winning elections

The general reader looking for a guide to contemporary Chicago politics will also benefit from Grimshaw's economic, sociological and political analysis of: the New Deal shift of black voters from Republican to Democratic, with divergence between national and local voting patterns; Mayor Richard J. Daley's strategy in choosing which black politicians (and non-politicians) to elevate within his machine; the significant differences affecting black political organization in the south side wards, the poorer "black belt" wards and the "plantation wards" on the west side; the rationale behind the seemingly erratic actions of Mayor Jane Byrne; and the inner workings of the Harold Washington coalition.

Where Grimshaw strays from scholarship into polemics is in the final chapter, "Machine Politics, Reform Style," covering the period from Washington's death through Richard M. Daley's first two years as mayor. This section is a learned polemic, to be sure, but too dependent on newspaper citations and presumably on his wife's experience as an on-again, off-again political worker in the tragi-comic electoral campaign that pitted Acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer against Tim Evans, would-be Washington heir apparent.

Here the quality of the analysis suffers from the passion of the analyst — for instance, in Grimshaw's faulting Washington for "refusing to purge the machine loyalists," including Eugene Sawyer. Grimshaw suggests that Washington "was advancing his own political self-interest at the expense of institutionalizing his reform movement." This allowed Washington to keep "his monolithic black base intact, but at what would prove to be a terribly high price": "Washington's reforms were not institu-

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tionalized as much as they were personalized." These conclusions fail to account for political necessity, despite Grimshaw's acute attention to such realities when dealing with earlier politicians in the pre-Washington era. Along with closing observations on the new Daley administration, these judgments suffer by comparison with the depth and diversity of perspective which Grimshaw affords the earlier period of his study.

... these insiders were outsiders — progressive reformers, heads of neighborhood organizations — who one day found themselves running the nation's second largest city

If Grimshaw's book reveals the simplistic foolishness of an expression like "the black vote," there's another contemporary history which demonstrates convincingly that Harold Washington progressives don't all think alike. Harold Washington in the Neighborhoods: Progressive City Government in Chicago, 1983-1987 is compelling contemporary history written by people who made it, told in a series of articles neatly framed within introductory and concluding chapters by editors Pierre Clavel and Wim Wiewel. Of the eleven primary contributors, seven were insiders: Kari Moe, one of the mayor's senior aides; commissioners Robert Mier (economic development), Elizabeth Hollander (planning), Judith Walker (human services), Timothy Wright (intergovernmental affairs) and Maria Torres (Commission on Latino Affairs); and deputy commissioner Robert Giloth (economic development).

A major point of the book is that before Washington took office, these insiders were outsiders — progressive reformers, heads of neighborhood organizations — who one day found themselves running the nation's second largest city. Four additional articles are by community activists who remained outside government — but not outside "the system": Robert Brehm, Donna Ducharme, Doug Gills and John Kretzmann.

Under Harold Washington "the system" expanded to embrace the community organizations. In theory, the organizations that helped elect a mayor went on to inform city government at the department level and within the mayor's office, and to set the agenda, and to mobilize constituencies. In practice, the meld was uneven. The key players here tell essentially personal stories of how it all played out, and in this reckoning each writer shares the sometimes painful lessons to be learned in the course of a revolution that works.

The insights have particular relevance today, and not only on the national scene. Most of the Chicago community organizations profiled in these chapters are still dominant in the 1990s, more than ever the front line of democracy at work. Even though the social movement of which they form the staff and perhaps the spearhead is no longer the same, the role they played in electing and shaping the Harold Washington administration remains vital for a new generation.

From their separate but parallel viewpoints, the writers chart a trail — with well-marked pitfalls — for those who may follow in the work of developing policies at the grass roots and using the powers of government to implement them. Cumulatively if not unanimously, they suggest that Harold Washington did indeed manage to institutionalize his reforms by "transcending the base" that concerns Grimshaw, providing a forum for talented individuals like those who wrote this book and empowering political associations at the grass roots. *

Alton Miller, who teaches politics and the media at Columbia College in Chicago, was press secretary to Mayor Harold Washington from 1985 to 1987. He is the author of three books, two of them about the Washington years.

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