Mayor Harold Washington by Gwendolyn Brooks—National Poetry Month 2023

I not only voted for Harold Washington for Mayor, I rang doorbells in Dick Mell's hostile ward for him.

Monday was the 40th anniversary of Harold Washington’s election as the first Black Mayor of Chicago.  I remember how thrilled and excited I was to see the Congressman from Hyde Park win after a hard-fought, racially divisive vote.  He had captured the official Democratic Party nomination on the strength of a massive Black turn-out and faced Republican Bernie Epton—suddenly anointed the white savior of the city’s White ethnic wards.  I was proud to pound pavement on his behalf in both elections in Dick Mell’s 33rd Ward on the Northwest Side.

Just a couple of weeks ago another Black progressive, Brandon Johnson, won his race.  He frequently tipped his hat to Washington as an inspiration and model.  Don Rose, the long-time progressive Democratic strategist and observer recently wrote:

Brandon Johnson’s somewhat unexpected win in the Chicago mayoral runoff was the greatest progressive victory in the history of the mayorality, surpassing, in its breadth and diversity, even Harold Washington’s epic election in 1983.

Washington’s win, realistically, was primarily a Black victory in a contest almost entirely focused on race. His 93-percent vote in the Black wards was supplemented by 9 percent each of the white and Latino wards. He did not carry a single white or Latino ward, even on the liberal lakefront, though the progressive coalition drummed up sufficient support to put him over the top.

Since that time the coalition has of course grown while race—while still present—is no longer the defining issue. Paul Vallas was able to capture about 20 percent of the Black vote, running primarily on the universal issue of crime, which everyone, Black, White and Latino said was the city’s top problem by far.

Johnson, however, who is Black, carried 29 out of 50 wards—including the 16 Black wards plus 13 white and Latino. He carried the four white lakefront wards north of the Lincoln Park community, from Lakeview to Rogers Park—plus the white “hipster corridor” wards to the west and a couple of low-voting Latino wards.

In all he eked out a 4-point, 24,500 vote win—approximately the range the polls were giving to Vallas.

That’s an interesting observation, but it in no way diminishes the seismic change that Washington brought to Chicago politics.  Like Washington, Johnson will face a divided City Council and the implacable opposition of many Whites, especially the Chicago Police Union and their supporters including deep pocket MAGA Republicans from the suburbs.  He will have trouble moving his whole progressive agenda.  How well he copes will determine if he is another one term mayor like his predecessor Lori Lightfoot who was also elected as a Black progressive with wide appeal to all parts of the city.

                                   Gwendolyn Brooks.

Gwendolyn Brooks, both a Chicago and U.S. Poet Laureate and the reigning queen of the city’s Black literati, was ecstatic, if brief, for Washington.

Mayor Harold Washington

Mayor. Worldman. Historyman.

Beyond steps that occur and close,

your steps are echo-makers.

 

You can never be forgotten.

 

We begin our health.

We enter the Age of Alliance.

This is our senior adventure.

 

—Gwendolyn Brooks

 

From Mayor Harold Washington. Copyright © 1983 by Gwendolyn Brooks.