Ironically, Chicago became the political capital of black America
because it was so racist. For most of the 20th century, it was the most
segregated city in America. Blacks used to have a saying: "In the
South, the white man doesn't care how close you get, as long as you
don't get too high; in the North, he doesn't care how high you get, as
long as you don't get too close." During the Great Migration, the
refugees who rode up from Mississippi on the Illinois Central Railroad
were crowded into the Black Belt, the South Side ghetto portrayed in
Richard Wright's "Native Son."
Because the black population was so concentrated, white politicians
couldn't gerrymander it out of a congressional seat. One of De Priest's
successors, William Dawson, was the most powerful black politician in
America. He helped boot out the predecessor to Mayor Richard J. Daley,
the current mayor's father, who bossed Chicago from 1955 to 1976. In
return, Daley's machine rewarded Dawson with control of the entire
South Side.
The politician who truly set the stage for Obama's rise was also a
South Side congressman: Harold Washington, who was elected mayor of
Chicago in 1983, beating two white opponents in the Democratic primary
-- incumbent Mayor Jane Byrne and future Mayor Richard M. Daley. In the
general election, the difference between Washington and his Republican
opponent was black and white -- and nothing else. When Washington
campaigned at a church in a Polish neighborhood, he was greeted with
the grafitto "Die, Nigger, Die."
In New York, Obama read about Washington's victory and wrote to City
Hall, asking for a job. He never heard back, but he made it to Chicago
just months after Washington took office. In his memoir "Dreams From My Father,"
he wrote about walking into a barbershop and seeing the new mayor's
picture on the wall. (It's probably still there. To this day,
Washington's image is as revered by South Side blacks as St. Anthony of
Padua's is by Italian Catholics.) The old men, who'd suffered a
lifetime of slights by white mayors, saw in Washington a sign that the
black community had finally arrived as a citywide power. Blacks may
have run things in their own neighborhoods, but they were still crammed
into dreary housing projects, and they sent their children to
overcrowded schools -- while white schools just across the color line
sat half empty. And of course, the big political jobs -- the state's
attorney, the County Board president, the mayor -- had always been
controlled by the Irish.
"Before Harold," the barber said, "seemed like we'd always be second-class citizens."
After too many triple cheeseburgers and deep-dish pizzas, Washington
dropped dead of a heart attack in his second term. But the confidence
he instilled in black leaders became a permanent factor in Chicago
politics. His success inspired Jesse Jackson to run for president in
1984, which in turn inspired Obama, who was impressed to see a black
man on the same stage as Walter Mondale and Gary Hart. Washington also
strengthened the community organizations in which Obama was cutting his
teeth, says Ransom. Obama's Project Vote, which put him on the local
political map, was a successor to the South Side voter registration
drive that made Washington's election possible.
"Everybody owes something to Harold Washington, because that was
something they never thought could happen," Ransom says. "If Harold can
be mayor, what can't we do? Obama talks about the audacity of hope.
That audacity has grown into the notion that a black man can be
president of the United States."
Before Washington, a black Chicagoan pol's highest aspiration was
U.S. representative. After Washington, it became senator, and finally,
president. Plenty of other cities have had black mayors -- Detroit,
Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Baltimore
-- but in none of those places have blacks achieved as much statewide
political success. Chicago has two unique advantages, says political
consultant Don Rose. First, it's in Cook County, which contains nearly
half of Illinois' voters. Second, the local Democratic Party is a
countywide organization. After Chicago's Carol Moseley Braun beat two
white men to win the 1992 Democratic Senate primary, precinct captains
in white Chicago neighborhoods and the suburbs whipped up votes for her in the general election.
"They had to go out and sell the black person to demonstrate that
the party was still open," says Rose, who sees "direct links" from
Washington to Moseley Braun to Obama.
"It was a hard-fought thing. If you use Harold Washington's election
as the pivot point, what you begin to see is black politicians making
challenges to the regular organizations, and then the organizations
having to support them."
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