The Most Influential Article the Reader Ever Published
“We learned to live with a petty tyranny that brokered black interests to the consistent disadvantage of blacks and prevented coalitions across class and race – blacks were only blacks. Poles were only Poles.”
To beat Epton, Harold Washington didn’t need a lot of the white vote, but he needed some, and it wasn’t clear he’d get it. Washington’s race spoke for itself: Epton went after his character. Washington’s law license had once been suspended; he’d done jail time for unpaid taxes. Fear of the unknown hung heavy over Chicago, and white Chicagoans who liked to think of themselves as progressive could be heard defending Epton as the prudent choice. Polls showed him closing on Washington.
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The contrast between the Washington and Epton campaigns shows up starkly in their visits to white neighborhoods. Not long ago, Bernard Epton visited Club Karlov, a bar at 4058 W. 47th St. in the 12th Ward. There he was greeted by a raucous crowd of about 100 workers for Aloysius Majerczyk, one of the least distinguished members of the City Council, whose main claim to fame is that he was the first alderman to bolt to Epton. Amid the shouts of “Epton for mayor” were insistent cries of “vote proud, vote white.” There was a wide variety of buttons – a yellow one reading “Be a Republican for a Day,” a mouse saying “Hey, Harold” and brandishing a middle finger, a picture of a watermelon with Washington written above it, and the straightforward legend, “Vote for the White Man.”
A young blond man said that people in the neighborhood realize black neighborhoods don’t get their share. Does that mean our neighborhood will get a cutback in services? “No,” Washington said. “Your question goes to the heart of the misconceptions and misunderstandings (about needs and desires of poor neighborhoods). Their cry is not to reduce the quality in other neighborhoods. Their cry is to raise the level in the whole city.”
“She had sort of been like a little girl who was sitting for 15 years watching her uncles play poker, and they
