one explanation
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Muwakkil’s been fascinated by Harold Washington since 1976, when the writer, new to Chicago, heard Washington describe the intrigue in City Hall after Richard J. Daley died as “Kafkaesque.” “I hadn’t heard many Chicago politicians with literary sensibilities,” Muwakkil says. Today he’s a senior editor at Chicago-based In These Times, and Obama is, of course, a preoccupation—but Washington remains one too. Muwakkil provided the text for the recently published Harold! Photographs From the Harold Washington Years, a collaboration with Antonio Dickey, who was Washington’s official photographer, and Marc PoKempner, who took pictures of the mayor for the Reader and other publications.
Last November 25 was the 20th anniversary of Washington’s death and April 12 is the 25th anniversary of his election as Chicago’s first black mayor. Besides the book, these dates have occasioned a series of forums on Washington’s life and legacy, and Muwakkil has been involved in many of them. (Another forum takes place at the Harold Washington Library on April 12 featuring Gary Rivlin, a former Reader staff writer and author of the Washington chronicle Fire on the Prairie, along with several Washington cabinet members.)
Race relations in Chicago were raw and infected in the early 80s when Washington answered the call to run for mayor. Today I think the nation suffers from racial fatigue. When an Al Sharpton is certain to hold a press conference tomorrow to denounce whatever stupid thing a Don Imus says today, surely there’s a feeling among millions of Americans of all races that we’re getting too old for this. And as a black man who seems to think so too, Obama benefits.
