Like a lot of Chicagoans, I wish Harold Washington could have been around to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration. Without Mayor Washington, there wouldn’t be a President Obama. Washington’s unlikely triumph in the 1983 mayoral race made him the first African-American to run this town, inspiring Obama to move here after he finished college, and changed the landscape for all the black politicians who came after. Thousands of white lifelong Democrats abandoned Washington and voted Republican in 1983 for fear that an independent-minded African-American would hire gangbangers to run the police department. His victory, and the four years he spent in office before dying of a heart attack, forced white voters to at least reconsider their prejudices about blacks with political power. It opened the door to Carol Moseley Braun’s Senate victory in 1992 and Obama’s 12 years later, which launched his national career. Washington was Obama’s role model, as the president himself has said more than once.
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I also wish former south-side committeeman James C. “Bull Jive” Taylor could’ve been here. Unlike Washington he was never much of a crusader for black political independence, and I don’t think many people remember him, let alone claim him as a role model. But without Taylor there wouldn’t have been a Mayor Washington. If Taylor hadn’t taken a few swings at him first, Washington might not have been tough enough for the truly daunting task of taking on Mayor Jane Byrne and Cook County state’s attorney Richard M. Daley in the primary.
But even after the primary, Taylor wouldn’t concede. He put together an independent political party named—get this—the James C. Taylor Party. It slated Barry as its state senate candidate and made one last effort to keep Washington from reclaiming his state senate seat. Washington won again.
The current Mayor Daley figured out a thing or two after watching Washington in action. He’s not going to put his black allies in a position where they’re forced to choose him over their communities in any sort of symbolic showdown. He’s careful to avoid riling up black voters with controversial appointments or inflammatory statements—in fact, he’s more likely to play the race card with white opponents, as he did in last year’s fight with Gold Coast residents over relocating the Chicago Children’s Museum. And it’s almost impossible to imagine him directly intervening to topple a black congressman like his father did with Metcalfe. Even when Bobby Rush had the temerity to challenge Daley for mayor in 1999—and get his butt handed to him—Daley stayed out of Rush’s re-election campaign against Obama a year later. Now both Rush and Obama are Daley supporters.
