Ploys by Black Aldermen to Scare Him Off Alleged : Threats on Sawyer in Chicago Race Told

Black aldermen tried to scare new acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer out of the race to succeed Harold Washington by warning that he could be killed or cause riots if the City Council picked him to replace the late mayor, a key white supporter of Sawyer charged Friday.

Alderman Edward Burke made the claim during the taping of a radio show. He said that Sawyer, a black who at the time was also a council member, was threatened Tuesday at a secret meeting with his black opponents on the council, including his chief rival for the acting mayor’s job, Alderman Timothy Evans.

“There is a radical element in our society that is convinced they can gain power by any means,” Burke said during an interview on WBBM radio. “And, if it means shutting down the government, if it means threatening elected officials with death, if it means threatening officials with harm, they’ll stop at nothing.”

Evans Denies Charges

Evans and others in the meeting denied the allegations. Burke did not take part in the meeting, but he said that he had received information about what took place.

The council voted 29 to 19 early Wednesday to pick Sawyer over Evans as the successor to Washington, this racially polarized city’s first black mayor. The vote climaxed a raucous, nightlong council session that saw thousands of pro-Evans demonstrators march on City Hall to try to stop the vote.

Sawyer, despite claims that he had the votes to win, wavered for hours over whether to press for a vote at all and had reportedly considered dropping out of the race. At one time during that period he met privately with Evans and other blacks.

Talking with reporters later, Sawyer attributed his hesitation to concerns that the succession battle was splitting the black community.

Sawyer made no mention of Burke’s charges, but he did say that he had been upset by threats leveled against the handful of blacks on the council who did support him. One black alderman showed up on the council floor wearing a bulletproof vest.

Both Evans and Sawyer had been Washington’s allies, but, upon the mayor’s death, Evans claimed to be more philosophically in tune with Washington’s reform agenda. And he charged that Sawyer, in order to win the acting mayor’s spot, had allied himself with white ethnic aldermen, such as Burke, who for years had bitterly opposed Washington on the council.

Tells of Harassment

One of Sawyer’s white supporters, Alderman Kathy Osterman, said Friday that she believes she is being harassed because of her vote. Osterman said that she has received telephone death threats all week and that her neighborhood ward office has been spray-painted with threatening graffiti.

Meanwhile, Evans suggested that Sawyer may have inadvertently disqualified himself from serving as mayor by resigning from the City Council seconds before being sworn in.

Although Evans said he had no plans to rush to court over the matter, he explained that Illinois law required any successor to Washington to come from the membership of the City Council. When Sawyer resigned, he technically was no longer a council member and, therefore, may have become ineligible to be mayor, Evans said.

Judson Miner, city attorney, who had backed Evans in his battle with Sawyer, said that he saw nothing wrong with the way Sawyer was sworn in.