Aftermath of Washington’s Death : Power Vacuum Heightens Chicago Racial Tensions

A power and leadership vacuum in the wake of Mayor Harold Washington’s death six months ago has led to a series of bizarre confrontations that have heightened tensions in this city and reopened racial wounds that the late mayor had struggled to heal.

And the white-black split could grow even wider in coming months if, as expected, race becomes a pawn that is exploited by ambitious politicians as Chicago prepares to elect a permanent successor to Washington, its first black mayor, early next year.

”. . . Certainly race and ethnicity will play a vital role in the politics of Chicago leading up to the ’89 election,” predicted Danny Davis, a black City Council member and a potential mayoral candidate.

More than just control of the mayor’s office is at stake in that election. Among black leaders there is lingering grief over the death of Washington and a growing fear that the political muscle they gained under him could atrophy if whites recapture City Hall.

“I think the black community would feel somewhat devastated,” Davis said. “. . . We’d have to start building all over again.”

Tensions have been simmering ever since the chaotic days after Washington’s fatal heart attack in November, when blacks and whites on the City Council clashed bitterly over the selection of Eugene Sawyer as interim mayor. Although the dapper, soft-spoken Sawyer is black, black activists fought the choice. They viewed him as a puppet of a council faction of white ethnics and black conservatives tied to the old Democratic machine.

In recent weeks, a new wave of racial discord has washed over the city as whites and blacks feuded openly over the anti-Semitic, anti-Christian lectures of a controversial aide to Sawyer, Steve Cokely, and over a tasteless picture of Washington, depicting the late mayor dressed only in women’s lingerie.

When Cokely’s scattershot attacks on Jews and others came to light, black leaders were either silent or defended his free speech rights, while Sawyer waffled for five days before acceding to white demands for Cokely’s dismissal. And the mayor let almost two weeks go by before issuing an unequivocal condemnation of Cokely’s remarks.

But black leaders were far more assertive when it came to the painting they found offensive. Backed by a police posse, nine black council members barged into a private student showing at the prestigious School of the Art Institute, ripped the painting from the wall and carried it away. And in the confusion, some of the council members asserted, incorrectly, that the artist responsible for the picture was Jewish.

‘Reverse White Racism’

Father Andrew Greeley, a Roman Catholic priest, author and sociologist who lives in Chicago, said the two incidents betrayed a disturbing strain among some blacks of “a kind of reverse white racism, where you don’t hold people to the same standards as you hold everybody else to.”

Other observers saw the episodes more as political grandstanding than as misguided passion. The Art Institute raid was instigated, in large measure, by the black council members who supported Sawyer’s election and now are undergoing reprisals from activists in their communities.

“They are desperately trying to prove how black they are,” said Alderman David Orr, a white liberal who sided with the activists against Sawyer.

Alderman Lawrence Bloom, who is Jewish, said Sawyer was slow to deal with Cokely not because the mayor condoned his aide’s views, but because he viewed Cokely as a political asset with ties to black nationalist groups that have proved adept at getting out the black vote.

Critical Support

But Bloom said the tactics of Sawyer and other prominent blacks could end up losing them the critical support of white liberals--many of them Jews--that was key to Washington’s success at the polls. And, he said, they could end up pitting white and black political interests directly against each other at election time.

“Whoever is a black candidate is going to have to rely more and more on the black vote,” Bloom predicted. “And that may have a self-perpetuating aspect about it. Then they will have to do that much more to ignite the black vote. (And) it may have a reverse effect on white politicians . . . who say ‘the only way we’re going to take advantage of this chance is by electrifying white voters.’ ”

Although Washington enjoyed widespread Jewish support, some of the current problems may go back to his first election as mayor in 1983. Then, his Republican opponent, Bernard Epton, allowed many key backers to openly exploit white fears of a black takeover of the patronage-rich city government. Even though Epton was Jewish, most Jewish voters were appalled by his tactics and shunned him at the ballot box.

Exploit Differences

Black academics and journalists in Chicago, as well as many black civil rights activists, say they doubt that anti-Semitism runs deep through the black community here. But they generally agreed that political opportunists were angling to exploit differences between the two groups.

“It is almost as if they (black leaders) use Jews and whites interchangeably,” said Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, who is black.

Alderman Bloom blamed the tensions in part on the absence of strong leadership in the city to fill the inspirational void left by Washington’s death. “Without that kind of strong political leader--and no one is stepping up to stand in those shoes--then the media pay attention to those voices which are expressing themselves,” Bloom said. “And those, I don’t think, are reflective of the broader community.”

Didn’t Groom Successor

One reason for this is that Washington, like the city’s last strong mayor, Richard J. Daley, did not groom a successor.

“I don’t think he was inclined to think . . . in terms of who might replace him when he was gone,” said Alton Miller, who was Washington’s press aide and confidant. “He would say ‘I’m going to be mayor for 20 years,’ or . . . ‘I’m going to be running it from the grave.’ ”

“But Harold Washington is dead. Who will stand tall in his absence,” asked a Chicago Tribune editorial last week. “Mayor Eugene Sawyer has done what he does best: vacillated. Most black aldermen have spent more time playing the demagogue on television than behaving like leaders. White aldermen are hiding under their desks or somewhere. The business community seems to have more pressing business.

“There has been talk among some clergy of restoring harmony. But the voices of anger and distrust have so far drowned out those of love and trust.”

Evenly Split

One look at the political map of Chicago tells how difficult restoring harmony is going to be. Not only are the numbers of whites and blacks almost evenly split, but neighborhoods and council districts are largely defined by the color of skin or national origin of the residents.

Davis said the Balkanization of Chicago into ethnically and racially distinct political divisions only encourages politicians to aggravate tensions. “And because their community is all-black, it’s all-white or it’s basically all-German or it’s all-Italian or it’s all-Puerto Rican or it’s all-Mexican or whatever, people can get elected at the local office with a narrowly defined political agenda,” he explained.

Also contributing to tensions is a sense of frustration over continuing urban problems. The Chicago Tribune is currently documenting, in detail, the contention by U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett that Chicago’s schools are the worst in the nation. The local public housing agency, landlord to tens of thousands of blacks, is considered a fiscally irresponsible disaster by federal and local authorities alike. Public transit, so vital to the urban poor, has deteriorated steadily in the last decade.

‘They Feel Cheated’

“People in the black community came to believe that their plight was the result of the city being run by white racists,” Father Greeley said. “Political power was supposed to improve their lot, and it has not done so. . . . By and large, the transfer of the mayorality from white to black hasn’t improved the lots of blacks, and that makes for anger. They feel frustrated. They feel cheated.”

“The problem in Chicago is that most elected officials use their influence not for the public interest but for private, partisan (gain): ‘How do I build my ward organization? How do I get more money? How do I get more jobs?’ ” said Orr.

Vision, or lack thereof, is also cited as critical to the city’s emotional state by former Washington aide Alton Miller.

“Harold Washington, unlike any of the people who are scrambling for the pieces of what he left, (had) horizons that went well beyond the 50 wards of Chicago. . . . He was not himself a ward politician of any distinction,” Miller said. “ . . . So on the one hand he was able to look beyond all of those narrow, incestuous political traps that politicians fall into when their primary focus is inward instead of outward.

“Sawyer isn’t the politician that Harold was,” Miller added. “Harold, even while he was alive, achieved icon status. If he touched your lottery ticket, you had a better chance of winning.”