Washington, Harold

Source:

 African American National Biography

Washington, Harold

(15 Apr. 1922–25 Nov. 1987),

politician and mayor of Chicago, was born on the South Side of Chicago, the son of Roy Lee Washington, a stockyard worker, and Bertha Jones, a domestic worker. Harold Washington attended a Benedictine boarding school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, until the age of six. He was then enrolled in Chicago public schools but dropped out of high school after his junior year to take a job in a meatpacking plant. His father, who had become an attorney and a precinct captain for the Democratic Party in Chicago's largely African American Third Ward, secured a job for Washington at the Chicago office of the U.S. Treasury Department. In 1941 he married Dorothy Finch. They had no children and divorced in 1950.

Following U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941, Washington was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was stationed in the South Pacific with the Air Force Engineers, and he took enough correspondence courses between missions to receive his high school equivalency diploma.

After the war Washington enrolled in Roosevelt College in Chicago, an experimental new college that was one of the few in the country to be fully integrated. He excelled at Roosevelt and was the first African American elected senior class president. He graduated in 1949 with a bachelor's degree in Political Science.

After graduating from Roosevelt, Washington entered Northwestern University Law School, where he was the only African American in his class. He earned his law degree in 1952, then entered into practice with his father. When Roy Washington died the following year, Ralph Metcalfe, an alderman and Democratic Party committeeman, hired the junior Washington to replace his father as captain of his precinct.

Washington quickly won favor with the Chicago Democratic machine, effectively turning out the vote for Metcalfe and other Democratic candidates. As head of the Third Ward's Young Democrats, Washington became a valued member of the Chicago Democratic Party machine for his ability to cultivate young black party leaders. In return, he was rewarded with jobs as an assistant corporation counsel for the city from 1954 to 1958 and as an arbitrator for the Illinois Industrial Commission from 1960 to 1964.

In 1964 Washington campaigned for and was elected state representative for the Third Ward. Once in office, he began to establish his independence from the Chicago political machine, then dominated by Mayor Richard J. Daley. Washington first broke with city Democratic leaders in the late 1960s, when he sponsored a bill to create a police review board with civilian participation. At the same time he began to establish himself as a civil rights advocate, further distancing himself from the white-dominated Daley machine. As a member of the state legislature he supported the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, worked to strengthen the Fair Employment Practices Act, and in 1969 helped establish the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus. In 1976 Washington was elected to the state senate despite opposition from a machine candidate.

In 1977 Washington made a decisive break from the Chicago Democratic organization by campaigning for the mayoralty in the special election that followed Daley's death. Despite a drubbing in the Democratic primary, in which he received less than half the black vote, Washington vowed to carry on the fight against the machine. “I'm going to do what maybe I should have done ten or twelve years ago,” he announced. “I'm going to stay outside that damn Democratic organization and give them hell.” True to his word, Washington returned to the state senate and continued to push reform legislation that was well to the left of the Chicago party's wishes.

In 1980 Washington successfully challenged a machine loyalist in the election for a seat representing Chicago in the U.S. Congress. In the House of Representatives he emerged as a leading figure in the Democratic Party's embattled liberal wing. He served as secretary of the Congressional Black Caucus and sponsored legislation that extended the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for African Americans to challenge discriminatory electoral practices. On foreign policy issues, Washington sought to reverse the military buildup championed by President Ronald Reagan. He supported an end to the production of nuclear weapons, opposed U.S. military intervention in Central America, and called for a 20 percent reduction in defense spending.

During his first term in Congress, Washington was approached by several Chicago political groups that were eager to draft a black candidate for the mayoral election in 1983. Washington agreed on the condition that a massive voter registration campaign be carried out before the election. The groups undertook the challenge, adding more than 130,000 new voters, many of them African Americans. Satisfied that the electoral base was now sufficient to make his campaign viable, Washington announced his candidacy.

Harold Washington, shown in his office in Chicago's city hall, in an undated photograph. (AP Images.)

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In the Democratic primary Washington faced the incumbent mayor Jane Byrne and State's Attorney Richard M. Daley, son of the former mayor. Washington won the primary with a plurality of 36 percent of the vote to Byrne's 34 percent and Daley's 30 percent. Washington's grassroots campaign earned him 85 percent of the votes cast by African Americans, who constituted approximately 40 percent of the electorate.

In the general election Washington's challenger was Republican Bernard Epton, an attorney and former Illinois state legislator, who capitalized on the wrath of a large segment of Chicago's white population. Washington nonetheless eked out a victory with 51.5 percent of the vote to become the city's first African American mayor. His support came overwhelmingly from black, Latino, and white liberal voters.

Washington's victory inaugurated a four-year period of factional struggle within the city council. The “Council Wars,” as they came to be known, featured white opposition to Washington's attempts to reform Chicago's system of political patronage and diversify the city's political leadership. The white majority on the city council, led by Aldermen Edward Vrydolyak and Ed Burke, succeeded in blocking many of Washington's initiatives. Yet the new mayor was able to achieve passage of several laws that severely weakened the power of the white Democratic machine. His most important accomplishment was the Shakman Decree, which outlawed patronage hiring and firing of municipal employees. He successfully instituted a $1,500 limit on campaign contributions from companies with city contracts, and he added scores of women and minorities to the city administration, including Chicago's first black police chief. Washington effectively ended the system of political patronage that had dominated Chicago's governance for most of the twentieth century. Some of his critics, including television anchor Walter Jacobson and Aldermen Vrydolyak, Burke, and Richard Mell, though, charged that he only redistributed political spoils to a new elite of black and Latino politicians and bureaucrats.

In 1987 Washington was challenged by Byrne in the Democratic primary and by Vrydolyak, running as an independent, in the general election. With more than 99 percent of black voters casting their ballots for Washington, he easily outpolled his opponents, taking 54 percent of the vote in both races. Only seven months after his reelection, Washington died in Chicago.

A pivotal figure in African American politics, Washington initiated a wave of black electoral insurgency that resulted in the election of African American mayors in many of the largest cities in the United States. His success in dismantling the Chicago political machine made him a pivotal figure in the history of the city as well. Though he was a consummate politician and a product of the political system he ultimately dismantled, Washington destroyed an old system of urban governance and helped change the process as well as the face of American politics.

This entry is taken from the American National Biography and is published here with the permission of the American Council of Learned Societies.

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