Washington's legacy

Since Mayor Harold Washington's death last November numerous attempts have been made to define and measure his legacy. Most have centered around Washington's efforts to reform Chicago city government. I believe, however, that his greatest legacy was energizing and mobilizing black voters, who had been dormant until February of 1983. I can remember being involved in numerous city campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s and lamenting the depressed black voter turnout. It was doubly frustrating, since the black vote that did turn out supported the status quo. When I asked one of my black construction worker friends to explain it, he just smiled and said, "The whip just changes hands. It don't make no difference who's holding it." The reform candidates that I supported were apparently not trusted to understand and relate to blacks.

In a chapter of the book The Making of the Mayor: Chicago 1983 (Eerdmans), Professor Michael Preston examines the relatively low level of black participation in Chicago politics until 1983. As Professor Preston argues and as the data in table 1 show, black voters before 1983 had never reached their voting potential.

It is important to remember that Washington was also a candidate for mayor in 1979. No one gave him a chance, however, and as a result black voters split their votes.

With the vaunted Chicago machine having already been defeated in 1979 by Jane Byrne, the campaign of 1983 offered a potent combination: Harold Washington, who could inspire and energize the black electorate, who now believed they could win, and two white candidates to divide the white vote. Washington turned the 1983 election into a crusade, with all of the religious fervor the term implies. In fact,

July 1988 | Illinois Issues | 38

much of the campaign's "Get Out the Vote" effort was run out of the churches. Black turnout changed with the realization that they had a viable alternative to another white politician, no matter how sincere. Electing a black to a major office signifies that the benefits of the office can be theirs; it is an overpowering symbol.

More recently, black voter turnout, while diminishing somewhat from the fever pitch levels of 1983, did not recede to the pre-Washington era levels.

The data in table 2 show that, in the general elections of 1986, black voters in Illinois (the great majority of whom reside in Chicago) were registering and voting in higher proportions than those in other midwest and northeast states. Only in the southern states of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi did black registration and turnout meet or exceed Illinois levels.

In an article analyzing the 1987 mayoral vote for the Chicago Sun-Times I noted that Washington's reelection effort benefitted from a larger-than-average drop in white voter turnout (down 16 percent from 1983 in predominantly white wards). While it's true that turnout in the predominantly black wards of the city dropped 12 percent from 1983 levels, I suspect that this was due to the fact that Washington was expected to win, and the emotion of the 1983 effort could not be sustained.

The question that now faces Chicago blacks is whether or not they will sustain their high level of turnout without the inspiring presence of Harold Washington. The presidential election this November could hang in the balance.□

Richard Day has his own survey research fim. Richard Day Research in Evanston. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

July 1988 | Illinois Issues | 39