Chicago/Names cont.

MANUEL GALVAN

Migration and representation
transforming the city council
and the county board
By MANUEL GALVAN

The migration of ethnic groups through Chicago and into the suburbs has transformed the area's complexion over the decades. The makeup of both the city and Cook County governments is also changing. During the next two years both city and county residents are in for more changes. New battles will emerge as power shifts, especially for Cook County with its board for the first time to be elected from single-member districts.
Voters this year will elect Cook County Board commissioners from 17 new single districts. The number of African Americans on the board is expected to rise from four to five. The number of Hispanics is expected to rise from one to two. Next year Chicago voters will elect aldermen from new wards that will most likely increase the number of African-American council members to 20 from 18. Hispanic seats are expected to rise to seven from four.
The increase in representation for minorities, particularly Hispanics, will better reflect their population numbers and potential for growth. The changes, which today are taken for granted, would not have come about without the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, renewals to the act and lawsuits.
While legal challenges to redistricting may still be de rigueur, there are signs of change. Cook County's new districts set a precedent: They had bipartisan support and triggered no lawsuits. "We took a lot of testimony," said Peter Creticos, who served as special projects director in the Office of the President of the Cook County Board. "The Districting Committee map adopted generally the configuration proposed by the Urban League and MAULER' (the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund).
For much of this century, even after the Voting Rights Act, it was not uncommon for a politician of one ethnic group to represent another group that made up a majority of his district. Vito Marzullo, the late and long-time alderman of the 25th Ward on Chicago's lower west side, was a classic example.
A native of Italy, he moved into the neighborhood as a youth when the Irish and Germans were being replaced by immigrants from Poland, Lithuania and Czechoslovakia. Around 1920, when Marzullo was a fresh, precinct captain, the Czech majority began calling the heart of its community "Pilsen" after the Bohemian city. Yugoslavians, Italians and a new wave of Germans replaced the Czechs. More Poles replaced them and by 1953 when Marzullo became alderman, the Mexicans were replacing everyone. In 1980, Hispanics accounted for 78 percent of the neighborhood, but Marzullo remained alderman. It wasn't until the mid-1980s that redistricting did what elections had not: Marzullo was replaced as alderman by Juan Soliz, a Mexican-American lawyer.
As the city's black and Hispanic populations grew, and the children of European immigrants intermarried, labels by country of origin were replaced with "white." Often too broad a term, "white" Chicagoans were sometimes "lakefront liberals" or "ethnics." Lakefront voters are not so liberal in their voting patterns anymore. "Ethnics," which usually meant Catholic Democrats of European background, steadily moved out of the city.
Today, city and county populations are usually broken down into "white, black and Hispanic." However, a check of the 1990 census for "ancestry" and a similar survey of the Chicago City Council and the Cook County Board reveals a somewhat different picture.
• African Americans are Chicago's and the council's largest population. They comprise 39 percent of the city population and 36 percent of the council membership. The city's second largest popula-
34/January 1994/Illinois Issues

tion is Mexican at 13 percent; however, they rank sixth in the council at a disproportionate 4 percent (Mexicans are part of the Hispanic population, but ancestry breakdowns allow this comparison).
• Chicago's third largest ancestry is German at 10 percent. Fourth is Polish, 9 percent, and fifth, Irish, also 9 percent. Italians are sixth at 4 percent. Because the census recognizes multiple ancestry, the same individual can be counted in more than one group. Except for African Americans, the City Council's makeup is disproportionate to its city population. The council's second largest ancestry group is Polish at 24 percent. Irish are third with 20 percent, Italians fourth with 10 percent, Germans fifth with 8 percent.
• In Cook County African Americans are also the largest group at 26 percent. Germans are second at 17 percent. The Irish are third with 13 percent, the Polish fourth with 12 percent, Mexicans fifth with 9 percent and Italians sixth with 7 percent. On the Cook County Board, African Americans are tied for first with the Irish at 24 percent. Germans place second with 18 percent. The Polish and Italians tie for third at 12 percent. Mexicans follow with 6 percent.
While the 50-member city council is expected to become even more representative of Chicago's population after the 1995 election, the Cook County Board could see a split with racial undertones after this year's election. Cook County, unlike Chicago, has a strong Republican party within its suburban areas. There will be 10 Democratic and five Republican districts. Two others will be swing districts, one taking in the northwest city plus suburban territory and the other Chicago's north side and the suburban North Shore.
Republicans on the board have traditionally voted to support the controversial institutions, such as Cook County Hospital and the Cook County Department of Corrections. Under the new system, what will motivate conservative, suburban commissioners to support a hospital and a jail that are not utilized by their constituents? As funding becomes tighter and the growing pains of "a changing county" strain relations, there exists the possibility that government issues will be turned into "us and them" battles.
Manuel Galvan is a Chicago-based writer and marketing consultant.

Names cont.

Continued from 32

As president of WIU, he will oversee an operating budget of $64 million and a campus of 13,000 students. He succeeds Ralph Wagoner, who stepped down in June to accept the presidency of Augustana College in South Dakota. "In an era when much of American higher education has faced severe criticism about its efficiency and effectiveness, and about its fundamental purpose, Western has maintained its historic strengths and an admirable clarity of vision," said Spencer.

Spencer served as acting provost, assistant professor and associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Montana and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. A graduate of Illinois College in Jacksonville, Spencer earned a master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

Robert Wedgeworth

Wedgeworth named
U of I librarian
Robert Wedgeworth of Champaign was named university librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on November 12 by the U of I Board of Trustees. He had been serving as interim university librarian since September of 1992.
Prior to his joining the U of I library, Wedgeworth was dean of Columbia University's School of Library Service from 1985 to 1992 and before that he was executive director of the American Library Association from 1972 to 1985. He also taught at Rutgers University for three years. Wedgeworth earned a master's degree from the U of I in library science. He is president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions an is cochair of an advisory committee on copyright registration and deposit.

The U of I Library has nearly 15 million items and 38 departmental libraries, and it is the third largest academic library in the country.

Hammersberg wins
technologist award

Suzanne Hammersberg of Orland Park, dean of health and human services at Moraine Valley Community College, Palos Hills, was awarded the Technologist of the Year Award by the American Society of Clinical Patholo-gists on November 3.

Prior to joining Moraine College, Hammersberg was dean of instruction and professor of allied health technologies for Miami-Dade Community College in Miami, Fla. She is also the former director of the Medical Technology Program and associate professor of pathology for the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, D.C., and was chairman of the Medical Technology Department at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans.

She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse and a master's degree and doctorate from George Washington University. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, American University Women, American Society of Allied Health Professionals and is currently co-editor of the "Professional Perspectives" column in Laboratory Medicine magazine.

Elmer and Annette Rahn

Carroll County couple
named top young farmer
Elmer and Annette Rahn of Mount Carroll received the 1993 Illinois Farm Bureau Young Farmer Award on November 28. The award recognizes the Rahns for their dedication and efforts in farming and leadership.
The Rahns and their children, Justin, Cor-rey, Darrin and Rachel, farm nearly

500 acres near Mount Carroll in Carroll County, raising soybeans, corn and hay. They also have a purebred Simmental cow-calf herd, from which they sell purebred breeding stock, and a feeder cattle operation.

The Rahns have been involved in the county Farm Bureau Young Farmers committee since graduating from high school. They were chosen from a field of four statewide finalists. As winners, the Rahns will receive 80 hours use of a Case-IH MAXXUM tractor and an expense-paid trip to the 1994 American Farm Bureau Federation annual meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in late January as representatives from Illinois.

They will also receive trips to the annual meeting of GROWMARK Inc., a farmer supply cooperative, next September and to the Illinois Farm Bureau's statewide Young Farmers Conference, both in Chicago, as well as a three-year membership in the Illinois Corn Growers Association.

James Pollock and Beverley Scobell

Top of page

January 1994/Illinois Issues/35

Illinois Periodicals Online (IPO) is a digital imaging project at the Northern Illinois University Libraries funded by the Illinois State Library