HAROLD WASHINGTON,
Late Mayor of the City of Chicago

The Chicago Democratic Political Machine (Part 4)
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But there was an erosion that began to take place. A rather subtle thing that people simply couldn't read at first. The vote totals began to go down in the black community and no one could say why. The white press was content saying that "black folks are apathetic", the easy way out, "they're lazy". But on closer examination we began to find out that that wasn't apathy, it was a protest. And blacks to a great extent had been systematically turned off against this awesome thing, which they felt they couldn't defeat, felt they couldn't fight, and felt that if they fought they couldn't win. In other words, there was no place to go, and so there has been a systematic turnoff. Now, I'm not trying to give excuses for people who just don't want to get involved, I'm talking about trends and tendencies, based upon my own research, which has been rather incisive and rather all inclusive over the years. But this began to move and generate, and around 1975 it became very clear that black people had just about bowed out to great extent from the political process in so far as local elections were concerned.

Then, some other things happened. In 1972, Ed Hanrahan, who had been the state's attorney, was responsible for the assassination, in my opinion, of two fine young black men: Mark Clark and Fred Hampton. And he was nailed by the press, there was no question about it, and the machine insisted on endorsing this man, notwithstanding the tremendous outcry of opposition from our community. And so, lo and behold, he was put up at the polls, and blacks, almost to a person turned against the party, and voted for the Republicans, just unheard of in those days, and defeated Mr. Hanrahan, that was in 1972. Congressman Ralph E. Metcalf, one of my predecessors to the office of Congress, a folk hero, famous track star of the years, had been in the machine since 1951. I had joined him in 1952, partly because I thought he was the kind of person who would be able to make some incremental changes in the party. But anyway, he moved through the machine, and in 1970, he was selected to replace Bill Dawson, which he did. I was his campaign manager for that campaign. Over a period of four years, he and Mayor Daley became disenchanted, and finally there was a great breach, and Daley, to make a long story short, tried to dump Congressman Metcalf. When he tried, the community rose up in alarm, not because they so much loved Ralph Metcalf, he was one of the Silent Six, and had been dubbed so. We thought he was a rather pedestrian operator. But, the feeling was that he belonged to us, that if we hadn't chose him, we at least approved of him and that no person outside our community had the right under any sanction to come and say whom we would support for office. To make a long story short, once again the community rose up and defeated Mr. Metcalf's opposition overwhelmingly.

So there was some rumbling, and there was some movement, and there was some concern. At the same time you were getting a series of independent candidates throughout the city, in the black community, rather, who were fighting the machine and winning. A series of aldermen, black alderman, defeating machine candidates, state representatives began to defeat candidates; state senators were defeating candidates. But at the same time, the vote was going down. So blacks were expressing disenchantment in two ways. One, by voting for the opposition at Democratic primaries, and two, by a substantial number of them just simply not voting at all.