Harold Washington
1922 — 1987 · First African American mayor of Chicago; congressman from Illinois's first district from 1981 to 1983; died in office during his second mayoral term
Harold Lee Washington was born on the fifteenth of April 1922 in Chicago, Illinois, the fourth and youngest child of Roy Washington Sr. — a Methodist minister and lawyer who was among the first Black Democratic precinct captains in the city — and Bertha Washington. Raised on Chicago's South Side, he came of age in a household where faith, law, and ward politics were the daily language, an inheritance that would shape the whole of his public life.
During the Second World War he served in the United States Army Air Forces in the Pacific, rising to first sergeant. Returning home, he earned a bachelor's degree from Roosevelt University in 1949 and a law degree from Northwestern University in 1952, then entered practice and the reform politics of his father's tradition. He served in the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois State Senate before being elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he represented Illinois's first congressional district from 1981 to 1983.
In 1983 Washington built a historic coalition and won the office of mayor of Chicago, becoming the first African American to hold it. His tenure — marked by the fierce "Council Wars" and by his insistence on open government, fair hiring, and neighborhood investment — reshaped who belonged in the halls of the city's power. Re-elected in 1987, he governed with growing authority until his sudden death in office on the twenty-fifth of November 1987.
He opened a door that had been shut, and a great city has never fully closed it since. May Harold Washington be honored, and long remembered.
References
- Harold Washington - Wikipedia
- Mayor Harold Washington Biography | Chicago Public Library
- Harold Washington | Chicago mayor, civil rights activist, lawyer | Britannica
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