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13. HAROLD WASHINGTON: THE ENIGMA OF THE BLACK POLITICAL TRADITION William]. Grimshaw Mayor Harold Washington is described in a biographical sketch by Robert McClory as "a remarkable man of paradoxes and enigmas." 1 McClory, a former reporter for the Chicago Defender, the principal black newspaper, certainly knows his way around black political circles; but he admits that Washington baffles him. Says McClory: "At times he seems as wise as a serpent and at others as simple as a dove." 2 I will argue that the paradoxical imagery of the serpent and the dove provides illuminating insight into the enigmatic Harold Washington and the equally perplexing black political tradition. Since the Chicago Democratic machine's inception over a half century ago, blacks have been torn between a cultural antipathy to the machine's style of politics and a devastating array of social and economic circumstances which drive blacks into supporting the machine. The paradox is not well understood by students of Chicago's politics because no other ethnic group in the city's modern history has experienced the conflict to the extent blacks have. To speak of the black political tradition, then, is to speak of a unique political tradition in the city's recent history. It is a complex tradition to comprehend because it is at odds with itself; cultural values pull blacks in one direction while social and economic needs push them in an opposing direction. The tradition also is difficult to understand because it is so at odds with the political machine tradition which has so thoroughly dominated Chicago's politics until just recently. Harold Washington personifies the torn black political tradition. His roots are deeply embedded in an intensely personal way in the torn tradition. Washington 's own father, Roy, for many years had to manage the paradoxical roles of serving his community as a Protestant minister while serving the Democratic machine as one of its ward leaders, combining, as it were, the roles of the serpent and the dove. 179 WILLIAM J. GRIMSHAW The personal heritage is profoundly important because the bond between Washington and his father was extraordinarily warm and firm. The mayor had a relationship with his father that many fathers dream of but few achieve. He has described his father as his "one and only hero in life," as "a real man, a good man," and "my role model." 3 Thus, the path Washington has followed in his political career is essentially the footsteps his father laid down years ago in the Third Ward: to be a good man while working in the serpentine world of Chicago's politics. At the cultural core of the torn black political tradition is the elemental fact that black politics is deeply rooted in the teachings of the church. During a long and arduous history of economic, social, and political segregation and discrimination , the one critical institution to which blacks had access was the church. The church was the sanctuary; it nurtured, and it instructed. The instruction included an extraordinary set of premises for political action. An elementary aspect of the creed is that action ought to be based on principle. Another basic aspect is the belief in universal brotherhood. These principles stand in the sharpest opposition to the machine tradition of politics. The machine tradition dictates that action ought to be taken on the basis of expediency . This requires a calculation of self-interest and consequences, instead of adherence to principle and leaving the outcome in ethereal hands. The machine is no less fundamentally committed to inequality. Those who support the machine are rewarded, while those who oppose it are punished. It is a simple matter to see how the black community's social isolation and poverty figure in the machine's success. Machine politics has been described as a "system of organized bribery," 4 an exchange of benefits for votes, and in communities of high need and low resources, the machine finds the largest number of takers. Yet for blacks, schooled politically by the church, machine politics presents a dilemma; cultural antipathy wrestles with economic necessity for control. A compelling case can be made for the tom black political tradition by examining black political behavior over the past fifty years, beginning with the creation of the machine in 1931 and culminating in Mayor Washington's election in 1983. The evidence will be presented in terms of four distinctive stages of black political behavior. Stage one is entitled Transformation and Contradiction, 'which encompasses the first twenty...

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