A01=Gordon K. Mantler
AIDS awareness
Al Raby
Author_Gordon K. Mantler
Black activism and politics
Black mayors
Bobby Rush
Category=JBSL
Category=JPA
Category=NHK
Cha-Cha Jimenez
Chicago machine
Chicago politics
Chicano movement
Chicano movement in Chicago
Chuy Garcia
civil rights in Chicago
conservatism
Daley machine
Democratic Party
Ed Vrdolyak
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Eugene Sawyer
Fred Hampton
freedom struggle in Chicago
gay rights movement in Chicago
grassroots activism
Harold Washington
Helen Shiller
immigrant rights
Jane Byrne
Jesse Jackson
Latino activism and politics
Linda Coronado
Marion Stamps
multiracial coalition
Nancy Jefferson
police violence
Protest at the Polls
Ralph Metcalfe
Richard M. Daley
Ronald Reagan
Rudy Lozano
Slim Coleman
urban politics
urban renewal
voter registration
Young Lords
Product details
- ISBN 9781469673851
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 155 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 14 Mar 2023
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In April 1983, a dynamic, multiracial political coalition did the unthinkable, electing Harold Washington as the first Black mayor of Chicago. Washington's victory was unlikely not just because America's second city was one of the nation's most racially balkanized but also because it came at a time when Ronald Reagan and other political conservatives seemed resurgent. Washington's initial win and reelection in 1987 established the charismatic politician as a folk hero. It also bolstered hope among Democrats that the party could win elections by pulling together multiracial urban voters around progressive causes. Yet what could be called the Washington era revealed clear limits to electoral politics and racial coalition building when decoupled from neighborhood-based movement organizing.
Drawing on a rich array of archives and oral history interviews, Gordon K. Mantler offers a bold reexamination of the Harold Washington movement and moment. Taking readers into Chicago's street-level politics and the often tense relationships among communities and their organizers, Mantler shows how white supremacy, deindustrialization, dysfunction, and voters' own contradictory expectations stubbornly impeded many of Washington's proposed reforms. Ultimately, Washington's historic victory and the thwarted ambitions of his administration provide a cautionary tale about the peril of placing too much weight on electoral politics above other forms of civic action—a lesson today's activists would do well to heed.
Drawing on a rich array of archives and oral history interviews, Gordon K. Mantler offers a bold reexamination of the Harold Washington movement and moment. Taking readers into Chicago's street-level politics and the often tense relationships among communities and their organizers, Mantler shows how white supremacy, deindustrialization, dysfunction, and voters' own contradictory expectations stubbornly impeded many of Washington's proposed reforms. Ultimately, Washington's historic victory and the thwarted ambitions of his administration provide a cautionary tale about the peril of placing too much weight on electoral politics above other forms of civic action—a lesson today's activists would do well to heed.
Gordon K. Mantler is associate professor of writing and history and executive director of the University Writing Program at George Washington University. He is author of Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960–1974.
