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Harold Lee Washington (April 15, 1922 – November 25, 1987) was an American lawyer and politician who was the 51st Mayor of Chicago. [1] Washington became the first African American to be elected as the city's mayor in April 1983. He served as mayor from April 29, 1983, until his death on November 25, 1987.
Nov 26, 1987 · Harold Washington, the first black Mayor of Chicago, the nation's third largest city, died today of a heart attack. He was 65 years old.
- Luis Gutiérrez
- John Sanders
- Dorothy Tillman
- Hermene Hartman
- Richard Dent
- Joan Harris
- Jesse Jackson
- Carol Moseley Braun
- Jacky Grimshaw
- Timuel Black
26th Ward alderman
He was human, like all of us. He had every frailty that every human being and politician has. But hell if I remember any of them. You wanted him to succeed because you felt he was fighting for you. And when he lost, you felt like you lost. That day, I remember getting a call from an alderman, one of the Vrdolyak 29, and he said, “My guy works at the fire department with the paramedics, and Washington is not going to make it. We should start thinking about how we put together a coalition for 2...
Senior cardiac surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital
We knew the mayor was coming. We didn’t know what condition he was in. All we knew is that they had needed to start CPR in his office and, as near as we could tell, they had not been able to get a meaningful heart rhythm back. They’d continued CPR all during the transfer. [When they arrived,] the emergency room physician looked at his monitor and said, “We’re not getting anywhere like this. Can you put him on the pump?” Which is short for the heart-lung machine. And we inserted tubing to drai...
3rd Ward alderman
I was at my office when I got word that Harold had a heart attack, and I went down to Northwestern Hospital. I went by the door to the room where they were working on him, and I will always remember seeing him lying up on that table. We sent somebody to try to find Roy Washington, his brother. [Washington’s fiancée] Mary Ella [Smith] came in, and we all went into a private room and joined hands and prayed. All the inner circle people, some aldermen, were there. We felt he was going to make it...
Special assistant to the chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago
I was totally caught off guard. And I went to Wayne [Watson, the vice chancellor] and I said, “Wayne, I’m going to close the office, and I want everyone to go home,” because I was nervous of riots downtown. Wayne said, “You can’t do that,” and I said, “Well, I’m doing it.” So I started walking the floors and saying, “You can leave work. I want everybody to go home.”
Chicago Bears defensive end
It wasn’t long before that day that I was with him. Because sometimes on my off days, I would just come down and hang out with him and have conversations in his office, or we went out to lunch. He loved soul food. I tried to get him to work out a few times, but he was like, “I don’t have much time.” He’d always say, “The workout is in the fight. I’m fighting people every day.” And there was so much fighting back then. Everybody was pissed off. You’ve got to clean things up those first two to...
Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs
Shortly after his first election, I received a call from somebody who was trying to set up his government and help him with the transition. The mayor wanted to put together a group of informal advisers, a kind of kitchen cabinet. We were unofficial. We didn’t really exist. We met with him maybe once a month for a couple of years, and I think what he wanted was to talk to people who didn’t have anything to gain from being in his inner circle, just people he thought he could rely on. We were a...
Civil rights activist and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition
I was in Kuwait on the way to Saudi Arabia when I got the word that Harold had died. The Secret Service took me to the side and told me. I cried. I just stopped and wept. When the sun is eclipsed at high noon, there’s disorientation. Chickens start screaming, and nature seems to be out of order. And in some sense, when Harold died, it was like that. There was no preparation for successors, no preparation except to have Harold for some more years. I had to figure out what to do. I was trying t...
Illinois state representative
Harold actually saved my political career, such as it was, because I sued the Democratic Party on reapportionment [in 1982]. I won the first verdict outside of the South on racial gerrymandering, and everybody told me I’d just committed political suicide, and that’s when Harold named me as his floor leader in Springfield. So I became assistant majority leader because of him at a time when I’d just won a case against the Democratic Party. [When he died,] it was like a member of your family had...
Director of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs
Since I had responsibility for the legislators, both Springfield and congressional, my job was to get them on the phone and inform them of the mayor’s passing. So that’s what I was doing, along with my staff. And they were very hard calls to make. I don’t know how I did it. For a lot of that weekend, it’s a blur. I think I was just robotic. I don’t even remember what I said. I don’t think I ate or slept until probably Sunday. I was in tears half the time. I couldn’t stop crying. As many conve...
Historian and Washington adviser
People lost their voice when he died. They lost the confidence and the determination that Harold represented. The coalitions that we had created between African Americans, liberal whites, Asians, and Hispanics had been broken, and each of those ethnic groups had to go out on its own. He almost had, in his own way, the attitude of a man who might have adopted him and who he adopted, Martin Luther King. There was a great deal of similarity in their styles, in being able to deal with the variety...
Nov 13, 2017 · Police Officer Curtis Jones stands as the lone guard outside the City Hall office of the late Mayor Harold Washington on the day he died at his desk Nov. 25, 1987.
Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, died of a heart attack in 1987 at age 65. Here’s a look back at his legacy.
Nov 25, 2022 · The city unexpectedly lost Harold Washington — its first Black mayor — 35 years ago today, Chicago. Tribune reporter Robert Davis noted Washington left “an indelible imprint on political ...
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Apr 11, 2024 · Harold Washington (born April 15, 1922, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died November 25, 1987, Chicago) was an American politician who gained national prominence as the first African American mayor of Chicago (1983–87).
