Mayor Harold Washington - Chicago's 41st Mayor

Mayor Harold Washington - Chicago's 41st Mayor Harold Washington, (born April 15, 1922, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died November 25, 1987, Chicago), American politician who gained national prominence as the first African American mayor of Chicago (1983–87). During World War II, Washington joined the army and served as an engineer in the South Pacific. After returning home in 1946, he graduated from Roosevelt University (B.A., 1949), earned a law degree from Northwestern University (1952), and established a private law practice in Chicago. He succeeded his father, a part-time Methodist minister, as Democratic precinct captain before working as a city attorney (1954–58) and a state labour arbitrator (1960–64). He then served in the Illinois House of Representatives (1965–76), the Illinois State Senate (1976–80), and the U.S. House of Representatives (1980–83). During his second term in Congress, Washington was persuaded by black leaders to enter the 1983 mayoral race in Chicago. Overcoming negative publicity—in 1970 his law license was suspended for failure to perform paid legal work and in 1972 he spent more than a month in jail for failing to file his federal income tax return for four years—and campaigning for reform and an end to city patronage, he won the Democratic nomination by upsetting incumbent Mayor Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley, the son of four-term mayor Richard J. Daley. In the general election Washington narrowly defeated Bernard Epton, a virtually unknown white Republican, in a record voter turnout tinged with racial overtones. Chicago retains its dubious title as one of the nation’s most segregated cities, according to two studies released Wednesday by the Chicago Urban League and by researchers at American University in Washington, D.C. A century after the start of the Great Migration and 50 years after the Kerner Commission Report declared “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal,” a quarter of Chicago’s 77 communities remain as racially and socioeconomically segregated as ever and undeniably unequal, according to the Chicago Urban League. "Sweet Home Chicago" Charles 'DJ' POP {Peace & Love} My Home 1980 ~ 1996