The Chicago Freedom Movement by Mary Lou Finley

Author:Mary Lou Finley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Impact on Politics

This movement generated creative power to advance independent politics. It did not start the impulse for independent politics in Chicago, but the movement propelled it forward. Breadbasket set up a political education class, out of which emerged Leon Davis and people like Alice Tregay, Janice Bell, Frank Watkins, Anna Langford, Lou Jones, and Peggy Smith Martin. Bill Cousins, Dick Newhouse, Charlie Chew, and Fred Hubbard won elections as independents. Congressman Ralph Metcalfe ultimately rebelled against the Daley political machine, and Harold Washington rebelled and eventually became mayor in 1983.9

And during that season of struggle, 1968, Dr. King was killed. Robert Kennedy was killed. The Democratic Convention in Chicago followed, and Daley exploded against Grant Park demonstrators. Out of that convention, Julian Bond went to another level of his leadership and visibility by being nominated a Democratic vice presidential candidate, but he had to decline because he was too young.

There was the Con-Con convention (Sixth Illinois Constitutional Convention) in 1969, with voices like Al Raby and Cliff Kelly.

Then came 1972. We were discussing a black political challenge in Chicago for the presidency. Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug led a revolt in New York, and Chisholm ran for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party—the first African American to run for president. We kept fighting for progressive politics, for inclusion; the Democratic Party had new rules for 1972 that we had worked for (known as the McGovern rules, because he had chaired the committee establishing them). These rules mandated that state delegations have a certain percentage of women and members of minority groups. But Mayor Daley would not accept the McGovern formula for inclusion, and his delegation did not meet the requirements. In Miami, at the Democratic National Convention, a progressive delegation from Chicago, cochaired by alderman William Singer and myself, unseated Mayor Daley and his people at about 9:00 p.m. that Friday. The next morning we had our first Saturday Operation PUSH meeting in our new (and current) national headquarters in Chicago, but at about 4:00 a.m. it was firebombed. It has been firebombed a total of three times. George McGovern rose as the Democratic nominee for president at that 1972 convention.

The seed that Dr. King planted grew into a tree of activism. And that tree has been watered by almost fifty years of Saturday morning meetings. There are branches of Breadbasket, then Operation PUSH, beyond Chicago; PUSH is in twenty-five cities. The Reverend Al Sharpton, twelve years old in 1972, joined the tree in New York City, and Reverend Bill Jones and Reverend H. H. Brookins in Los Angeles and Reverend Brown in Indianapolis also joined.

Fast-forward to 1983, the boycott of Chicago Fest. Chicago Fest was supposed to be Mayor Jane Byrne’s coronation. We had gotten her elected as mayor by breaking the back of the machine, but she was a big disappointment. We began to break away from fear, being locked into the machine. So we thought, how are we going to do this boycott? Because of

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