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eVideo Kanopy

Punch 9 for Harold Washington

Summary

Barack Obama moved to Chicago in 1985, in part, because of a man he'd never met: Harold Washington. The first black mayor of a major U.S. city, Washington created a broad coalition across America's most segregated metropolis on an inclusive platform whose progressive values are still being championed today. Following the 20 year reign of Richard J. Daley, Chicagoans appeared fed up with the machine politics that had defined their city in the national imagination. After a promising but ultimately disappointing term from Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, the city's Black leaders recruited Washington to mount an effort to unseat her. In one of the dirtiest political campaigns in American history, in a city rife with corruption and discrimination, Harold Washington took on the deeply-entrenched machine, and a shameful realignment of the city's White democrats with the Republican candidate, to become the 51st mayor of Chicago.

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