By Ben Joravsky
So much about city government has changed in the last few years that it sometimes seems Washington’s moment in history was only a dream. Those under 30 for whom the past is fuzzy and inconsequential might find it hard to even imagine a mayor like Washington, so vastly different was he in style, substance, and background from the current officeholder.
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“We’re going to reach out to [other communities], but this is the base,” he proclaimed to voters at a south-side church. “We don’t have to be ashamed of it. We’ve been through the crucible. We’ve been pushed around, shoved around, beat, murdered, emasculated, literally destroyed. There’s been an unfair distribution of all the goodies. No system works for us. We influence no institutions in this country except our own….But through this struggle we’ve stayed together. We’ve maintained equanimity. We’ve been courageous. We’ve become more understanding. We are humanitarian. We have elevated amazing grace to the level of art and now it’s our turn.”
“I often think about the conflicting feelings and hatred Harold’s election exposed,” says Price. “I know how much hope there was–I worked in the campaign. The rallies we had–artists for Washington, DuSable High graduates for Washington–we had a benefit Redd Foxx appeared at. People came in from all over the country for that campaign. It was so infectious. You’d be finishing up work and somebody would say, ‘Are you going to the rally?’ and I’d say, yeah, and I didn’t know which rally they were talking about–we just had to go. But the other things–the hatred, the fear. They made up so many stories about Harold, they tried to turn him into a demon. I remember going to a bar one night and standing next to a man, and you know how bigots in a bar can come on to you like they want to be your friend. This guy starts in on how he’s got nothing against black people but he knows things about Harold, and the next thing you know he’s talking about me. He starts saying, ‘I know his brother and he’s so and so,’ and I say, ‘Is that so?’ And he says, ‘Oh yes, it’s a fact.’ I often wonder about this hatred. Where does it come from and where has it gone?”
But Washington paid a dearer price. “He aged so much in those five years in office,” says Price. “He had the ability to make it seem as though it all just rolled off of him, but I know a lot of it hit hard. He was under a lot of stress. I don’t think Harold ever slept in his bed more than once or twice. He would come home late at night and eat and go to sleep in his La-Z-Boy–that’s where his weight gain really got out of hand. You’d call him late at night and he’d answer the phone. He wasn’t taking care of himself.”
“He liked to talk about history. He read all the time, he understood the past,” says Price. “He loved to talk. He liked words for what they did. I once accused him of making up words and he said, ‘Yeah, what’s wrong with that? People know that words are made by man–God doesn’t create words.’
