It was a powerful program, this cultural community, one more pliant than simple nationalism, more sustaining than
my own brand of organizing. Still, I couldn’t help wondering whether it would be enough to keep more people from
leaving the city or young men out of jail. Would the Christian fellowship between a black school administrator, say,
and a black school parent change the way the schools were run? Would the interest in maintaining such unity allow
Reverend Wright to take a forceful stand on the latest proposals to reform public housing? And if men like Reverend
Wright failed to take a stand, if churches like Trinity refused to engage with real power and risk genuine conflict, then
what chance would there be of holding the larger community intact?
Sometimes I would put such questions to the people I met with. They would respond with the same bemused look
Reverend Philips and Reverend Wright had given me. For them, the principles in Trinity’s brochure were articles of
faith no less than belief in the Resurrection. You have some good ideas, they would tell me. Maybe if you joined the
church you could help us start a community program. Why don’t you come by on Sunday?
And I would shrug and play the question off, unable to confess that I could no longer distinguish between faith and
mere folly, between faith and simple endurance; that while I believed in the sincerity I heard in their voices, I remained
a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to
accept a salvation too easily won.
The day before Thanksgiving, Harold Washington died.
It occurred without warning. Only a few months earlier, Harold had won reelection, handily beating Vrdolyak and
Byrne, breaking the deadlock that had prevailed in the city for the previous four years. He had run a cautious campaign
this time out, professionally managed, without any of the fervor of 1983; a campaign of consolidation, of balanced
budgets and public works. He reached out to some of the old-time Machine politicians, the Irish and the Poles, ready to
make peace. The business community sent him their checks, resigned to his presence. So secure was his power that
rumblings of discontent had finally surfaced within his own base, among black nationalists upset with his willingness to
cut whites and Hispanics into the action, among activists disappointed with his failure to tackle poverty head-on, and
among people who preferred the dream to the reality, impotence to compromise.
Harold didn’t pay such critics much attention. He saw no reason to take any big risks, no reason to hurry. He said he’d
be mayor for the next twenty years.
And then death: sudden, simple, final, almost ridiculous in its ordinariness, the heart of an overweight man giving
way.
It rained that weekend, cold and steady. In the neighborhood, the streets were silent. Indoors and outside, people cried.
The black radio stations replayed Harold’s speeches, hour after hour, trying to summon the dead. At City Hall, the lines
wound around several blocks as mourners visited the body, lying in state. Everywhere black people appeared dazed,
stricken, uncertain of direction, frightened of the future.
By the time of the funeral, Washington loyalists had worked through the initial shock. They began to meet, regroup,
trying to decide on a strategy for maintaining control, trying to select Harold’s rightful heir. But it was too late for that.
There was no political organization in place, no clearly defined principles to follow. The entire of black politics had