Responding to Wilkins’s questions, Wright spoke colloquially and bluntly. For black teenagers in Roseland, Wright said, “You can’t be what you ain’t seen. . . . So many of our young boys haven’t seen nothing but the gangs and the pimps and the brothers on the corner,” and in their daily lives “they never have their horizons lifted.” But Wright also emphasized black Americans’ lack of self-esteem. “If I can somehow be white: a lot of black people have that feeling. If I can somehow be accepted. And Africa is a bad thing. I’m not African. I’m not African. I’m part Indian. I’m part Chinese. I’m part anything.”
That part of Wright’s worldview would resonate deeply with Barack, but his perspective on the breadth and depth of American racism matched that of Martin Luther King Jr. “How do we attack a system, get at systemic evil and realize that it’s not the individuals, it’s the system,” he told Wilkins. “You hate the sin and not the sinner.” Wilkins closed the telecast with a prophetic description of Trinity’s importance. “This church will be measured by how much of its power will reach beyond its own doors, and by how much its members will reach back, back to those left behind.” The day of the broadcast, the Sun-Times told Chicagoans not to miss “a compelling and moving portrait of one Chicago clergyman who has made a difference.” Jeremiah Wright “sets a standard of excellence that should inspire clergy of all faiths.”
“The first time I walked into Trinity, I felt at home,” Barack later told Wright’s daughter Janet. Furthermore, Obama recalled, “there was an explicitly political aspect to the mission and message of Trinity at that time that I found appealing.” In their first 1987 conversation, Barack tried to sell Wright on DCP’s program. “He came with this Saul Alinsky community organizing vision,” Wright recounted years later. “He was interested in organizing churches,” yet Barack’s depth of knowledge about the black church was woeful indeed. “He didn’t know who J. H. Jackson was,” Wright remembered, naming the conservative, dictatorial president of the National Baptist Convention who pastored Chicago’s Olivet Baptist Church and was infamous for changing Olivet’s address from 3101 South Parkway to 405 East 31st Street when Parkway was renamed Martin Luther King Drive.
Wright remembers that Obama “had this wild-eyed idealistic exciting plan” of “organizing pastors and churches” all across Roseland in support of his Career Education Network. “I looked at him and I said, ‘Do you know what Joseph’s brother said when they saw him coming across the field?” Obama, utterly unfamiliar with the Bible, said no. “They said ‘Behold the dreamer.’ You’re dreaming. This is not going to happen,” Wright told him. “You’re in a minefield you have no concept about whatsoever in terms of trying to get us all to work together, even on something as important as the educational issues in the Roseland community,” Wright explained, citing the twin evils of denominational divides and local Chicago politics.
Given Wright’s busy schedule, that first conversation ended after an hour. But Obama soon returned, talking first with Donita before sitting down with Wright, who remembers he had “questions about this unknown entity, the black church, and its theology. . . . I had studied Islam in West Africa, and he wanted to know about that.” In addition, “we talked about the difference between theological investigation, rabbinic study, and personal faith, personal beliefs, and how I separated those two,” Wright recalled. “Our visits became more of that nature and that level than the community organizing piece, because I said, ‘That ain’t going to happen. If you mention my name, I can tell you preachers who are not coming in the Roseland area.’” That surprised Obama, and Wright also spoke about the black church’s “rabid anti-Catholic” sentiment. “We would spend time talking about religious stuff like that to help him understand that brick wall he’s running up against in terms of organizing churches.” So “most of the time . . . we talked about how insane” religious antipathies could be, “more so than community organizing.”
Barack continued to visit Wright in the months ahead, and their conversations gave Obama a greater understanding of why almost all of the people with whom he was working held their religious faith as a source of strength that could give them courage. It not only “bolstered them against heartache and disappointment” but could be “an active, palpable agent in the world,” undergirding their involvement by offering “a source of hope.” Witnessing that, Barack remembered, “moved me deeply” and “made me recognize that many of the impulses that . . . were propelling me forward were the same impulses that express themselves through the church.”45
Obama was even more warmly welcomed by Father Michael Pfleger at St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church in the Gresham neighborhood, well above DCP’s northern boundary. The thirty-eight-year-old Pfleger had been a seminary classmate of Holy Rosary’s Bill Stenzel, had first met Jerry Wright five years earlier in an Ashland Avenue barber shop, and was well acquainted with Deacon Tommy West, the energetic DCP member from St. Catherine’s who spent more time at St. Sabina than at his home church. Pfleger had grown up barely a mile west of St. Sabina on Chicago’s Southwest Side, and in 1966, at age seventeen, he had watched as an angry white mob attacked an open-housing march being led by Martin Luther King Jr. in Marquette Park, just a few blocks north. By 1987 Pfleger had been at St. Sabina for twelve years, and although his congregation was nowhere near the size of Trinity’s, no church in Chicago, and certainly not one with a white priest, offered as vibrant a Sunday service as Mike Pfleger did.
Years later, Pfleger recalled that Obama “came in and introduced himself and what he was doing.” He spoke about how churches “were the most powerful tool in the community for social justice and for equality” and how they should be actively pursuing those goals, not watching from the sidelines. “I was amazed by his brilliance,” Pfleger recalled; he was struck as well by “his aggressiveness.” Pfleger asked Barack “what was his church,” because “people that want to work with churches ought to be in a church.” Barack replied that “he was still looking, had been visiting some places, Trinity being one of them.” Pfleger had expected a twenty-minute conversation, “and it went much longer.” He offered Obama his full support, and after Barack left, Pfleger could remember “walking out of this room saying, ‘That’s somebody to be watched. He’s going places.’”46
For Obama, these early months of 1987 were intense as he expanded his horizons and added to his growing set of influential acquaintances. On March 2, in faraway Jakarta, Lolo Soetoro died of liver disease at age fifty-two. If Ann called Barack with the news—“they did not talk often,” Sheila recalled—he did not mention it to her or anyone else. He also “never talked that much about his dad” or his death to Sheila, and as best she could tell, “Barack’s father played virtually no emotional role in Barack’s life.” He continued his weekly conversations with Greg Galluzzo—an hour on March 4, ninety minutes each on March 13 and 20, another hour on March 24—and he also introduced his good friend Johnnie Owens to Galluzzo.
Barack and Johnnie had begun discussing whether Johnnie would leave Friends of the Parks and join Barack at DCP, but Owens needed a salary much like Barack’s $20,000, and that meant Barack would have to add the MacArthur Foundation as a funder in addition to CHD, Woods, and Wieboldt.
By mid-March, Barack’s most pressing concern was on the jobs front, and on Monday, March 23—just two weeks before Election Day—Mayor Washington was coming to Roseland to open the much-delayed new Far South Side jobs center that his employment deputy Maria Cerda had agreed to establish more than six months earlier. In the run-up to that ceremony, Barack dealt extensively with Salim Al Nurridin, a politically sophisticated Roseland figure whose Roseland Community Development Corporation (RCDC) was relatively low profile but whose long-standing acquaintance with one of Barack’s new mentors allowed for an easy introduction to this young organizer who was “under the tutelage of Al Raby.”
As a native of Altgeld, Salim knew Hazel Johnson, and he had significantly helped 9th Ward alderman Perry Hutchinson, now wel
l known for his star role in the FBI’s sting operation, win the seat he was now in danger of losing on April 7. Salim had become a Muslim under the influence of Roseland’s least-known figure of quiet political significance, Sheikh Muhammad Umar Faruqi, who oversaw a mosque on South Michigan Avenue, but Salim was not a Nation of Islam “Black Muslim.” The new jobs center would be located in a building that Faruqi and Roseland’s low-key Muslim community had acquired. Salim worked easily with Barack, whom he saw as “a very energetic and purposeful young man, with a passion to do things effectively.”
On that Monday morning, Washington and his two-man security detail arrived at the RCDC office at 33 East 111th Place. The mayor had been told he would be greeted by Loretta Augustine on behalf of DCP as well as Salim, and that Maria Cerda, Perry Hutchinson, DCP’s Dan Lee, and “Barac” Obama would be there as well. A city photographer snapped away as the hefty Washington, holding his own notes and with his trench coat thrown over his left arm, shook hands with local well-wishers as a beaming Loretta stood to his right clad in a handsome white coat. The mayor and Cerda listened carefully as Loretta thanked him for coming. One photograph captured Sheikh Faruqi a few paces behind Washington; three different photographs include a tall young man with a slightly bushy Afro standing in the rear of the small room, listening intensely to Washington and Loretta.
Obama would later quote the mayor as saying to Loretta: “I’ve heard excellent things about your work.” Then the entire group walked outside and turned south on South Michigan Avenue. With traffic blocked off and the sun in their faces, Washington and Loretta led the procession a little more than a block to the new office at 11220 South Michigan. Sheikh Faruqi trailed slightly to Loretta’s left; Cerda, 34th Ward aldermanic candidate Lemuel Austin, and state senator Emil Jones Jr. trailed to Washington’s right. At the front door of the new office, Washington, Cerda, Loretta, and a camera-hogging Perry Hutchinson posed with a white ribbon and a pair of scissors. The mayor spoke to the crowd, and then the ribbon was cut. The mayor climbed into his car for a short drive to 200 East 115th Street, where he broke ground for a future Roseland health center. Barack had emphasized repeatedly to Loretta that she should press Washington to attend a DCP rally for their Career Education Network program, but Loretta had not gotten a commitment.
In his own, overly dramatized retelling of the morning, Barack cursed in anger at her failing and stomped off while Dan Lee tried to calm him down. Loretta remembered no such scene, saying she had “never seen him angry” even when he must have been. “I’ve seen him drop his head,” but, beyond that, “he never showed it.” Tommy West agreed. “You could never see him angry.” Later that day, Barack had an initial appointment with a Hyde Park physician, Dr. David L. Scheiner, who would remember Obama exhibiting no emotional turmoil during his office visits.47
On March 28, four hundred former Wisconsin Steel workers attended a seventh-anniversary rally in South Chicago, where their pro bono lawyer, Tom Geoghegan, told them he hoped their lawsuit against International Harvester—which had just renamed itself Navistar—would soon go to trial. A day earlier Frank Lumpkin and others had picketed outside Navistar’s annual meeting at the Art Institute of Chicago. Envirodyne Industries, to which Harvester had sold Wisconsin before its sudden closing, was also suing Navistar, “alleging fraud and racketeering,” the Tribune noted. The U.S. Economic Development Administration had recouped a tiny portion of its $55 million loan to Envirodyne by selling the mill as scrap to Cuyahoga Wrecking for $3 million, but Cuyahoga went bankrupt before clearing the site, leaving the rusting shell of one mill as a haunting symbol of South Deering’s past. “Frank Lumpkin deserves a spot in the organizers’ hall of fame,” the Tribune rightly observed.
On April 2, Obama joined Mary Ellen Montes and Bruce Orenstein for a joint UNO–DCP press conference in response to Mary Ryan’s private approaches on behalf of Waste Management Inc. Barack, Lena, and Bruce had decided that playing hard to get—indeed, very hard to get—would maximize the price WMI had already indicated it was willing to pay to expand its Southeast Side landfill capacity. UNO and DCP publicly embraced a no-exceptions moratorium on any new or expanded landfills, while calling for WMI to “commit to a long-term reinvestment program” for the “economic development of neighborhoods around its landfills,” the Sun-Times reported. UNO and DCP were sending a clear message they were willing to make a deal, but WMI had to be generous in purchasing their assent.
The next day, Barack again met for an hour with Greg Galluzzo—in April, as in March, they would have five hours of conversation spread over four weekly meetings. Most of Chicago was consumed by the mayoral contest that would climax on April 7. Ed Vrdolyak was running a surprisingly populist, multiethnic campaign, while Tom Hynes seemed focused on trying to take down Vrdolyak rather than targeting Washington. The Tribune heartily endorsed the mayor, saying that “Chicago is in better shape today than it was when Mr. Washington took office” in 1983. Uppermost among Washington’s “unfinished business,” the paper pointedly added, was “helping depressed neighborhoods get better housing and more jobs.”
Two days before the election, Tom Hynes dropped out, in a strategic attempt to unite white voters behind Vrdolyak. On Election Day, Washington swept through Altgeld Gardens in a voter-turnout effort, and he ultimately triumphed with almost 54 percent of the vote. One poll showed him winning 15 percent of white voters and 97 percent of blacks. In Washington’s best precinct, Marlene Dillard’s London Towne Homes, a young 8th Ward precinct captain named Donne Trotter was given credit for the mayor winning 795 out of the 798 votes cast. Citywide, Ed Vrdolyak received 42 percent, which the Tribune noted was “better than anyone had predicted.” There also was no question that “the biggest loser” was Tom Hynes, whose sullying of the family name among black Chicagoans would redound in another election two decades later. Another loser was Alderman Perry Hutchinson, who was narrowly edged out by his predecessor, Robert Shaw, in what one observer termed “a choice between two snakes.” An indictment followed just six days later, and Hutchinson was soon on his way to federal prison, where he died at age forty-eight.48
Obama had attained such a glowing reputation among the CHD staffers at the Chicago archdiocese that Cynthia Norris, the thirty-year-old director of the Office of Black Catholic Ministries, requested that he conduct a training session for the eighteen delegates Chicago was sending to the National Black Catholic Congress in Washington in late May. Norris wanted the delegates to be well prepared to represent Chicago at the huge assembly, the first such gathering since 1894, and Obama trained them in the basement of Holy Name Cathedral, the famous diocesan seat just west of downtown’s Magnificent Mile.
At the end of April, Gamaliel hosted a second weeklong training session at Techny Towers in suburban Northbrook. DCP’s Margaret Bagby was among the forty or so community members who attended, along with Lena, Mike Kruglik, and CHD’s Renee Brereton, plus younger organizers such as Linda Randle. Augustana College senior David Kindler, a young trainee who had already gotten a taste of organizing work in the Quad Cities area where Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, face each other across the Mississippi River, would remember Mary Gonzales as the star performer among an otherwise all-male and largely macho cast of trainers: Greg Galluzzo, Peter Martinez, and Phil Mullins. “Hard-assed” and “maternal,” Mary was just “phenomenally good.” Barack took charge of at least two sessions, and Kindler would recall him as someone who “likes everybody to love him.”
Galluzzo wanted to nurture and develop new, full-time organizers, and he was regularly petitioning every possible foundation to contribute to the first-year salaries of beginning organizers, just as Kellman had done with CHD and Woods when he hired Barack. Galluzzo knew that organizers must develop “sensitivity, patience and inventiveness” and understand that “he or she is there as a facilitator” who has to motivate community organizations composed entirely of volunteers. “Since every church is an important potential organizing base,” G
reg said, “an organizer needs to know something of the theological and institutional characteristics of the churches in the community.”49
Barack’s top priority was still his Career Education Network, and his goal was to win Washington’s support for the program. Thanks to Al Raby’s introductions at City Hall, Barack had already spoken with Luz Martinez, a relatively junior aide, about a mayoral endorsement, and in early May a seven-page document entitled “Proposal for Career Education and Intervention Services in the Far South Side of Chicago” was sent to Washington with a cover letter bearing the names of DCP president Dan Lee and now “Executive Director” Barack H. Obama. The cover letter said DCP wanted “to identify concrete ways that we can positively impact our schools” and emphasized that they “are not seeking any City funding for our program,” although they did want the mayor’s “whole-hearted support and endorsement of our program” and requested that he meet with DCP leaders sometime in the next month. They also asked that Washington “keynote a large meeting of parents and church leadership,” which DCP hoped to convene in mid-June.
In Barack’s own letter to Luz Martinez, he volunteered that Al Raby might have already mentioned DCP’s request to her or to her immediate boss, Kari Moe. The proposal said the number of blacks graduating from college in Illinois had declined since 1975, and that the dropout rate at the five Far South Side high schools was more than 40 percent. The scale of what Obama and DCP envisioned was grandiose, with “two central offices” coordinating the work of staff representatives at each high school plus supplementary personnel in various churches and social service agencies. The document said the program would give “individualized attention to at-risk students” and offer “incentives for student performance.” It would be “administered by the Developing Communities Project,” would have thirteen full-time employees as well as twenty part-time tutors, and required an annual budget of $531,000. “State funds would be used to fund this first year of the program,” with corporate and foundation support increasing the projected budget to $600,000 and then $775,000 in the two subsequent years. Obama’s plan might have seemed familiar to anyone who recalled Jerry Kellman’s Regional Employment Network and its initial $500,000 in state funding, but in this case underperforming high school students were taking the place of unemployed steelworkers.
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