Rising Star

by David Garrow

  By mid-February, UNO, hoping to take the lead in Chicago’s fractured school reform movement, distributed a twenty-nine-page proposal to compete with a much more detailed plan championed by Don Moore’s Designs for Change, Sokoni Karanja, and Al Raby from Haymarket. DCP was listed as an organizational backer of UNO’s plan, but no DCP member was among the twelve names credited with preparing the document. Danny Solis, Peter Martinez, and Lourdes Monteagudo, an elementary school principal now working closely with UNO, were among them, as was an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Bill Ayers, who had arrived there six months earlier and met both Danny and Anne Hallett the previous fall. Acknowledging that “good schooling is an expensive proposition,” the UNO proposal called for the hiring of an astonishing 14,563 additional educators for Chicago’s elementary schools, at a cost of $442 million. UNO envisioned an annual CPS budget increase of $584 million, and called for a $481 million increase in state funding to support it.

  On February 18, the same day that the Sun-Times gave the proposal prominent coverage, UNO and DCP brought busloads of members to a school reform hearing at board of education headquarters, but the overflow crowd intimidated officials and the meeting was adjourned. Soon a third major plan, this one backed by Fred Hess’s Chicago Panel, Gwendolyn LaRoche from the Chicago Urban League, and Patrick Keleher from Chicago United, joined the confusing fray. DCP concentrated on getting its Career Education Network off the ground, with Obama and Owens hiring an African American woman in her early thirties, Cassandra Lowe, who had been working as a college recruiter for nearby St. Xavier University, to oversee it. By early March, afternoon counseling sessions for fifty or so high school students were finally under way at Reformation Lutheran and at Our Lady of the Gardens. Asked about DCP’s 1987–88 change from an employment emphasis to its new concentration on secondary schooling, Owens explained that “the focus shifted to the more fundamental question of preparing people for jobs in a changing society.”72

  By the end of February, Barack had to decide both about law school and about making his long-mulled trip to Kenya before the fall 1988 academic year began. His sister Auma had returned home from Heidelberg and would eagerly host a midsummer visit.

  Barack later would write that he applied to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, but he also applied elsewhere, including to Northwestern University’s law school, right in downtown Chicago. Acceptance letters had arrived from both Harvard and Northwestern, but with one huge difference: Harvard’s financial aid package would require him to take out loans of well over $10,000 a year, while Northwestern’s offer, the Ronald E. Kennedy Scholarship, would allow him to attend a top-twenty law school in Chicago for free. Debating his choice of school, Barack asked Jean Rudd and Ken Rolling at the Woods Fund about attorneys from whom he could seek advice. Jean’s husband Lionel Bolin was a descendent of a famous African American family, a 1948 graduate and now a trustee of prestigious Williams College, and a successful broadcast executive who, after serving in the U.S. military, had graduated from low-cost New York Law School. Woods Fund board member George Kelm, a low-key civic activist, had been managing partner of a prominent Chicago law firm, Hopkins and Sutter, before becoming president of the Woods family’s Sahara Enterprises investment firm.

  Barack “was trying to make a strategic choice about which school,” Jean Rudd recalled, and Jean and Ken remember Barack telling them about Northwestern’s full-scholarship offer. George Kelm was a Northwestern Law School alumnus and a past president of its alumni association, and he strongly advised Barack against attending Harvard. Northwestern was so interested in persuading Barack to accept its Kennedy Scholarship, named after an African American faculty member who had died four years earlier at the age of forty-two, that the admissions office asked the law school’s dean, Robert W. Bennett, to speak with Obama. “The admissions people came to me and they said, ‘We’ve got a fantastic prospect for this scholarship’” and “‘we want you to try to talk him into taking it,’” Bennett recounted. “Barack was brought to my office” and “I tried to talk him into taking this Ronald Kennedy Scholarship.” Bennett was a 1965 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, and Barack was “the only applicant that the admissions people ever” asked him to help recruit during a full decade as dean.

  Neither Kelm and Bennett’s efforts nor the full three-year scholarship were sufficient to outweigh Barack’s belief in his destiny. Harold Washington had graduated from Northwestern’s law school, and only once had a Harvard law graduate become president—Rutherford B. Hayes, in 1877. Northwestern law alumni had been major party presidential nominees five times, but William Jennings Bryan was a three-time loser and Adlai Stevenson had lost twice. It would be a costly decision for Barack—a cumulative difference of more than $40,000—but his choice was evidence of how deeply he believed what he so far had shared only with Sheila and Lena.

  The only person in Barack’s workday world, other than Lena, to whom he spoke about leaving was Johnnie Owens, whom he had recruited to DCP with at least half an eye toward this decision. Johnnie remembered the moment clearly. “I didn’t have a clue until one day he asked me, ‘Are you ready to lead?’ I’m like ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’ ‘I’ve been accepted at Harvard Law School,’” and he would be leaving DCP to attend its three-year J.D. program. “And I’m like ‘What?’” Owens remembered, for there had been no prior indications that Barack was contemplating such a future. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing: about applying, that he was interested, anything like that. And so he began explaining to me how he’d been struggling with the thought of maybe going into the ministry versus law school.” Neither Sheila nor Lena ever heard him talk about the ministry, but as Johnnie remembers it, Barack “said he had ideas and thoughts about going into the ministry and that he had actually talked to Reverend Wright about some of this.”

  Barack asked Johnnie to succeed him as DCP’s executive director, promising not only to work with the members on the transition, but also to introduce Owens to the trio of women who were DCP’s most important funders: Jean Rudd at Woods, Aurie Pennick at MacArthur, and Anne Hallett at Wieboldt. Owens agreed, but several weeks passed before Barack was ready to tell DCP’s volunteer leaders about his upcoming move.73

  On March 5, ten days before Democratic ward-level and congressional primary elections across Chicagoland, the Chicago Tribune reported that Waste Management had fired two managers at its SCA chemical waste incinerator at 11700 South Stony Island Avenue for repeatedly disconnecting air-monitoring devices designed to measure the facility’s destruction of highly toxic PCBs. WMI insisted that the misconduct “did not threaten health or safety,” but Marian Byrnes, Hazel Johnson, and congressional candidate Mel Reynolds picketed the plant, demanding it be closed. Metropolitan Sanitary District officials pulled back from a plan to dump eighty thousand cubic yards of sewage sludge in a wetlands property five blocks south of SCA.

  Howard Stanback, Bruce Orenstein, and Barack were working on plans to have Mayor Sawyer attend a postelection March 17 rally at St. Kevin to announce publicly the city’s strategic alliance with UNO and DCP regarding landfills. On Election Day, four African American ward committeemen who were allied with Sawyer were defeated, an unsurprising verdict on the process that had made Sawyer Harold Washington’s successor. Two successful challengers were forty-eight-year-old educator Alice Palmer in the 7th Ward, who defeated organization loyalist William Beavers in a virtual landslide, and young West Side activist Rickey Hendon in the 27th Ward. Another winner, in a South Side state representative contest, was 8th Ward precinct captain Donne Trotter, who a year earlier had turned out such an impressive victory margin for Harold Washington at London Towne Homes. One of the few challenges to a Sawyer loyalist that failed was Salim Al Nurridin’s 9th Ward committeeman contest against Bill Shaw, whose twin brother Bob, the 9th Ward alderman, bizarrely alleged that Salim operated a harem full of welfare recipients. Only slightly more uplifting had been Emil Jones and M
el Reynolds’s unsuccessful challenges to incumbent 2nd District congressman Gus Savage.

  When the Tribune reported that the thirty-six-year-old Reynolds had voted only twice since he turned twenty-one, Reynolds claimed that plotters had altered his voting records. Tribune political reporter R. Bruce Dold commended Reynolds for running “a surprisingly effective first-time campaign” and praised him as “a walking role model for black achievement.” But when the votes were tallied, Reynolds received only 14 percent, Jones 24 percent, and Savage won renomination with just 53 percent.74

  Stanback, Orenstein, and Obama carefully scripted the St. Kevin evening rally where Gene Sawyer would eagerly agree to UNO and DCP’s demand for a new mayoral task force to study the city’s landfill options. Unlike Jim Fitch’s committee, this new group would be heavily stacked with UNO and DCP loyalists. Howard, Bruce, and Barack jointly drafted Sawyer’s remarks, and then both organizers, along with Lena and Loretta, met with Sawyer, Stanback, and other mayoral aides at City Hall. A young assistant to Stanback, Judy Byrd, remembered being struck by Barack, who “spoke with such command and such clarity.” This was in stark contrast with Bruce’s impression of the new mayor. “I remember in that meeting talking to Sawyer,” Orenstein said, “and feeling like no one’s there, no one’s home.” Yet the central trio worked exceedingly well together. Bruce found Barack “very collaborative and very easy to work with,” and was repeatedly impressed by how Barack made sure that his top leader was never ignored or left out: “he was looking out for Loretta.” In addition, “Stanback’s a full partner. I remember Stanback saying at the time that he’s never had a more collaborative relationship with a community organization, and he really appreciated it.”

  At Stanback’s insistent urging, Orenstein also tried to convince some hard-core landfill opponents like Marian Byrnes to take part in the new process, but Byrnes realized that this was all leading to two predetermined ends: a new landfill at O’Brien Locks that the city desperately needed, and a $20 to $25 million community trust funded by Waste Management that would be controlled by UNO and DCP, not Jim Fitch and the wider community.

  Angry but determined, Marian, Hazel Johnson, and others picketed St. Kevin that evening, distributing a no-more-landfills flyer that invoked the title and featured song from the Eyes on the Prize civil rights documentary that had aired a year earlier. UNO members tried to obstruct the leafleting, and when Hegewisch News editor Vi Czachorski, a UNO opponent, tried to enter the basement, UNO’s Phil Mullins physically blocked her. “As I descended St. Kevin’s stairs, Mullins put his arms across the narrow stairway and said ‘You can’t attend this meeting.’ I tried to continue, crowds pushed. Mullins said ‘I’m getting the police. I’ll charge assault!’” Czachorski wrote in the next issue of her weekly newspaper. “I left.”

  UNO and DCP’s own dueling flyer demanded that Sawyer name a new task force “made up entirely of residents who live in communities affected by landfills.” Only such a group can “take this issue out of the backrooms and into the light of day.” DCP also distributed a statement in Loretta Augustine’s name denouncing “backroom deals that ram landfills down the communities’ throats and send the enormous profits from such dumping into corporate and city coffers.”

  As a crowd of more than six hundred filled St. Kevin’s basement, Orenstein paced nervously while Barack was “relaxed and cool.” Sawyer carried with him a briefing memo summarizing the remarks that Loretta and Mary Ellen would make as well as his own speech, typed out in large, bold capital letters. A seven-piece mariachi band provided entertainment as multiple TV camera crews set up their equipment. DCP president Dan Lee and St. Kevin pastor George Schopp joined Loretta, Lena, and the mayor on the stage.

  DCP’s Loretta Augustine opened the meeting. “We, as residents, have had no control over what has happened in our community. We are tired of being victims. We are taking control of our own community.” Then Lena spoke, followed by Sawyer. “Waste disposal and landfill decisions will no longer be made in the back room, at a table full of politically connected financial opportunists,” the mayor read, his text sounding far more like Bruce Orenstein than Gene Sawyer. “Whatever happens here will be because you decide.”

  With Lena and Loretta flanking the mayor, Lena then took charge of the traditional IAF-style colloquy with Sawyer, just as she had with Harold Washington almost five years earlier on that same stage. UNO and DCP had encouraged their supporters to be boisterous, and one reporter called the crowd “raucous.” Lena enjoyed her role to the hilt, and she began reciting the formal demand that the mayor appoint a new task force within ten days. She warned Sawyer to “be careful how you respond because this is an angry group of people tonight.” The mayor stuck to his script and pledged full acceptance of UNO and DCP’s demands. At that point, Lena turned to the cheering crowd and declared, “I’m going to take it for granted that we will have all the power we want!” As one veteran organizer later remarked, five years as a quintessential Alinsky leader had made Mary Ellen Montes into “one of the most macho women I had ever met.”

  As the gathering concluded, Bruce and Barack were ecstatic about the meeting. But UNO and DCP’s Alinsky-style power grabs—first blowing up the Fitch talks, then bringing a sad sack mayor to heel before an excited crowd—had fractured the Southeast Side community. Bruce, Lena, and Barack had succeeded in infuriating and alienating the local business leadership and the true environmentalists, two groups that just weeks earlier had been prepared to join forces in a true community consensus. Ed Vrdolyak quickly put Sawyer on notice, objecting to the city allowing UNO and DCP to control negotiations with Waste Management: “For certain community organizations who without question do not truly represent the vast majority of homeowners, residents, and taxpayers to submit their community buyout (sellout) wish list is totally and completely wrong.”

  But Vrdolyak’s public protest bore no political fruit, and a week later, Sawyer and Stanback announced a new sixteen-member Task Force on Landfill Options: Mary Ellen Montes led a group of five UNO supporters, including Father George Schopp; five other appointees were DCP members: Loretta Augustine, Dan Lee, Marlene Dillard, Margaret Bagby, and Father Dominic Carmon. Bob Klonowski was another ally, and no more than three appointees, including Marian Byrnes and Hazel Johnson, were likely dissenters. It was hard to imagine a more politically unrepresentative group.75

  In late March Barack announced his upcoming departure. He went to see Loretta first. “He told me he was leaving and he needed to go back to school.” Most DCP members learned the news at a meeting where Barack spoke of a smooth transition to Johnnie Owens as his successor. Dan Lee recalls that “I wanted to cry” and “we all got teary-eyed. . . . He was like a brother.” Tommy West called out, “No, you can’t go,” but they all realized that Barack’s potential reached well beyond Roseland. “We hated to see him go,” Yvonne Lloyd remembered. “It was very sad,” but they all appreciated, as Betty Garrett explained, that “if he could better himself, then we wanted him to go.” Barack remembered overhearing Yvonne remark how different he seemed now than he did on that August day two and a half years earlier when Jerry Kellman had first introduced him. “He was just a boy. I swear, you look at him now, you’d think he was a different person.” Of course, in many ways indeed he was.

  Cathy Askew was the most emotional about Barack’s announcement. “I was really upset,” she recalled. “I thought we were friends.” Barack remembered Cathy expressing her disappointment and saying. “What is it with you men? Why is it you’re always in a hurry? Why is it that what you have isn’t good enough?” Yet they all understood how frustrating the past year had been for Barack. “For the leader or organizer who feels expected to bring some change and improvements to the community, the day-to-day litany of roadblocks and resistances makes it hard,” one close observer of Chicago organizing wrote that spring.

  Marlene Dillard had watched Barack experience repeated setbacks while always trying to hide his disappointment
from DCP’s members. The outreach to Local 1033 at Republic LTV had gone for naught, the efforts in Altgeld Gardens had led to little, and only now was a tiny version of CEN getting under way. Again and again, “I always felt that it was a disappointment to him.” Whenever she and Barack visited a funder like Woods, “he was trying to project how great we were doing.” Then, “when we were leaving,” he would turn to her and apologize for his braggadocio: “Well, we’re trying.” Overall, “I think it weighed very heavy on him. . . . He was leading people, and he was getting nowhere.” Indeed, Marlene came to believe “that he felt ‘If I could just become the mayor of Chicago, I would be able to do this.’”

  Ernie Powell saw the same thing. “I think Barack got a little frustrated with that, and he felt like he had to get into the seat of power.” The DCP pastors who interacted regularly with Barack understood likewise. With CEN operating out of Reformation Lutheran, Tyrone Partee saw Barack almost daily and remembered him saying, “I’m going to law school.” Barack knew Tyrone was from a political family, and to him, Barack was “clear that he wanted to go into politics. ‘I believe that’s what I’m called to do.’” Alvin Love was caught off guard by Barack’s announcement, but he realized Barack was “frustrated with the speed of change” and had concluded that “there might be a better way to do” things.

  Barack went to see both Rev. Eddie Knox at Pullman Presbyterian Church and Rev. Rick Williams at Pullman Christian Reformed Church in person. With Knox, Barack presented Harvard as an opportunity he was pondering, and Knox smilingly replied, “There isn’t much to think about.” Harvard was such “a golden opportunity” and Knox believed “You’re going to go far.” Rick Williams reacted similarly. “I’m happy for you,” Rick remembered saying, “but I’m also sad, because this kind of work needs people for the long haul, people like yourself.” Rick understood Barack’s hope of building a truly large, multicongregational alliance to pursue educational reform and employment opportunity all across Chicago, but, just as Jeremiah Wright had sought to explain a year earlier, bringing people and churches together behind such an agenda was far more complicated than Barack could imagine. Rick told Barack that Harvard was “a wise decision” and wished him well. “You are going to do more for more people getting a law degree from Harvard than you would do here.” Barack had “a passion for making life better for lots of people,” Rick remembered, and to do that, “you’ve got to have power.”