Fire on the Prairie: Chicago's Harold Washington and the Politics of Race

by Gary Rivlin

Book Overview

Chicago--a name synonymous with tough urban politics and racial conflict. In 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., set the nation's sights on the city when he said, If we crack Chicago, then we crack the world. Black empowerment would take off like a prairie fire across the land. Here is the story of Harold Washington's election in 1983 as the city's first black mayor. Photographs.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805026983
• ISBN13: 9780805026986
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A well told story about people and a movement

Gary Rivlin is a great writer. And he lived through the exciting times he's writing about in Fire on the Prairie. I was a Chicagoan, a convert to the Washington Movement and a friend and a source for Gary's coverage of City Hall at the time. He never pretended to be objective, but he ended up telling about the complexity of what was going on better than anyone at the time because of it. We attended Harold's funeral together - he understood what it meant for me, someone who grew up feeling that the Chicago system would always keep me out, when someone opened it up. This book is a great story. It won't bore people who aren't political junkies. He goes way beyond the Harold vs. Eddie Vrdolyak personality conflict that the mainstream media dwelled on. He doesn't dwell on everything, but he shows it was more than just a Black-White conflict, though it was that. It was also about people excluded banding together and prying open a closed system. It was about a coalition that brought Chicago into the 20th century just before the beginning of the 21st. It was about Latinos moving from the margins to the balance of political power in one of the continent's largest cities. It was about Asian Americans, Native Americans, the poor, refugees, community organizers and others becoming part of a process. The personalities, the feelings and the environment of a city going through tremendous change are laid out in this book. While written long before 2008, even reading this now, you can picture a young African American organizer who began to see politics as something that wasn't beyond his grasp, who was excited by change that some thought would never come. This isn't just about Harold Washington in 1987. It is also about each of us, including the current President of the United States and the current Mayor of Chicago, who were changed and then made change in a new world of possibilities.

Fascinating!

I was not disappointed in this book at all. I heard about it on 'This American Life' and the story piqued my interest. It's the story of an underdog managing to challenge the system of Chicago politics in an unprecedented manner. Harold Washington was someone with incredible political skill and he used it in order to attempt to change things for the better despite the status quo attempting to stand firm against him. It shows that Hope and politics can sometimes coexist to create positive changes.

Not quite tuned in

An excellent book about the late, beloved mayor but the author apparently wasn't aware of the huge importance of Chicago's 7 African-American radio stations, so important to a community that values oral culture much more than do white folks. Even WVON doesn't get a look in. Mayor Washington visited those stations, often once a week, to take phone calls from real people who were not going to let him wriggle off the hook about an issue, even though they adored him. But Harold wasn't afraid to get grilled by listeners on the blindingly white WBBM-AM, the CBS station there, for he stepped up to the microphone about once a month. No mention is made of the Harold Washington tribute LP "Keep the Dream Alive" (Ecobert Music ECO 269). Many of these broadcasts are archived at the Amistad Research Center, in New Orleans, the British Library Sound Archive, and were donated to the Harold Washington Public Library as well.

Great political drama

FIRE ON THE PRAIRE is a good example of why the American reading public's narrow focus on national politics is so unfortunate. There are thousands of political stories in the cities, counties and states of America that are never told because the presumed target audience is too small. Thankfully, Gary Rivlin decided to tell the story of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor. The book will appeal to anyone interested in politics, even if Chicago is of no particular interest. City-level politics is politics at its most raw. This story, set in the 1980's, features (literally) brawling aldermen, overtly race-based electoral appeals, bribery, graft and other interesting forms of corruption, and the more creative bad-mouthing that we'll likely ever hear on the national stage. The cast of characters - real political figures - read like they walked out of central casting. The impervious, heroic Mayor Washington, the nefarious but canny Ed Vrdolyak, the bumbling Jane Byrne, the barbaric Ed Burke, the big-talking con man Clarence McClaine, the ego-maniacal Jesse Jackson and on and on. An unusual feature of this book is that while Washington is the central character, the book is almost not about him so much as Chicago politics in the 1980s. A third of the book devotees equal time to Washington and his arch-nemesis, Vrdolyak. Indeed, the Vrdolyak is painted with greater depth and may actually be quoted more than Washington. Washington comes off as pretty much impervious to corruption, pettiness, and most of the regular dynamics of Chicago politics - but he also comes off as inaccessible. The book plunges immediately into the political story without the customary 80 pages devoted to the central subject's early life. Rivlin never writes, "Washington thought..." nor does he report on conversations that occurred between two people, neither of whom subsequently spoke with Rivlin. The overall effect is double-edged - the story comes off as more credible but also Washington himself is left as something of a mystery.A more serious problem with the book is that its fascinating emphasis on pure politics comes at the neglect of an in-depth exploration of Washington's policies. Policies are certainly mentioned, but I retained more about how Washington made a difference in the life of his city from an hour-long radio show on him that from this 420-page book. The absence might be explained by what Rivlin explains is the difference between "white reform" and "black reform." Rivlin basically explains that white reformers are more concerned with process, where as black reformers are more concerned with results. White reformers may decry cronyism and call for the elimination of patronage jobs. Black reformers call for a more proportional share of the jobs. FIRE ON THE PRAIRE is written with a greater sympathy for what Rivlin would characterize as the black style of reform. The overarching point of the book was that Chicago's racial divisions were s