869: Harold

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Zohran Mamdani won the primary race for New York mayor, the Democratic establishment's lukewarm response echoed the treatment of another charismatic, unconventional candidate decades earlier. This week, we bring you the story of Harold Washington, the greatest politician you've probably never heard of, and the backlash that ensued when he became Chicago's first Black mayor.

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Prologue: As New York City’s Democratic establishment attempts to resist the candidacy of Zohran Mamdani, we look back at another mayoral candidate who upset the established political machine. (7 minutes)
Act One: A history of the brief mayoral career of Harold Washington and its lessons for Black and white America, as told by people close to him. (39 minutes)
Act Two: Ira revisits interviews with Chicago voters from the 1997 and 2007 rebroadcasts of this episode. In 1997, ten years after Harold Washington’s death, not much had changed in Chicago. By 2007, attitudes had begun to shift slowly, and another Black politician from Chicago was on the rise — Barack Obama. Ira also speaks to David Axelrod, an advisor to both Harold Washington and Barack Obama. (10 minutes)

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0:00.0	One thing it's been interesting watching the rise of the New York mayoral candidate, Zohran
0:05.5	Mamadani, who's a Democrat, is watching precisely how much of the Democratic machine has come out
0:12.0	to support him. After he went a Democratic primary, of course, normally the party would
0:17.0	fall in behind him, and in fact some prominent Democrats have come forward and endorsed them.
0:22.4	But not all of them.
0:24.0	Not some of the most important New York Democrats.
0:26.6	Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg.
0:34.2	And I'm bringing all this up today because watching this, it reminded me the story of another charismatic politician ages ago.
0:42.4	Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago.
0:46.3	Harold became mayor back in 1983.
0:49.3	And that was so revolutionary at the time that a black man would become mayor of the city of Chicago
0:55.5	that after the primary, the Democratic Party turned on him
0:59.2	and an old-school Democrat, a white guy,
1:02.4	ran as an independent against Harold in the general election,
1:07.2	much like Andrew Cuomo, as done with Mamdani.
1:11.6	But back then, most in the Democratic machine endorsed the white guy in the general election.
1:18.6	Then, once Harold took office, Democrats continued to fight him and the changes that he wanted to make.
1:25.6	I want to be clear, I don't want to over-simplify in comparing these two stories.
1:30.3	So much of Harold's story is very different than Zoran Mamdani's.
1:34.3	The opposition to Harold was over race.
1:36.3	The opposition to Mamdani is more about his views on Israel,
1:39.3	and it's socialism or progressivism or whatever you want to call it.
	...

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