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Marty Kaufman
Harold Washington is the first Black mayor of Chicago; he was elected in 1983, mere months before Barack moved to Chicago to organize with Marty. Washington only appears in person once in the memoir, but he looms large over the Black community in Chicago. Every Black person Barack speaks to talks about Washington as though he’s a close friend or a family member, and every Black household has a picture of him hanging in their home. Though Barack recognizes that Washington, to many, symbolizes Black power and that it’s possible to overcome Chicago’s history of racism and segregation, he ultimately comes to realize that simply having a Black mayor doesn’t mean that Chicago doesn’t still have racial issues. And indeed, when Washington dies suddenly in 1987, it takes only a few days before the diverse coalition that elected him fractures, resulting in chaos in Chicago. When Barack meets Washington, his impression is that the mayor is charismatic and charming.
Harold Washington Quotes in Dreams from My Father
The Dreams from My Father quotes below are all either spoken by Harold Washington or refer to Harold Washington. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 8
Quotes
One thing I noticed, though. The woman so concerned with the cruder habits of her neighbors had a picture of Harold in her kitchen, right next to the sampler of the Twenty-third Psalm. So did the young man who lived in the crumbling apartment a few blocks away [...]. As it had for the men in Smitty’s barbershop, the election had given both these people a new idea of themselves. Or maybe it was an old idea, born of a simpler time. Harold was something they still held in common: Like my idea of organizing, he held out an offer of collective redemption.
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Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Dreams from My Father LitChart as a printable PDF.
Harold Washington Quotes in Dreams from My Father
The Dreams from My Father quotes below are all either spoken by Harold Washington or refer to Harold Washington. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 8
Quotes
One thing I noticed, though. The woman so concerned with the cruder habits of her neighbors had a picture of Harold in her kitchen, right next to the sampler of the Twenty-third Psalm. So did the young man who lived in the crumbling apartment a few blocks away [...]. As it had for the men in Smitty’s barbershop, the election had given both these people a new idea of themselves. Or maybe it was an old idea, born of a simpler time. Harold was something they still held in common: Like my idea of organizing, he held out an offer of collective redemption.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
