Chicago, Chicago

 

 

 

 

Gary Rivlin
Fire on the Prairie: Chicago’s Harold Washington and the Politics of Race
New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1992

In 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “If we crack Chicago, then we crack the world.” Chicago then became a focal point, and Black empowerment would take off like a prairie fire across the land. Fire on the Prairie tells the story of Harold Washington’s election in 1983 as the city’s first Black mayor. Chicago was also central to Barack Obama’s run for the Presidency: he first worked there as a community organizer.