Richard Joseph Daley was an American politician who served as the mayor of Chicago from 1955, and the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party Central Committee from 1953, until his death. He has been called "the last of the big city bosses" who controlled and mobilized American cities. Daley was Chicago's third consecutive mayor from the working-class, heavily Irish American South Side neighborhood of Bridgeport, where he lived his entire life. He was the patriarch of the Daley family, whose members include Richard M. Daley, another former mayor of Chicago; William M. Daley, a former United States Secretary of Commerce; John P. Daley, a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners; and Patrick Daley Thompson, a former alderman of the Chicago City Council.
Harold Lee Washington was an American lawyer and politician who was the 51st Mayor of Chicago. Washington became the first African American to be elected as the city's mayor in April 1983. He served as mayor from April 29, 1983, until his death on November 25, 1987. Born in Chicago and raised in the Bronzeville neighborhood, Washington became involved in local 3rd Ward politics under Chicago Alderman and future Congressman Ralph Metcalfe after graduating from Roosevelt University and Northwestern University School of Law. Washington was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 to 1983, representing Illinois's first district. Washington had previously served in the Illinois State Senate and the Illinois House of Representatives from 1965 until 1976.
Luis Vicente Gutiérrez is an American politician. He served as the U.S. representative for Illinois's 4th congressional district from 1993 to 2019. From 1986 until his election to Congress, he served as a member of the Chicago City Council representing the 26th ward. He is a member of the Democratic Party and was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus during his tenure in the House. In the 113th Congress, with his 20 years of service, Gutiérrez became, along with Bobby Rush, the longest serving member of the Illinois House delegation, and so was occasionally referred to as the unofficial "dean" of the delegation.
Dorothy Jean Tillman is an American politician, civil rights activist and former Chicago, Illinois alderman. Tillman served as the alderman of the city's 3rd Ward from 1985 until 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, representing part of the city's South Side in the Chicago City Council. As an Alderman, Tillman was a strong advocate of reparations for slavery. In April 2007, Tillman was defeated in a runoff election by challenger Pat Dowell. Tillman defeated Dowell in 2003. Prior to her career as an alderman, Tillman was active in the Civil Rights Movement, working for Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as an activist. Tillman was known for wearing large hats and has cultivated this image as her trademark.
David M. Axelrod is an American political consultant, analyst, and former White House official. He is best known for being the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. After Obama's election, Axelrod was appointed as Senior Advisor to the President. He left the position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012. Axelrod wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and joined CNN as Senior Political Commentator in 2015. Until recently, Axelrod served as the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics. His memoir is titled Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.
Walter David Jacobson is a former Chicago television news personality and a current Chicago radio news personality. He currently provides opinion segments for WGN Radio AM 720. From 2010 until 2013, he was an anchor of the 6 p.m. news on WBBM-TV in Chicago, where he also had worked from 1973 until 1993. From 1993 until 2006, he was principal anchor on WFLD-TV's FOX News at 9 and the host of FOX Chicago Perspective, a one-hour news and political show that aired Sunday mornings on WFLD.
James Luther Bevel was an American minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and then as its Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education, Bevel initiated, strategized, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma voting rights movement, and the 1966 Chicago open housing movement. He suggested that SCLC call for and join a March on Washington in 1963 and strategized the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches which contributed to Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The College of Media is a college at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, United States. The college's name changed from the College of Communications to the College of Media in 2008.
John Callaway was an American journalist, who appeared on radio and television as a host, interviewer and moderator. He was the original host of Chicago Tonight, a nightly news program broadcast on the Chicago, Illinois television station WTTW, serving in that role from 1984 to 1999.
The Rainbow Coalition was an anti-racist, working-class multicultural movement founded April 4, 1969, in Chicago, Illinois by Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, along with William "Preacherman" Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization and José Cha Cha Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords. It was the first of several 20th-century black-led organizations to use the "rainbow coalition" concept.
Hoke Marion Norris was a Chicago journalist whose reporting during the Civil Rights Movement had a significant impact on popular opinion in Chicago.
The Southern Courier was a weekly newspaper published in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1965 to 1968, during the Civil Rights Movement. As one of a few newspapers to cover the movement with an emphasis on African-American communities in the South, it provided its readership with a comprehensive view of race relations and community and is considered an important source for historians.
The Chicago mayoral election of 1989 saw Democratic nominee Richard M. Daley win election to the remainder of an unexpired mayoral term with a 14% margin of victory. This marked a return for the Daley family to the office of mayor. Daley was elected over Alderman Timothy Evans, the nominee of the newly formed Harold Washington Party, and the Republican nominee Ed Vrdolyak.
Charles E. "Charlie" Cobb Jr. is a journalist, professor, and former activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Along with several veterans of SNCC, Cobb established and operated the African-American bookstore Drum and Spear in Washington, D.C., from 1968 to 1974. Currently he is a senior analyst at allAfrica.com and a visiting professor at Brown University.
Christopher Lee Schaller was an American journalist, columnist, editor, humorist, speechwriter, and political strategist.
Cheron Michelle Brylski, is a writer, speechwriter, public relations director and activist who built a career helping minorities and women enter the political mainstream in Louisiana and improve their quality of life through education, health and economic reform. She was the first woman to be appointed to the chartered position Public Information Director for the City of New Orleans by the late Mayor Ernest Nathan Morial. She worked in city government from 1980 to 1986, when she started her own consulting business. For nearly 30 years, her boutique public relations agency, The Brylski Company, headquartered in New Orleans has helped governmental, political and non-profit clients move their message through effective communications.
Timuel Dixon Black Jr. was an American educator, civil rights activist, historian and author. A native of Alabama, Black was raised in Chicago, Illinois, and studied the city's African-American history. He was active in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, most notably participating in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Chicago Freedom Movement during 1965 and 1966. Black was part of a coalition of Black Chicagoans that worked to elect Chicago's first African-American mayor, Harold Washington, in 1983, and he mentored a young Barack Obama, the future U.S. president, on building a political base on Chicago's South Side.
Rozell "Prexy" William Nesbitt is an American educator, activist, and speaker on Africa, foreign policy, and racism. He has also worked as a "red cap," social worker, union organizer, special assistant to Chicago’s Mayor, the late Harold Washington, and a senior program officer with the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. As an anti-apartheid campaigner, he came to personally know Nelson Mandela.
Jeannie Morris was an American sports journalist and author. Primarily based in Chicago, she covered various sports, including baseball and football, during a time in which women were not permitted in certain areas of sporting events. As an author, she wrote biographies on Brian Piccolo and Carol Moseley Braun, the latter of whom she followed as a reporter.
