This week in history: Mayor Washington ‘left his last crowd smiling’

As reported Nov. 26, 1987 in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Mayor Harold Washington’s death shocked Chicagoans and left many behind grieving his loss and his legacy. The city’s first African American mayor broke many barriers, despite plenty of opposition from a number of (mostly white) aldermen.

The Sun-Times sent Mark Brown to cover what would be Washington’s last public appearance and remembered it as a “boasting, wisecracking happening that left everybody smiling.”

Washington’s last appearance took him to the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization in Kenwood where he and other developers would break ground on a “$6 million, 70-unit town house development at 46th Place and Woodlawn, the first new housing construction in the neighborhood in decades,” Brown wrote.

The development was a testament to Washington’s campaign to build a better Chicago for everyone. The mayor even bragged to an aide that he was able to attract “federal grants to build low-income housing.”

A slight drizzle forced everyone inside, but the weather “hadn’t dampened the mayor’s spirits,” Brown noted. A state senator friend in attendance said Washington was “in good spirits, healthy, robust. He was very happy about what was being done there and it showed.”

After making a speech, Washington put on his white hardhat and strolled outside to turn over a few shovelfuls of dirt for photographers, Brown’s report said.

The whole event took about a half hour, Brown wrote. As he headed out the door, Washington kissed the cheek of Phyllis Bratton, a KOCO employee.

“Things happen like that, I guess,” Bratton told Brown as she mourned Washington’s death with her co-workers at KOCO headquarters. “It really shook me up. I feel close to the mayor. He was looking fine.”