Interview with Chuck Bowen

Before we start, I'm going to be going up to where? Going to go up to the, up to 43rd Street.

Turn right on 43rd Street, take the Dan Ryan, go up over to 30, you'll hear him in the pulpit.

I'll bet.

Yeah, I actually, wow.

Oh, he is something else.

Such a strong, really a strong man, you know, he's, when people say things to him, you know, I remember the first time that I asked him about his support to me, which was in like a couple of elections ago.

And I was going in to talk to him, you know, and we knew each other, but not nearly like we know each other.

And basically, we knew each other more by reputation than we did really knowing.

And so I had gotten to know him where I would, at least knew, where he knew who I was and so forth.

So I got time for the endorsement.

And I said to him, I said, knowing that his church is really like the, his church is really the, Jesse is an associate pastor there or an assistant pastor, whichever one you want to call him.

And his congregation is deeply rooted in Operation Push and so forth.

So I didn't know, you know, where he, how far he could go out.

He seemed favorable to the mayor, but I didn't know.

So I said to him, I said, well, I said, we're going to, I said, like to have some guys to endorse the mayor.

I said, but I can understand if you're not, he said, Chuck, he says, I'm going to be for him.

He says, if I'm going to be for him, he says, I'm going to say I'm for him.

He says, and no, he said, I'm not going to take any back steps at all.

He said, I'm for him.

He says, and I'm going to let everybody know I'm for him.

And I want everybody else to vote for him.

And he has been that kind of guy.

You know, nothing shady about him at all.

Yeah.

Let's hold off.

Well, anybody who's in command and the way ministers are, just their character, you know, they are, they have big egos.

And yes, you do.

And but you just have to, over a period of time, you learn how to work with them, you know, and let it go.

But they are a great group of guys to work with because I think that everything that I talked about, basically, you've seen that they were saying, you know, like I said, the holistic ministry, most of the ministers today understand they just can't, just can't preach about the gospel and what the moral thing should be.

It's also about taking care of people while they're here on earth, you know, and that's where they are, basically.

And the good ministers, I mean, the ones who have big congregations, that's where they are.

You were saying something also, I think, last week about all the different kinds of people you have to invite.

I mean, if I was to ask you, why can't you just invite one powerful minister and have him come after the mayor and down for the mayor? Because that wouldn't represent all of the different denominations.

Everybody has to see their people involved in an endorsement session like that.

Everybody who's in charge of large groups, you have to make sure that they have a chance to speak.

They have to see their people involved.

Well, you know, it's just like if you had a situation where you were asking Hispanics to come and endorse the mayor.

You couldn't have a Mexican speaking for a Puerto Rican.

They want to see the Puerto Rican guy speak or the Cuban guy, you know.

Everybody's got to have his own speaking and that's the way the ministers are.

So for example? For example? Well, for an example, Bishop Louis H.

Ford is the head of the Churches of God in Christ.

And while Bishop Ford might not, he has his own endorsement techniques and so forth, but yet he will send his representatives to an endorsement session where all the other ministers are going to be.

Bishop Brazier is the head of all of the apostolic churches in the city.

And even though there are about, I think there are four other, four or five other apostolic bishops in the city of Chicago, Bishop Brazier is generally recognized as the leader of the apostolic church in the city of Chicago.

We have Bishop Davis, his diocese is actually in the state of New York, but he lives and resides in the city of Chicago.

I guess what I was asking is that if, I remember you ticked off all the different denominations that were there.

And if you could just, we just need to, that's sort of a really interesting thing.

It speaks to the diversity in the black community for one thing.

Okay, well in the denominations you have the Baptists, you have the Methodists, you have the United Methodists, you have the Christ Methodists, you have the AME Church which is the African American Methodist Episcopal Church, you have the Lutheran Church, you have the Spiritual Church, you have...

But they all want their say and they all want to be recognized.

And you can't have a Baptist minister up speaking only when the bishop of the AME, the African American Episcopal Church is in the audience as well.

Just can't be, the Churches of God and Christ, you can't have that.

Okay? That was it, yeah.

Okay, I'm up.

Down the river down there.

A piece of my copper come off last night off my house.

Is this the right way? Yeah, yeah, off the...

And you're right over here on the left, aren't you? I'm right here where this big car is.

Right here.

Right here? Okay.

When I ask you a question like, what's politics like in Chicago, then you should just start by saying, you know, politics in Chicago is.

Yeah, what politics in Chicago is like.

Okay, so I'm going to throw you a softball over here because you might know something about this.

What's politics like in Chicago? Politics is like in Chicago is like no other place in the world.

This is the major league of the political world in the city of Chicago.

It's a city of neighborhoods and the ethnic diversity of our city lends to the politics and it's a fascinating business being in politics in the city of Chicago.

I've had people who were just hangers -on basically and what I want to call my friends on, but my barber, who was the guy who cut my hair and he left Chicago, went to Phoenix, Arizona, became basically one of the biggest guys in politics in Phoenix, Arizona.

I have another friend who went to Oakland, California, who was just one of the guys and he's an advisor to the mayor in Oakland now and so forth.

When people leave Chicago, they're well equipped to know about politics anyplace.

You came up in the political ranks over here.

How did politics work here on a street level? How does the organization work from your experience? Well, as I experienced it, I came into politics in 1955 probably at the height of the Dawson era.

Congressman Dawson was the political leader of five southside wards at the time.

Our organization was built on service, service to our neighbors.

We had a precinct, an organization was organized around the precinct.

Precinct normally around 550 to 600 voters in each precinct, an ward.

Ward normally with 60 precincts and each precinct then divided with 500 to 700, five, 600 registered voters in each one.

Might have been 700 people in the precinct, but only maybe five to 600 who were actually registered voters.

The precinct captain was the link between the commitment and the people and he took care of the party's business and those candidates sponsored by the political party.

It was based though on what kind of service we could give, what kind of community service we could give.

We had an interest in the schools, we had an interest in everything that dealt with politics in the ward.

So did you consider back in those days, I mean was the precinct captain the most important person in the organization in terms of that individual voter? Well no, no question about it.

He was the, he was the link.

Start by saying the precinct captain, but you have to say the precinct captain, so no question.

The precinct captain was the greatest link to the voter in the war.

He was the, he was the person who on a day -to -day basis was expected to see the people, talk to them, to see what their needs were.

And he kept in touch with everybody.

He knew when a new baby was born, when somebody died, what the needs of the people were, who didn't have food, those kinds of things.

And we took care of the people and their needs, their basic needs.

Now in those days was the, in a black, in a plaque precinct, would the precinct leader be white or black? Most in a black ward, in those days in, if the ward was already a black ward, and it was in say on the south side, in the south side area, when I came, when I came on board, the five wards on the south side, the second, the third, the fourth, the sixth, and the 20th, they were already black wards with black ward commitment.

On the west side, however, the wards were changing where the voting population was black, but the precinct captains and the ward commitment, the aldermen were still white.

And that changed around 1960.

I think they had the first election of a black alderman on the west side in 1963.

Ben Lewis was the first black alderman on the west side.

I believe that was 1963.

That was the first time that, and that change came very rapidly after that time.

And of course, the south side wards were expanding, and every time they expanded, it was because the neighborhood became African American, and therefore an African American would take over as a ward commitment.

Now you came into the organization of Congressman Dawson.

Tell us about Congressman Dawson and his importance and what his organization was like.

Well, in my opinion, Congressman Dawson, he was the, he epitomized what an organization should be.

He had been an officer in World War I in the Army.

He had gotten his law degree at Northwestern University.

He worked on the railroad as a Pullman porter.

So, and he was a lawyer, and he knew just what an organization, the discipline needed in an organization, and that's the way the organization was set up.

Whatever he said, that was what we did.

And when somebody disagreed with the congressman, he would say to you very quickly, now if you want to run your own organization, get you some precinct captains and let's start a fight.

And that was his way.

And of course, nobody wanted to start a fight with the congressman because he was all powerful.

Was he hands -on? He was a hands -on operator.

Yes, he had a hands -on operation.

The congressman knew the wine heads on the street.

He knew the doctors, the lawyers.

People could approach him, no matter who they were, they could stop him on the street and talk to him.

He would stop his car and get out and go.

He had only one, you know, he had a false leg, but he would walk for blocks down the street just to talk to people.

And on Saturday mornings, when we would be in the headquarters, people would bring to the headquarters hams and spaghetti and food for us during the day and bake cakes and bring coffee.

And that was not at election time, that was like on any given Saturday, somebody would fix a lunch and bring it to the headquarters and those guys who played pinnacle would be there with the congressman playing pinnacle.

And of course, while he was having a pinnacle game, he was of course asking questions as to what was going on and so forth.

And we had an organization where many times, 10, 11 o 'clock at night, we were going to the hospital to take somebody who couldn't get an ambulance for a sick person to go to the hospital.

Somebody was at the headquarters to render that kind of service to them.

So it was definitely a hands -on kind of organization.

Now how did you get involved? And you were telling us about how the congressman used to use you at meetings as an example.

Yeah, well, I got involved because I was of course at that time young and full of enthusiasm.

And I lived with my family in the Harold L.

Ickes CTA driver and the precinct captain came by and a friend of mine told me, said, I'd been refused because I'd taken the examination and they told me for the first time that I was colorblind.

And a friend of mine said, well, they might have made a mistake and maybe your precinct captain can get them to re -examine your eyes.

So I talked to the precinct captain and we had a long conversation and he said to me, he says, why don't you become my representative in the Young Democrats? And I said, I don't know anything about that.

He says, well, he says, come down to the organization and be a part of the organization and you can be my representative in the Young Democrats.

And I agreed to do that and I kind of caught the eye of the congressman because I was asking a lot of questions and every time somebody would say something, I'd have something to say.

So he said, well, he says, you think you're pretty smart.

And he was standing in the back of the room and he said, you think you're pretty smart? I said, no.

I said, I don't, I just want to know.

He said, well, I'll tell you what we'll do.

So can we pick up the story again right before he said he made you a president? And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

And he said, well, I'm a president.

I was like at the number 10 position in the ward, which is a pretty honorable position to be in.

You got 60 precents and you're in the top 10.

So I just made the top 10.

Now, what do you mean by the number 10 district? Can you explain it to us? Okay.

What I mean by the number, the 10th precents are taken in rank.

The, the precent that brings in the best vote for an election is the number one precent and right down the line.

So if you're the number 10th precent, it means that you were the 10th best precent in the ward.

And so I was like the 10th best precent in my first election.

And I discussed it with a friend of mine who was Alan Hunt at the time, who was a Congressman's secretary.

And I said to him, I said, you know, if I'd spent a hundred dollars, I'd have been two or three in the, in, in, in the rankings.

And he said to me, he said, wouldn't it have been worth it? And from that day on, I did whatever I had to do to make sure that I had the workers on the street, that I took care of my precent, made sure that I had poll watchers to make sure that I had taken care of people in the precent so that I would get a good vote.

And after my first election, then on for 11 years, I was the number one precent captain in the second ward.

And my last vote in the precent was 508 to three.

And the old man would use me when I say the old man, I mean, Congressman Dawson, because I was the youngest precent captain in the ward for many years, actually.

I would, he would ask me to at the last, the last Friday before an election, which was always on a Tuesday, he would ask me to come up and say a word at the end.

And I would always kind of stick it to the other precent captains by saying, you know, I'm the youngest precent captain in this ward, and you should be out, you should be out voting me, but you're not, and you're not going to out and the precent captains would have the chairs up and telling me they're going to beat me and they're going to get me, you know, and I mean, some of them will be really demonstrative in their conversations, you know, about what they wanted to do to me.

But everybody always, it was, it was his way of lighting a fire under everybody, no matter what election, no matter what time it was, we, we didn't have anybody else to fight, not really the Republicans.

We fought ourselves as to which one was going to bring in the top vote.

And that's the way, that's the way our organization was.

This was the, the second ward was the mother ward of all the black wards in the city of Chicago.

It was the first and it was the most powerful ward in the, in the city of Chicago and so far as African Americans are concerned.

This was the time when Mayor Daley, the old man was mayor.

In 1955, we elected Mayor Richard J.

Daley the first time and it was Congressman Dawson's organization that really put the, put the mayor over the first time because the Tribune would ran an editorial and a cartoon and they had Mayor Daley who was at that time the, the county clerk and they had him sitting on Dawson's lap and Dawson, they had Dawson pictured with a big cigar and a derby hat and call him boss Dawson and like Daley was his puppet and I guess that was to spur the white vote to, to vote for his opposition and but we carried the day because we, we produced the, the real vote and the real margin of victory for the mayor at that time.

That was Daley's secret weapon wasn't as a relationship with, you were telling us about his relationship with, with, with Congressman Dawson? I think it was.

There's no question that, that was his, his real, that was his bat.

That was his, the bat that he used against all of his enemies was Congressman Dawson because of the kind of vote we could produce out here.

What about all the talk that Daley and black, black voters and black politicians were enemies? See that's, that's, that's the thing that people I think will be surprised.

They don't know Chicago politics.

Well that comes in a different era.

What happened was as Daley rose up in the ranks and gained his own statue as a mayor, the blight vote became diluted and because, and what I mean when, because as, as blikes moved here from the south, as blikes started to move out into other areas, the independent movement started to take hold and as the independent movement started to take hold, that diluted the democratic vote from blikes in the city of Chicago.

So we didn't have as much influence and the, and the other part of it was Dawson was getting older.

Dawson was, I think Dawson died in 1969.

He had to be 81 years old when he died.

He was in senility when, when he passed.

He was not the same Dawson that I knew in 1955 obviously and so we were, we lost that and we really didn't have the chain of command to pick up where Dawson left off.

There, there was a fight that ensued between Metcalfe and Holman at the time who were two powerful aldermen for the seat that Dawson was, had left behind and the blight vote was splintered and the blight power of course was splintered and did not regain that kind of importance until the election of Harold Washington in reality.

So what's the position now of the blight vote in Chicago? Well, diluted only from the, from the strength that we don't, that we're not exercising the right to vote.

We're not voting.

The blight vote is there.

The vote is there.

The numbers are there.

They are not exercising that right to vote and therefore it's, it's just not, the, the, the power is diluted but I think that the church has rallied much in the last three or four years.

I think that the church has rallied a lot of the, the, the power.

At least they have a, they have an open door to the mayor.

The mayor sees them as a, as a base of strength and I think that that is something that's building and, and, and coming back now.

So I would think that it will, you will start to see it come back and I think really the, the, the Republican election is going to have a big effect on African Americans because thus far they haven't, they just haven't had enough time to see what the repercussions are going to be.

But once they start to see what's going to happen under this contract with America and how it's going to affect minorities, the taking away things like affirmative action where many black contractors and, and companies have made money, especially here in Chicago, to see that diluted, to see the summer jobs program kind of fall by the wayside is going to wake up and people vote.

Their motivation to vote is when they get angry.

They, that's what makes them come alive and understand that they need to exercise their right to vote.

Now in the community as we travel around the city, there seems to be, you know, there are different tugs on the community.

I mean, you've got people, you know, who are obviously have ties to Mayor Daley, you know, have seen, you know, been able to work with Mayor Daley.

There's also a lot political people who are not only against him, but vehemently against him.

How does that work with the community? I mean, what do you see in terms of the black community in Chicago now, you know, in terms of Mayor Daley? Well, in terms of the mayor, the mayor hasn't made anybody angry.

The mayor has basically been a good mayor, serving and being open to most of the people in Chicago.

Even his critics, I think, would say that he has tried to reach out to them.

And because they are opposed to the mayor, there are people who just, that's their, therefore somebody else and they're going to give the opposition.

That's something that just can't be restrained, I don't think.

I mean, and opposition is good.

It's good for everybody, really.

Everybody can't be going in the same direction.

But I think that the mayor's success is that we do have access to the mayor.

The leadership has access to the mayor and especially through the largest organization in the African -American community, and that is the church.

Now, you came up in a politics that was really organizational based, where the precinct captains really went out and worked.

The Aldermen really had a close connection to people.

Things have changed a lot, haven't they? They have changed an awful lot since I came up in politics.

The media, now, if a person does not have the kind of resources to get media attention, it's very hard for them to get to the voters.

They don't have precinct captains because they don't have jobs to give them.

The political jobs was a way to reward people who worked for you.

And since you don't have that, you have to go to a community base of volunteers.

And volunteers are just not going to do what people are going to do when it's their profession to go out and try to get the vote.

So does that lead to less interest in the community, lower turnout? Well, I think it's left.

I think it's led to lower turnouts in the community.

And people are not as interested because when your neighbor can come and knock on the door and tell you that they want to talk to you about a candidate or they want to get you at a coffee sip and sit down and talk about a candidate, it means a lot more than seeing somebody on television that you've never seen before.

And there's always conversation around the table today.

This guy's not saying anything on the television, you know.

But when your neighbor comes and if they're pretty well versed in who that person is, what their programs are and so forth, then you get a better feel for it.

Now, in our community, we're not organized.

In the other communities in the city, they're still bases of organization.

We've allowed that to happen and we've allowed the media to come in and be the spokesperson for us because they said that politics was dirty and that everybody in politics was wrong.

And we believe that.

And that's just not the way it is.