Dorothy ‘The Hat’ Tillman Interview / Studs Terkel Interview

We never actually got a moment.

That would be nice to tell me.

We'll stay right here.

You may well have gone.

Everybody in our film was in one shot.

Tell me.

It's a little odd because we get everything.

Oh, right.

Exactly.

We're the shadows.

I bet you got something this week.

Do you realize you were mentioned by some city council or something like that? Every single day? Excuse me, guys.

Tell us who you are, what your position is, and how you see it.

Do you enjoy politics? My name is Dorothy Tillman.

I'm Alderman of the Third Ward.

I've been Alderman for 13 years.

That's a community on the south side of Chicago, the Grand Boulevard community.

How do you enjoy politics? Are you something that enjoys Chicago politics? I look at it as being elected officials, as really using it as a platform to make things better for my people and all people who are downtrodden.

Coming from the civil rights movement, always going to government for regress, dealing with things that were wrong.

This is a whole other side.

It gives me an opportunity to at least make things right for those who are in need, to really use it as an opportunity to better things.

For people who don't know anything about Chicago, this place has got a reputation for coalition politics.

Is politics still important in Chicago? Well, I think Chicago is probably one of the cities that have the most ethnicity.

In fact, I'm from Montgomery.

I came here in 1965 with Dr.

King.

Before I came to Chicago, I knew nothing about ethnicity.

You were either black or white.

When I got here, I found out about all the different ethnic groups, the Irish, the Polish, the blacks, the Lithuanians.

I knew nothing about Lithuanians and those types.

It was black or white.

Chicago, Germany, is still a very ethnic community.

But the majority of Chicago is black now.

Between black and brown, you make up a huge majority.

But you still have your pocket of ethnicity and you still have your Irishmen.

I think in Chicago, the Irishmen have always, even though they have a very small number, they have always dominated Chicago politics.

Because maybe they're better organized and have been into it longer.

I don't know.

So for an outsider, how would you describe Chicago politics, starting by saying Chicago politics? I'd say Chicago politics, first of all, is if you put the right person in place, it's fun.

Because Chicago do have what you would call home rule.

Compared to most cities, a lot of cities have strong mayor, weak council.

In Chicago, you have strong council, weak mayor, allegedly.

So most decisions are made at the local level.

Even when you talk about Chicago from the state, we have home rule.

We make our tax embodies, we make our own laws.

And then when you get to the ward level, I represent over 60 ,000 people.

That's larger than some towns.

And when you get to a ward level, you're responsible for zoning.

You have your ward superintendent for cleanup, your district commander, police commander, your human service.

It's almost like a little city.

And you have a lot of say -so in terms of how that community is going to be, where the streets are going to go, where the sidewalks are going to happen.

And what happened in the black community, more than the other communities, What we have is that a lot of our communities have been neglected for so long that when those of us, like myself, get an office, we almost end up being social workers.

We end up doing things that we don't have to necessarily do as aldermen, but we do it because there are so many needs in our community.

I mean, somebody might come to my office and say, my child needs some diapers.

Or somebody might say, I have a problem with my rent.

I have a caseworker problem.

I need my caseworker to take care of me.

I need this.

I need that.

Social worker problems, child in jail.

Just things that family, everyday problems, we deal with those things.

And we don't deal with them, they get mad.

And one thing about Chicago aldermen, and I'm proud to be a part of this body, is that we are the first line of defense.

And aldermen is always the first line of defense.

Whenever there's a problem, call your alderman.

Everybody knows who the alderman is, and everybody knows the mayor.

Nobody knows the state rep, the senator, the congressperson.

Everybody says, call the alderman.

If it's a government problem for the state level, call your alderman.

If it's a federal problem, call your alderman.

Never the congressperson, never the state rep, but your alderman.

And Chicago aldermen are the first line of defense that I think we do in spite of our diversities, and sometimes we fight on major issues.

We do a great job in terms of being there for our community.

We work 24 hours, our farm ring 24 hours.

If a building is on fire, our farm ring, they look for you to be there, to see about putting this family up, to see about are the children okay.

I mean, we're on call 24 hours.

Our staff is the hardest working staff in government.

They work as hard as the aldermen.

So we work very hard for the first line of defense in government.

Can I ask you a question? One of the things that strikes us about Chicago, all the aldermen are really strong, and the mayor is really strong.

Don't you have to be turning in the mayor's good graces in order to get some of the perks? Well, I don't know whether you call it graces.

I think that the mayor, really we have a strong council, weak mayor.

It's just that the mayor has a lot of people who vote with him.

I don't think that you'd be in the good graces.

I don't deal with none of the mayors.

I think I've been able to get resources from both.

I came under Harold Washington, Mayor Sawyer, and the sitting mayor now, and we've never done anything with them in terms of graces.

We've always demanded or requested what was for our community.

Either one of these administrations have our community been liking.

Under Mayor Washington, whatever our community needed, we got.

Sawyer and under the present mayor.

We are there to serve our community.

We make requests.

The commissioners and all of them, they're there to serve us.

They might be appointed by the mayor, but they're there to serve us.

I've never made a request from any commissioner, any member of the mayor's staff, that they have not responded and have nothing to do with good graces.

I think sometimes we fight.

We don't always agree.

We'll fight.

But if it's right, we vote for it.

If it's wrong, we vote against it.

But we also demand what our community is supposed to give us, taxpayers, we're there to represent it.

Our community should be represented regardless of who's in there, and that's the way we deal with it.

Harold Washington was the historic mayor of Chicago.

Saying his name, Harold Washington, tell us what his importance was for the city.

Well, I always like to tell people that.

I think the beginning of Mayor of Washington was Martin Luther King Jr.

I think when we came in in 65, we began to break through a lot of barriers and make people get a lot of strength where they can move and begin to do it.

I think Harold Washington was almost like the culmination of Dr.

King.

And to put Harold Washington in the first black mayor of the city of Chicago, not just a black mayor, but a mayor for the whole city, a mayor that was fair, a mayor who didn't mind being black at the same time, understanding that you can be black and still be responsible for everybody.

Mayor of Washington cared for the community.

He pioneered a lot of programs in our communities.

In fact, before Mayor of Washington, we didn't even know they had weed cutters.

Just simple things, cutting weeds off the vacant lots.

We got new streets.

A lot of the city service went directly to the community under the late, great Mayor of Washington that the black community was never really used to.

And now we're used to it and we expect it.

Harold Washington, another thing is that he believed in linked development.

Even when he dealt with big companies in terms of companies doing business with the city, they had to give to the neighborhood.

He was a neighborhood person.

And I must say that a lot of the mayor's programs now that the present mayor is using are a lot of the things that Harold Washington came up with.

So how important, if you go to people on the street and you say Harold Washington, what will they tell us and how important was he? Well, it depends on the age group.

He was very great for the black community, black self -esteem.

He was really great for the city because if people don't understand, Harold just freed up the black community.

Harold freed up the Hispanic community.

They might not even be here if it had not been for Harold.

He freed up women.

Chicago was such a closed government.

It wasn't just the black community locked out.

A lot of other people were locked out.

Harold opened up the doors for a lot of people to come into government.

And it wasn't just black and brown, it was other people too.

So Harold just kind of opened those doors and said, come on in, let's work this thing out.

And it was anybody who showed a rainbow of people in vomit, it was the late great Mayor Washington.

He was a great mayor.

I remember saying to him, you know, why don't we get ours? What are we going to do? If anybody is saying anything to Harold Bob, do it.

He said, no, everybody gets theirs.

It's equally as fair.

I'm the mayor of all the citizens of the city of Chicago.

And he was a great mayor.

Has that rainbow coalition held? Well, we're here in city government.

I don't know that we vote like that.

A lot of our progressive people who are here are no longer here.

One of them, as soon as Gutierrez was alderman, that I personally went over with a whole band of people on Harold Washington behalf and literally knocked on every single door in the black community to make a difference in that election.

And he kind of, he could have played a leading role in keeping that coalition together, but he opted to break that.

And it's unfortunate, but I don't think we're together on the floor in terms of the coalition, but the coalition outside of this body that have worked together with each other is still together.

And that's unfortunate, but that's real.

Why do you think that's happened? Because we know that some of the Latinos have gone with Mayor Daley.

Well, I don't think you think of whether they go with Mayor Daley or Joe Blower.

The question is, do they go for what's right or do they just vote just to vote? And it's not the personality as much as it is.

I mean, you don't vote against somebody just because they're a person.

You vote against them because they're wrong.

And I voted against Mayor Washington when he was here.

So you can't deal with whether or not you're just voting against, for or against the mayor.

You're voting on the issues.

And if the issues are correct, they should vote with us.

One of the things I have found out, coming from the civil rights movement, is a lot of the gains in terms of affirmative action, in terms of people being able to blacken Brown Bay and have the seat, that came from the struggle of the black community.

And you would think that it's a natural for the Hispanic community to work closely with us because we fought.

We fought on behalf of them, on behalf of blacks and women.

So women and the down -out and the Hispanics and blacks are a natural coalition.

But somehow it always happened that if it doesn't fit them, sometime they'll change.

But there's a body outside of this body that still works together.

Can I ask one last question about Mayor Washington? I mean, there he is, four years as a mayor, the first term.

There's a lot of battling on city council.

Finally, win by win, finally control of city council.

It's the height of his power.

One moment later, he's gone.

What does that loss mean for the black community? Well, it was a great loss.

It was a great personal loss and it was a great loss.

I was at the hospital when Harold died.

So I will always remember that scene of just watching him work on him and praying.

And I always tell people that I've never asked God for anything that God didn't give me, with the exception I asked God to give me Harold back.

And I thought he was going to be all right, but he didn't come back.

And I think it was a trauma to our community.

And it's a trauma that our community has not overcome yet.

Even myself now, I'm still angry at the fact that he died, that something happened to him, whatever happened.

And I think the community was traumatized and we still are traumatized.

And I don't think we've overcome that traumatization as a black community and as a city.

And I think it's a grieving that we have not had a chance to deal with.

It's a grieving that we have not had a chance to talk about.

And I think the black community is going to have to talk about the death of Harold Washington.

And nobody ever, ever, and that might be something to do, really set and dealt with the feeling of what it felt like, how you feel, and where do we go from here, that has never been done.

At least with Dr.

King, he was like a father to me, and his assassination got me.

But we knew that we lived very dangerously.

And I was hurt by his death.

But Harold was just kind of like snatched away.

And it's something that the community has not dealt with.

And I think it's an after effect, and I think it needs to be dealt with.

Today's politics, we were here during the mayoral election last year.

And I'll tell you, we went to a number of rallies over on the south side.

And we were really, really taken aback by the rhetoric.

Not that people were just opposed to Mayor Daley, but the rhetoric was very, very, very strong.

Can you explain what's going on politically in terms of the African -American community in Daley? And then I have a couple of follow -up questions on that.

I don't think I've ever been to a rally where it seemed as if...

45th of Michigan? I missed it, but I can imagine that.

That was on Michigan.

What was the rhetoric? It was very, very strong.

Really? What did it say? I'm kind of sorry, I'm going to reiterate that you have a lot of times with African -American politicians.

It'll seem very personal.

Well, I think it can't be personal, it has to be factual.

And one of the things that Dr.

King...

That's their lives of balance in terms of working with Dr.

King, is we were always told to deal with what the truth is.

As a scientist, you've got to always deal with the truth.

And that's what you do.

You can't deal with just rhetoric.

If it's wrong, it's wrong.

And one thing the mayor said about me in the last election was that...

Till and I might not always agree, but she fights for people.

There's a mutual respect, you have a respect in there.

If you're wrong, I'm going to fight you.

If you're right, I'm going to fight you.

She's like Trotman.

She didn't know what I was going to do, but I felt I was very wrong.

She's been passed over.

Why are you going to pass her over? She said, this is not a Hispanic seat.

She's the vice chairman two times, and she's not been given it.

She's very good.

And this person has a chairmanship.

Things that's right, you fight.

Things that's wrong, you fight.

Things that's right, there's no need to fight.

I know some of the ready might have been strong.

I think they should have stayed whatever.

I think you always stay with the issues.

I really think that we would have, too, we needed a black mayor, but not just a mayor because of the color, but because the African American community felt we would have fared better.

It had to be a person with character, a person who was right.

I mean, you can have somebody in there.

You know, you've got to deal with content of character.

I mean, if you get someone in, don't take care of our community.

It's still the same.

So what's the difference? I don't know.

I guess I don't know.

Is it the case then that you have rhetoric in the middle of a campaign, but then afterwards it seems like everybody gets along pretty well over here? Well, you wasn't in the council.

You was at a rally.

And even now we disagree on some things.

One thing about Chicago government, even under Mayor Washington, in the height of the 29 -21, the garbage got picked up.

The lights got turned on.

Basic city services happened.

The struggle was always with the contracts.

That's the struggle.

How many contracts are we getting? When you look at the fact that we don't have enough black policemen on the police force, the firearms, when you look at that, and when you look at contracts and things affecting the black and brown community and the women community, that's the fight.

The other stuff is just basic city things.

But it's contracts.

It's about how much resources, and where does the resources go? Do you bill enough black, give enough blacks contracts that they can bill and work? Because if a black gets money, the money turns over, and the community gets a certain amount of time.

So I think that's the bigger fight in terms of equity with the contracts.

And one of the things that Harold Washington did is he did have equity with the contracts.

And I think that's what people are missing about when they're just talking.

I mean, we're going to sit here and have, we're going to take care of the city.

That's our responsibility as elected officials.

But it's all about the contracts.

I mean, where do the contracts go? Where does the money go to building? I can certainly say that I probably got more housing redevelopment in my ward under Mayor Washington, even though I do get some now.

Harold coming from the black community, and coming from also the machine, because he was nurtured in the machine.

He understood the politics of it.

He also understood the needs of our community.

And he was able to balance it all to try to at least begin to help the community grow.

And also in Harold Washington, people felt kinship.

So they too became a partner.

Under Harold Washington, black folks felt a partner in government.

That's what you had.

Anything else? Yeah, I have a question because last year...

The eye line tends to trip.

This is off the subject.

You filmed all over town last year during the election.

There seems to be an obsession with signs.

Getting your sign up and getting your name in front of the elector as much as possible.

And in your district, we came across some guys who were busy not tearing down your sign, but plastering their own signs when your opponent's over yours.

Well, one of the things...

You know, I'm running for Congress.

I do intend to win by the time I'm here.

One of the things we have not done, and we have not in this election, is put any posters up on the polls because I'm so disgusted.

I've never in my life seen it, especially when you're in the center part of this district.

That looks so messy.

It should be neat.

It's a battle of the signs, but that's part of Chicago politics.

You should be neat.

You should not...

I've always told my workers that you're not to deface people's property, nor you to put them on the public way in terms of traffic signals and be disrespectful.

Some folks have no respect.

You can't expect people to give something they don't have.

Why do you think that there's so much battle? Because compared to any other city we've been in, the battle of the signs here is more than anyplace else.

What is it about Chicago? Well, name recognition.

People sometimes don't...

They're standing by the bus post and they're looking, and there's a percentage of votes that you might get.

The last minute they might see your name, you know.

But I tend to think people have...

They believe people have not made their mind up before they went in, and that's why you do it.

You should be on election day with the palm cards.

You ever seen that? The passing of the palm cards.

Well, I do a mailing.

In my ward, on election day, all of my residents have my sample ballot.

So how do you feel when you drive down the street and you see the night after one of the opposition crews ripped off your face off all the posters on the floor? It don't bother me.

My workers get upset.

It don't bother me.

I mean, it's not, you know...

They're not ripping my face.

I dare them.

Let me ask you to do one more thing, just one last thing.

We've been doing this all over the country.

This is our 30th state, and we're trying a lot of strata.

Just smile at the end of it and keep looking at the camera.

Hi.

I'm Oliver Dorothy Tillman.

In the city of Chicago, I represent over 60 ,000 people, which is larger than most...

a lot of little towns.

Right now I'm running for Congress for the 7th congressional district.

In this country, I intend to win by time this show.

Welcome to Chicago, the greatest city in the world.

Okay, can we do a short version? I don't feel much adjustment.

So it's consistent.

You didn't like that? I do like that one.

It's got to match.

I've never known the match of anybody.

I've always surpassed them.

I guarantee you'll stand out.

But if you can do...

I'm Alderman Dorothy Tillman, and I'm running for Congress in the city of Chicago.

I'm running for Congress in the 7th congressional district.

In the city of Chicago, that's fine.

I stand corrected.

Okay.

The honorable member for the third ward.

So just, you know, I'm Alderman Dorothy Tillman, running for Congress in the 7th congressional district in the city of Chicago.

Yes.

Hi, I'm Alderman Dorothy Tillman.

I'm running for Congress for the 7th congressional district in the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois.

Great.

Let's try it one more time.

A little more energy.

Hi, I'm Alderman Dorothy Tillman.

I'm running for Congress in the city of Chicago.

Hi.

Hi, I'm Alderman Dorothy Tillman.

I'm running for Congress in the 7th congressional district in the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois.

Hi, I'm Alderman Dorothy Tillman.

I'm running for Congress in the city of Chicago, 7th congressional district, state of Illinois.

Unbelievable.

I don't want to do it one more time.

So is it? Yeah.

Yes, sir.

Well, I was going to say, are you getting it? Okay.

We were down at the city council today.

We were at city council, then we went at the back room, you know, where they all hang out and schmooze.

And I sort of felt like we were at American politics ground zero.

It was.

Well, more several years ago than today.

Today it's settled down a bit, but not much.

Chicago, you must remember Chicago, we think of the city council in Nigeria.

The first name that comes to mind is Richard Daly the Elder.

You know, like Pliny the Elder, Richard Daly the Elder.

Sort of a serial comic Caesar, in a sense.

What he said goes.

And they were, Mike Royko the Columnal, described the city council as a chamber of trained seals.

And so they would follow his, whatever he said was the word.

Every now and then, once in a while, there was an independent alderman, Len DePray, case in point.

And he would get up, you know, now microphones came into being, electronics are now part of the scene.

And when he got up to speak, to challenge something of his honor, the mayor, the mic would be turned off.

Danny would just nod, and oh, Mike.

So DePray says it was a great training ground for me.

I learned how to say, be very succinct.

Get things, get poils of wisdom in 10, 15 seconds.

You would be turned off.

Chicago must remember as a blue collar city primarily.

It didn't have the graces of what are called story cities, like New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco.

They're called story cities.

And though Chicago were dull, it had no story.

Chicago had far more stories to it than all these cities put together.

But it was blue collar primarily.

And so the people came when this huge complex was being built after the Chicago fire of 1871, and there was swamp.

And here came architects as well as the blue collar people working in where? In steel, farm equipment, packing house.

So when Sandberg in the celebrated poem of the book of Chicago, Hogg Butcher the World, of course he was right.

The stockyards, the biggest in the world at the time.

The sitter of the nation's railroads.

1 ,000 passenger cars passed through Chicago each day through a dozen or so depots.

Grain market, you know, of course the grain market, and steel.

All this was Chicago.

Today, of course, you know, it's taken a tremendous beating for a number of reasons.

One, the multinationals taking over, conglomerates taking over, and of course moving plants to places where there are no unions, where the labor could be described as serf, slave labor, certainly serf labor.

Plus the nature of technology itself, the computer, and the chip.

I can't get used to those words.

To me hardware, software means hammer, nails, software, pillowcases, Turkish dowels.

So I'm not up on that.

But we do know all that played a role in devastating our city.

Perhaps more than most cities, because it was the industrial city.

City of the skyscrapers.

No accident, Chicago brought forth the skyscrapers.

Steel was the ingredient here, and the visionaries like Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.

And so it was a city of Eastern Europeans who came, Mediterranean came, from the deep south, poor whites came, especially after World War I and World War II.

As far as the black people of the south, there were two migrations after World War I and World War II.

As a result, Chicago was two big, big black areas.

The south side, more sophisticated, older people there, came at the end of World War I.

And the west side, more deprived, if possible.

So that's part of Chicago, and the Hispanic population is growing.

So the minorities or the new groups are the people of color, to a great extent.

And so Chicago has this particular division, too, of segregation.

Well, you could travel from all the way along the outer drive, the beautiful outer drive, Face Lake, Michigan, you could travel all the way from the south, Gary, Indiana, all the way north, Evansville, Illinois, and not once see a slum or a ghetto.

From the distance you will see those huge housing projects, the biggest in the world, Robert Taylor Homes, but from a distance.

So that's Chicago, too.

As far as the city and corruption, well Chicago may have been most flamboyant in its corruption, but I was rather proud of it.

I called Chicago not the most corrupt city, but the big daddy of them all.

And so the slogan originally of Chicago, way back when it was being built, of course there was a matter of parks were being discussed and trees and forests were discussed, so the Latin slogan, Orbs in Horto, was the slogan.

City in the garden.

In fact, Olmsted, the planner, the garden, the one of Central Park, New York, was in Chicago, too, making these plans.

Later on, Mike Royko, the columnist, the irreverent columnist, or Nelson Aldrin, the irreverent novelist, conceived the phrase, Orbs in Horto is not exactly, it should be, Ubiest Mea, where's mine? And that was a Chicago thing.

An anecdote goes with it involving Royko.

At the time of Daily the Elder, apartments were made without question, but now during the 60s, new kinds of independent congressmen came in.

There was a block of black guys, but also some white independents, one of whom was Dick Simpson of the near north side, who was also a teacher at the University of Illinois Chicago campus.

And he was challenging Daily on occasion.

And when someone was appointed to the zoning board, the zoning board dealing with real estate, who was also a member of Arthur Rubleff and Company, leading realtor, but also the son of Daily's right -hand man, Alderman Tom Keane, who later on spent time in the pokey.

See, Daily was not interested in money, by the way.

They're going to find, they said one thing only, power.

But Tom Keane was the money man.

Well, Tom Keane's son, Tommy Keane, of Arthur Rubleff and Company, is appointed to the zoning board that determines the nature of real estate.

And so this descending Alderman gets up Simpson and says, this is nepotism, but first more than that is conflict of interests.

And Daily said, what do you mean by nepotism? What do you mean by conflict of interests? And he goes on to say, you don't know, you have no children, you had children, you'd know why Tommy Keane's mother is a fine Polish -American woman.

And Max Cobb next day has, my mother's a fine Polish -American woman, where's mine? So in a sense, that was Chicago at the time.

Is ethnicity a big deal here? Ethnicity? See, that's a hard one to answer.

Ethnicity has always been a big deal in Chicago, especially among Eastern Europeans who have come here.

There are different neighborhoods.

There's the Ukrainian neighborhood, there's the Lithuanian neighborhood, Polish neighborhood, even the Eastern European have their own kind of neighborhood.

And it was called the bungalow neighborhoods, two flats, you see, living on the first floor would be the old steelworker, and who saved money to have the house, up above lives his daughter and son -in -law.

That was the pattern for Chicago.

The only trouble with that sort of ethnicity is also suspicious of the outsider, especially the black, and that became part of the Chicago scene.

How does that play out?