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Former Cook County Board President John Stroger Dies
Produced by Sonari Glinton on Friday, January 18, 2008
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John Stroger, center, with Emil Jones, Barack Obama and Richard M. Daley in August 2000. (AP Photo / Stephen J. Carrera) |
Former Cook County Board President John Stroger has died. Stroger suffered a stroke in March 2006. His years of public service cast a giant shadow on the city and its politics. For Chicago Public Radio, Sonari Glinton reports.
Jobs. When telling the story of John Stroger, that's a continuing theme. During the 1950s when Stroger began his career he was able to see the importance jobs could have for African-Americans and the power that came from doling out those jobs.
JOHNSON: John to me is a Booker T. Washington. He believes very strongly, if you give a person a job you don't have to worry about all these laws about integration and all. Because he's going to pull himself up and to him job has always been the big thing.
That's Dr. Robert Johnson. Johnson and Stroger were friends for more than 70 years. You know, the kind of friend you meet in grade school and you promise to be best friends for the rest of your lives, well that's Robert Johnson and John Stroger.
JOHNSON: John always knew that he could achieve, but he didn't think he'd be able to.
John Stroger grew up in Helena Arkansas, on the poor side of a very small, very poor town.
Johnson describes their upbringing in the south as harsh. He says Stroger's was harsher—dirt floor, father who couldn't work, not a lot of reason for hope.
JOHNSON: I remember at our baccalaureate our english teacher said to John and his mother, ‘Instead of this boy looking to go to college, he needs to get a job to help this family.’
Stroger ignored that advice and worked his way through Xavier University in New Orleans, as a janitor. And with his mother insistence he made his way to Chicago were knocked on doors for Cook County democratic party.
He worked his way up from office to office. Taking jobs other politicians didn't want. All this while going to law school at night as well as working in the political organizations of the black power houses of Ralph Metcalfe and and William Dawson. Stroger became a Democratic committeeman in the late sixties and a county commissioner soon after.
TROTTER: He was in many ways that individual who sat by the door
Illinois State Senator Donne E. Trotter:
TROTTER: He was the one who was there. One foot in, one foot out, and the foot that was out he was keeping the door open to let others in.
Trotter was one of the many young politicians Stroger mentored over the years.
As a black politician in the '60s and '70s, Stroger who was part of the establishment, had to keep favor with white politicians like the late mayor Richard J. Daley while fighting off accusations that he was an Uncle Tom.
TROTTER: And being one of the first individuals in this city to be in that position, it was certainly difficult to traverse those two lines and he did it and he did it well.
Stroger's patience paid off eventually when he was elected president of the county board in the 1990s.
His administration has a number of accomplishments mainly the state of the art hospital that bears his name and the county clinic system.
Tom Hynes was the former Cook County Assessor and a close friend and political ally of the Stroger family. He says the presidency of the county board was the culmination of a lifetime of work.
HYNES: He cared. He cared about all the people in the county. He especially cared about the poor. And that's why he has the respect of people across the board in the political process.
Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley was the first and arguably the most vocal of a new breed of white reformers on the Cook County board. Quigley and Stroger went head to head in any number of pitched political battles, mainly over Stroger's belief in patronage.
GLINTON: As someone who fought against him, what do you think his lasting legacy will be?
QUIGLEY: It's clearly going to be that there's a big hospital with his name on it on the west side. Whether or not that hospital was built the way it should have been built and so forth. It will be serving the public for a hundred years. So I think that's his most lasting legacy. I do think there was a spirit there that will remain. This was a man who if you cut his finger would bleed the county colors. He truly loved the county and its mission.
The twilight of John Stroger's time in government was spent fighting off a variety of investigations into county hiring, management and mismanagement as well as opposition from with in his party. Most of the trouble stemming from that central theme in John Stroger's career—jobs.
Again his friend Dr. Robert Johnson.
JOHNSON: I tried to get him not to run. It was too strenuous. And his answer to me was, well he says ‘Who's going to be here to protect the people we got working. I'm the only one who could do it,’ he says.
John Stroger did run again. By that time, he was in his late '70s. On a Sunday in March 2006 Stroger spent a long day of campaigning at churches on Chicago's West Side.
I talked to an aide who was assigned to drive Stroger, that day. When looking at the schedule he says he suggested to Stroger they cancel some of the events, which included five church services. The young aide remembers Stroger glaring at him as if to say, this is what I do. Stroger made all the stops, completing his job for the day. Then like so many hundreds of late campaign nights before he went home to his wife Yonnie.
John H. Stroger Jr. had a stroke the next morning. He was never seen in public again.
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