Early Years and Military Service
Harold Washington was born on April 15, 1922, to Roy and Bertha Washington. His father had been one of the first precinct captains in the city, a lawyer and a Methodist minister. His mother, Bertha, left a small farm near Centralia, Illinois, to make a fortune in Chicago as a singer. She married Roy soon after arriving in Chicago and had three children, one named Kevin and the other named Ramon Price (from a later marriage), former artist and chief curator of The DuSable Museum of African American History.
Washington grew up in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, at the time it was the epicenter of black culture in the entire Midwest (black culture has since spread throughout the entire South Side of Chicago and the south suburbs). Washington attended DuSable High School, then a new segregated high school, and was a member of the first graduating class. In a 1939 citywide track meet, Washington placed first in the 110 meter high hurdles event, and second in the 220 meter low hurdles event. Between his junior and senior year of high school, Washington dropped out, claiming that he no longer felt challenged by the classwork. He worked at a meat packing plant for a time before his father helped him get a job at the U.S. Treasury. There he met Dorothy Finch, whom he married soon after—Washington was 20, and Dorothy 17. Seven months later, the U.S. was drawn into World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
In 1942, Washington was drafted into the war and sent overseas as part of a segregated unit of the Army Air Forces Engineers. In the Philippines, Washington was a part of a unit building runways. Eventually, Washington rose to the rank of First Sergeant in the Air Force. In her biography of Harold Washington, Florence Hamlish Levinsohn surmises that the three years Washington spent fighting for his country in the South Pacific while experiencing racial prejudice and discrimination helped shape his views on racial justice in the mayoral run to come.
Read more about this topic: Harold Washington
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early, years, military and/or service:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
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“I had lived over twenty years without the legal right to be alone one hour M to have the exclusive use of one foot of space M to receive an unopened letter, or to preserve a line of manuscript “from sharp and sly inspection.””
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“[I]t is a civil Cowardice to be backward in asserting what you ought to expect, as it is a military Fear to be slow in attacking when it is your Duty.”
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“We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men’s necessities, while elsewhere she was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim’s shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.”
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