Years later, Pfleger recalled that Obama “came in and introduced himself and what he was doing.” He spoke about how churches “were the most powerful tool in the community for social justice and for equality” and how they should be actively pursuing those goals, not watching from the sidelines. “I was amazed by his brilliance,” Pfleger recalled; he was struck as well by “his aggressiveness.” Pfleger asked Barack “what was his church,” because “people that want to work with churches ought to be in a church.” Barack replied that “he was still looking, had been visiting some places, Trinity being one of them.” Pfleger had expected a twenty-minute conversation, “and it went much longer.” He offered Obama his full support, and after Barack left, Pfleger could remember “walking out of this room saying, ‘That’s somebody to be watched. He’s going places.’ ”46
For Obama, these early months of 1987 were intense as he expanded his horizons and added to his growing set of influential acquaintances. On March 2, in faraway Jakarta, Lolo Soetoro died of liver disease at age fifty-two. If Ann called Barack with the news—“they did not talk often,” Sheila recalled—he did not mention it to her or anyone else. He also “never talked that much about his dad” or his death to Sheila, and as best she could tell, “Barack’s father played virtually no emotional role in Barack’s life.” He continued his weekly conversations with Greg Galluzzo—an hour on March 4, ninety minutes each on March 13 and 20, another hour on March 24—and he also introduced his good friend Johnnie Owens to Galluzzo.
Barack and Johnnie had begun discussing whether Johnnie would leave Friends of the Parks and join Barack at DCP, but Owens needed a salary much like Barack’s $20,000, and that meant Barack would have to add the MacArthur Foundation as a funder in addition to CHD, Woods, and Wieboldt.
By mid-March, Barack’s most pressing concern was on the jobs front, and on Monday, March 23—just two weeks before Election Day—Mayor Washington was coming to Roseland to open the much-delayed new Far South Side jobs center that his employment deputy Maria Cerda had agreed to establish more than six months earlier. In the run-up to that ceremony, Barack dealt extensively with Salim Al Nurridin, a politically sophisticated Roseland figure whose Roseland Community Development Corporation (RCDC) was relatively low profile but whose long-standing acquaintance with one of Barack’s new mentors allowed for an easy introduction to this young organizer who was “under the tutelage of Al Raby.”
As a native of Altgeld, Salim knew Hazel Johnson, and he had significantly helped 9th Ward alderman Perry Hutchinson, now well known for his star role in the FBI’s sting operation, win the seat he was now in danger of losing on April 7. Salim had become a Muslim under the influence of Roseland’s least-known figure of quiet political significance, Sheikh Muhammad Umar Faruqi, who oversaw a mosque on South Michigan Avenue, but Salim was not a Nation of Islam “Black Muslim.” The new jobs center would be located in a building that Faruqi and Roseland’s low-key Muslim community had acquired. Salim worked easily with Barack, whom he saw as “a very energetic and purposeful young man, with a passion to do things effectively.”
On that Monday morning, Washington and his two-man security detail arrived at the RCDC office at 33 East 111th Place. The mayor had been told he would be greeted by Loretta Augustine on behalf of DCP as well as Salim, and that Maria Cerda, Perry Hutchinson, DCP’s Dan Lee, and “Barac” Obama would be there as well. A city photographer snapped away as the hefty Washington, holding his own notes and with his trench coat thrown over his left arm, shook hands with local well-wishers as a beaming Loretta stood to his right clad in a handsome white coat. The mayor and Cerda listened carefully as Loretta thanked him for coming. One photograph captured Sheikh Faruqi a few paces behind Washington; three different photographs include a tall young man with a slightly bushy Afro standing in the rear of the small room, listening intensely to Washington and Loretta.
Obama would later quote the mayor as saying to Loretta: “I’ve heard excellent things about your work.” Then the entire group walked outside and turned south on South Michigan Avenue. With traffic blocked off and the sun in their faces, Washington and Loretta led the procession a little more than a block to the new office at 11220 South Michigan. Sheikh Faruqi trailed slightly to Loretta’s left; Cerda, 34th Ward aldermanic candidate Lemuel Austin, and state senator Emil Jones Jr. trailed to Washington’s right. At the front door of the new office, Washington, Cerda, Loretta, and a camera-hogging Perry Hutchinson posed with a white ribbon and a pair of scissors. The mayor spoke to the crowd, and then the ribbon was cut. The mayor climbed into his car for a short drive to 200 East 115th Street, where he broke ground for a future Roseland health center. Barack had emphasized repeatedly to Loretta that she should press Washington to attend a DCP rally for their Career Education Network program, but Loretta had not gotten a commitment.
In his own, overly dramatized retelling of the morning, Barack cursed in anger at her failing and stomped off while Dan Lee tried to calm him down. Loretta remembered no such scene, saying she had “never seen him angry” even when he must have been. “I’ve seen him drop his head,” but, beyond that, “he never showed it.” Tommy West agreed. “You could never see him angry.” Later that day, Barack had an initial appointment with a Hyde Park physician, Dr. David L. Scheiner, who would remember Obama exhibiting no emotional turmoil during his office visits.47
On March 28, four hundred former Wisconsin Steel workers attended a seventh-anniversary rally in South Chicago, where their pro bono lawyer, Tom Geoghegan, told them he hoped their lawsuit against International Harvester—which had just renamed itself Navistar—would soon go to trial. A day earlier Frank Lumpkin and others had picketed outside Navistar’s annual meeting at the Art Institute of Chicago. Envirodyne Industries, to which Harvester had sold Wisconsin before its sudden closing, was also suing Navistar, “alleging fraud and racketeering,” the Tribune noted. The U.S. Economic Development Administration had recouped a tiny portion of its $55 million loan to Envirodyne by selling the mill as scrap to Cuyahoga Wrecking for $3 million, but Cuyahoga went bankrupt before clearing the site, leaving the rusting shell of one mill as a haunting symbol of South Deering’s past. “Frank Lumpkin deserves a spot in the organizers’ hall of fame,” the Tribune rightly observed.
On April 2, Obama joined Mary Ellen Montes and Bruce Orenstein for a joint UNO–DCP press conference in response to Mary Ryan’s private approaches on behalf of Waste Management Inc. Barack, Lena, and Bruce had decided that playing hard to get—indeed, very hard to get—would maximize the price WMI had already indicated it was willing to pay to expand its Southeast Side landfill capacity. UNO and DCP publicly embraced a no-exceptions moratorium on any new or expanded landfills, while calling for WMI to “commit to a long-term reinvestment program” for the “economic development of neighborhoods around its landfills,” the Sun-Times reported. UNO and DCP were sending a clear message they were willing to make a deal, but WMI had to be generous in purchasing their assent.
The next day, Barack again met for an hour with Greg Galluzzo—in April, as in March, they would have five hours of conversation spread over four weekly meetings. Most of Chicago was consumed by the mayoral contest that would climax on April 7. Ed Vrdolyak was running a surprisingly populist, multiethnic campaign, while Tom Hynes seemed focused on trying to take down Vrdolyak rather than targeting Washington. The Tribune heartily endorsed the mayor, saying that “Chicago is in better shape today than it was when Mr. Washington took office” in 1983. Uppermost among Washington’s “unfinished business,” the paper pointedly added, was “helping depressed neighborhoods get better housing and more jobs.”
Two days before the election, Tom Hynes dropped out, in a strategic attempt to unite white voters behind Vrdolyak. On Election Day, Washington swept through Altgeld Gardens in a voter-turnout effort, and he ultimately triumphed with almost 54 percent of the vote. One poll showed him winning 15 percent of white voters and 97 percent of blacks. In Washington’s best precinct, Marlene Dillard’s London Towne Homes,