Chicago Mayor Fires Controversial Aide
CHICAGO — Acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer on Thursday fired a top aide whose repeated anti-Christian, anti-Semitic lectures triggered a week of controversy that immobilized Chicago government and left relations between blacks and Jews strained.
“I know that our city continues to suffer serious racial disharmony,†Sawyer said. “We cannot hide from that fact . . . . These are tender times.â€
The aide, Steve Cokely, 37, became the focus of one of the most contentious confrontations between the city’s white and black communities in recent years when the Chicago Tribune disclosed that he had recorded racial attacks in a series of lectures prepared for followers of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Criticizes Washington
On the tapes, Cokely, who served as the mayor’s $35,500-a-year liaison with community groups, called the crucifix “a symbol of white supremacy,†said Jews were engaged in a conspiracy to rule the world and contended that Jewish doctors were injecting blacks with AIDS when giving inoculations. He also criticized the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and presidential candidate the Rev. Jesse Jackson for having Jewish aides.
While publication of the Cokely remarks resulted in a chorus of political and religious leaders demanding his dismissal from city government Sawyer, who like Cokely is black, balked. Initially he said he would not fire his aide. Later he said he wanted to rehabilitate him. Sawyer even told reporters that he was making progress, saying, “I’ve got him dressing better now.â€
The crisis forced the mayor to spend most of his days and evenings trying to decide how to handle it with the least damage to his chances in next year’s mayoral election.
If the controversy showed Sawyer to be indecisive it also revealed a previously unrecognized dimension of anti-Semitism among Chicago’s blacks.
Claims ‘Ring of Truth’
The Rev. B. Herbert Martin, who is Mayor Sawyer’s choice to head the city’s Commission on Human Relations, told the Chicago Tribune that Cokely should not be fired because “there is a ring of truth†to his comments about a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.
Martin also told the paper that “there is a growing opinion among younger blacks, grass-root black people, that Jews are running things, that Jews are unfair, unloving.â€
Currently head of the agency that runs public housing in Chicago, Martin who was the late Mayor Washington’s minister, voiced similar views in a televised interview Thursday.
“Herbert Martin is not one to use words lightly,†said William Sampson, a Northwestern University urban affairs authority who is also black. “He’s very conservative . . . the reality is that there are some people who believe there is a kernel of truth in what (Cokely) said . . . . There are a lot of blacks who are very concerned about the role that Jews play in issues and concerns that affect the lives of black people.â€
“The question is how far these attitudes go, how widespread they are,†said Michael C. Kotzin, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith regional director. “There is no question there has been and there are certain individuals, including some at a leadership or spokesman level, who endorse the most classic forms of anti-Semitism.â€
Shows Community Needs
“It shows how much more has to be done particularly by some of us who live in the black community but keep our feet in several communities,†said the Rev. Kenneth B. Smith, president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, who was also Chicago’s first black school board president.
“The danger with the comments that have been made (by Cokely) is that they feed misunderstanding in the uninformed.â€
Sawyer seemed to recognize that the Cokely affair damaged both him politically and the city generally. “I have the authority, indeed the responsibility, to reconcile differences, mend fences,†he said.
“The sadness is that what the mayor did he did too late,†said the Rev. Paul H. Sherry, executive director of the Community Renewal Society, an agency that has combatted racism in Chicago for decades. “It’s going to be difficult to repair the damage.â€
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