When Harold Washington walked into Donnelley Hall on election night in 1983, African Americans in Chicago were jubilant. For black Chicagoans, Washington's mayoral victory was a chance to rectify decades of injustice and inequality. It was, for at least one elderly woman standing in the crowd that night, “the miracle…I have been waiting for all my life” (quoted in Travis 1990:193). So when Washington arrived at 1:30 a.m., the celebration was already well under way and 15,000 supporters were hoarse from screaming “Harold! Harold!” The “pilgrimage,” as Washington called the campaign, had come to an end. For Harold Washington and for many African Americans it was truly “our turn.”

Victories like Harold Washington's in Chicago or more recently Antonio Villaraigosa's in Los Angeles represent real breakthroughs that could signal the fulfillment of long-held dreams. One of the hopes of the civil rights movement was that racial minorities would gain access to the vote and that they would then be able to elect representatives who would help minorities control their own destinies. Although minority leadership hasn't always led to dramatic changes in minority well-being (Mladenka 1991, Reed 1988, Smith 1996), the election of minorities to office has often been followed by significant growth in minority employment in city government (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984, Eisinger 1982), major reforms of police practices (Headley 1985, Lewis 1987), increased efficacy and participation among minority voters (Bobo and Gilliam 1990), and perhaps most important, by real shifts in white attitudes toward the minority community (Hajnal 2007).