Chicago Republicans

The recent passing of Dr. Martin Luther King’s wife Coretta returned America’s attention for a brief moment to the turbulent days of the early civil rights movement. We remembered together the overwhelming divide that separated the races, embodied in the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine. As laughable as the idea seems to us today, for decades Democrats in Congress and the courts argued that states could bar African Americans from white establishments without violating the Constitution. This doctrine was formally established in the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896. Homer Plessy, an African American, was arrested for refusing to leave a ‘whites only’ section of the train. Plessy sued and the case eventually moved all the way up to the Supreme Court. In their decision, the justices argued that state laws creating separate facilities for blacks and whites were constitutionally sound. This ruling opened the door for the disastrous Jim Crow laws that successfully segregated the south for the next 60 years.

It was immediately obvious to African Americans that the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine was merely a means to further black subjugation. Black schools, hospitals, prisons and government service centers were chronically ill equipped and under funded. Democratic governors and legislatures in the south consistently rebuffed appeals from black schoolteachers and principals to provide funds comparable to those received by white schools. Because of the effective ‘black codes’ that disenfranchised a large segment of the black population, African Americans in the south had little political power with which to fight back. Not until 1954 and the cataclysmic Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case did the federal government finally insist that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” The court argued that segregation in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, an amendment the Republicans had passed nearly 90 years earlier in 1868. Despite the ruling against segregation, most schools in the south weren’t finally integrated until the Nixon administration forced the issue by using the National Guard.

Today there is a subtler form of “Jim Crow” segregation alive in Cook County. One has only to take a day trip to John Stroger Hospital and its neighbor Rush Hospital to witness first hand how unequal these two separate facilities really are. While Rush services the predominantly white clientele in North Chicago, Stroger Hospital cares mostly for Chicago’s black residents. Countless newspaper stories have chronicled how Democratic patronage has led to gross mismanagement at Stroger Hospital; patients stomped to death by security, babies dying in the waiting room, impossibly long pharmacy lines, and the discouragement patients face while waiting hours at the emergency room. A recent study found that 40% of emergency room patients wait six or more hours before being seen by an attending physician. Twenty percent of patients wait 12 hours or more for an available bed for overnight or follow up treatment. Complaints like these are seldom heard at Rush.

These two facilities are clear examples of ‘separate but unequal.’ And while the reasons for the disparities are complex, the most obvious (and easily solved) is the odious patronage system that pervades Stroger Hospital. As long as Democratic County President John Stroger continues to use Stroger Hospital as a job factory for his political allies, reform is likely to be slow. The facts are clear, John Stroger gives county jobs not to the most qualified, but to the most politically loyal. This tendency of his to reward friends at the expense of his constituents is a key reason why African Americans struggle to receive timely health care.

The Chicago Republican Party salutes the service of Coretta Scott King and her civil rights co-workers who helped end the tragic American phenomenon called segregation. We further call on municipal governments to put the needs of people before political agenda so that the modern version of ‘separate and unequal’ will die.