The scene was one that Harold Washington would have loved: a city united- black, white, Hispanic-paying its last respects to the mayor.
At the Daley Center Plaza Friday afternoon, people of every race, religion, age and political persuasion gathered for an ecumenical prayer service under gray, almost weeping, skies.
And, as religious leaders from many faiths talked of the great loss that all felt at the death of the mayor and of the dream he cherished of a united city, thousands began to queue up in orderly lines to begin a 56-hour procession past the mayor`s open coffin in the rotunda of City Hall.
More than 4,000 people an hour walked by the coffin containing the body of Washington, who suffered a fatal heart attack Wednesday in his office four floors above the rotunda.
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”You see all these people,” said Eugene Smiley, 31, a South Side resident, pointing to the waiting line and to the others who were still standing in front of the stage at the Daley Center where the hourlong memorial service was being held.
”There`s blacks, whites, old people, young people, Hispanics. This is what the mayor meant to us,” Smiley said. ”He was our leader, and he showed us the way. The movement is not dead because the mayor is dead. We`ll carry on.”
The mayor`s body will lie in state around the clock until midnight Sunday, and the crowds are expected to continue to be large, especially Saturday, when many of those attending the annual Chicago Christmas Parade on Michigan Avenue are expected to combine their celebration of the upcoming holiday with a visit to see the late mayor.
The bronze-colored coffin was surrounded by white flowers. Washington`s body, clad in a navy-blue suit, had an American flag folded next to his head. A Chicago flag was draped over the lower half of the coffin.
A double line of mourners entered City Hall and walked half the length of the lobby on newly laid red carpeting leading to the rotunda, which was masked on four sides with blue cloth walls with narrow openings for entry and exit.
Even before the LaSalle Street doors of City Hall opened about 4:40 p.m. to allow visitors to walk through the lobby to view the coffin, the waiting line, five or six people wide at some points, stretched for more than five city blocks, almost completely encircling both City Hall and the Daley Center. One of the first visitors was Christina Williams, an employee of a downtown marketing-research firm. She had arrived at City Hall shortly after noon, almost four hours before the doors were to open. She held a single red rose and said, ”The rose is for the mayor, my symbol of love for Harold Washington.”
Many in the crowd wore the blue ”Washington sunrise” buttons that were so prevalent throughout the black community during Washington`s first successful race for mayor in 1983 and made a reappearance last April, during his final election victory.
Before City Hall was opened to the public, more than a half-hour later than scheduled, several hundred people wearing ”VIP” badges, representing the elite of Chicago and Cook County politics, business and religion were ushered into a roped-off area in front of the stage at the memorial service. There, they stood listening to the prayers and gospel singing for about a half-hour and then were escorted across Clark Street to view the mayor`s body before the general public.
Outside, impatient visitors sometimes broke into chants of ”Open the doors” and ”We want Harold,” but the demonstrations were generally good natured, prompted more by tired feet and chilling winter weather than by genuine ire.
Among the first to enter the draped-off area was Alton Miller, the mayor`s press secretary. Miller was with Washington in his office Wednesday morning when the mayor slumped over onto his desk and then slid to the floor, the victim of a massive heart attack that an autopsy showed killed him about two hours before he was pronounced dead.
The first group of visitors also included Interim Mayor David Orr, Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn, Cook County Board member John Stroger and the mayor`s relatives-his brother, Roy L. Washington, and his half-brother, Ramon Price.
Not among the first to arrive but receiving much attention was Jesse Jackson, the Democratic presidential candidate and Chicago political leader, who cut short his trip to the Persian Gulf to fly back to Chicago when he learned of the mayor`s death.
Jackson was met at the airport by several politicians, including Ald. Timothy Evans (4th) and Ald. Eugene Sawyer (6th), who are vying with each other for Jackson`s support in their bids to become the city`s acting mayor and serve until an election in April, 1989, to fill the rest of Washington`s unexpired term.
When Jackson arrived at a side door of City Hall about 5:45 p.m., he shouted to his aides, ”Sawyer, Evans and Jesus,” referring to the two competing aldermen and Ald. Jesus Garcia (22d), and brought them to his side as his entourage linked arms around the mayor`s coffin and sang the civil-rights anthem, ”We Shall Overcome,” an event chronicled live by
television news cameras covering the funeral proceedings.
Initially shunning the VIP treatment was former Mayor Jane Byrne and her daughter, Kathy, who stood in the public line about 3,000 places from the beginning of the line.
”It`s no big issue,” she said, when asked why she had chosen to take the public route into the visitation area. ”I believed it was the right thing to do.”
After about 45 minutes of standing in line, though, Byrne and her daughter were seen being escorted into City Hall by Chicago police officers.
The afternoon ecumenical service, which featured more than a dozen religious leaders of various faiths giving ”expressions of comfort,”
attracted hundreds of city employees and other downtown workers as well as thousands of Loop visitors from the suburbs making their annual trek to State Street to view the window decorations in the major department stores.
In front of the Marshall Field & Co. department store, parents and children were serenaded by Christmas music as they walked from window to window watching the animated Yule displays. But as they reached the two windows on either side of the center entrance, they stopped in silence to view a framed color photograph of Harold Washington, placed on a pedestal draped with purple bunting, which also held a sign that read, ”In Memoriam.”
Streets all around City Hall were blocked off by police when the visitation began, and no parking or car traffic was allowed in streets around the building. Police on horseback were stationed at the LaSalle Street doors to control the crowds, but the visitors were orderly.
As the crowds grew smaller by Friday evening, though, some of the streets were reopened to traffic, if not parking. LaSalle Street between Lake Street and Madison Street will remain closed entirely until midnight Sunday, when the vigil ends.
Occasionally, a visitor would be overcome with grief upon entering the blue tentlike rotunda area. They would be taken from the line to an emergency first aid station set up near the Chicago Fire Department headquarters just north of the rotunda.
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Early in the vigil, one woman fainted as she approached the coffin. Two other women became hysterical and were taken to the first aid station until they regained their composure.
And another fellow, described by some witnesses as resembling a ”street person,” tried to lift the protective cord separating the viewing lines and the coffin and was personally escorted from the area by new Chicago Police Supt. LeRoy Martin, who was supervising security.
Outside the building, city workers distributed to the waiting visitors leaflets, inviting them to come to the University of Illinois-Chicago Pavilion, 1150 W. Harrison St., at 6 p.m. Monday for a huge memorial salute to the mayor. A public funeral service for Washington will be held at 10 a.m. Monday at Christ Universal Temple, 11901 S. Ashland Ave. The mayor will be buried after the funeral in Oak Woods Cemetery, 1035 E. 67th St.
The leaflet urged those attending to keep car lights on during the mourning period and to wear black armbands and the Washington ”blue sunrise” buttons at the event in the Pavilion. Although the memorial event in the university hall is billed as a ”people`s salute,” it is generally believed it will be a major event in the jockeying to become acting mayor by the several aldermen interested in the post.