Chicago's `Mr. President' - Cook County, Illinois Board of Commissioners President John H. Stroger Jr

Ebony, April, 2000 by Charles Whitaker

HE is the chief executive of one of the most significant counties in the nation--a 17-district, multicity territory with a larger population and a bigger budget than 35 states. He presides over a workforce of 23,000, in an administration whose tentacles reach into every corner of the third-largest metro-suburban area in the country.

Yet for all the power and prestige of his current post, John H. Stroger Jr., the 70-year-old president of the Board of Commissioners of Illinois' Cook County (which includes Chicago), remains as personal and personable as he was when he was a mere foot-soldier in the often brutal battlefield that is Chicago politics. But now, after more than 40 years of public service, he sits in the top job in one of the top counties in the nation. And he's enjoying every minute of it.

Travel with John Stroger as he makes the rounds in Cook County--especially in Chicago, the county seat--and you'll hear "Hi, Mr. President!" shouted by an assortment of passersby. Stroger returns each greeting heartily, pausing in mid-sentence to make eye contact with the well-wishers and occasionally extend a hand.

"I never really thought that I'd be in politics at the level that I am involved in it," says the Arkansas native and grandson of former slaves who is the first Black to serve as Cook County Board president. "In Arkansas, we tied our politics to civil rights and trying to get the right to vote and participate. You never thought about this being a career."

Actually, politics has been more than a career for Stroger. "Government is his passion," says his son, Todd, 38, who has followed his father into the family business. (Todd is a member of the Illinois House of Representatives.) "Now that he's 70, he's starting to develop some hobbies, but when we were growing up, talking about politics and government was his only hobby."

Stroger, who is in his 30th year on the Cook County Board and mid-way through his second four-year term as president, cut his political teeth in Chicago's powerful Democratic machine under the tutelage of his mentor, the late Congressman Ralph H. Metcalfe. As president of the Cook County Board, however, Stroger's influence extends well beyond the Chicago borders.

The county of 5.1 million people (only 25 percent of whom are Black) includes posh suburbs and still-rural exurbs that bear little resemblance to the jurisdiction's urban center. Stroger controls a budget of $2.6 billion that provides a wide variety of public safety, health and recreational initiatives for the county.

The hallmarks of his nearly six-year reign as president have been the balancing and streamlining of a once-bloated county budget and spurring the construction of a new county hospital, his crowning achievement. He also helped rescue the historic Provident Hospital---once Chicago's lone Black hospital and the site of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams' pioneering open-heart surgery. Under Stroger's leadership, Provident has been integrated into the county's far-reaching 32-facility health care system.

Stroger also has insisted upon and succeeded in opening the doors of county employment and contract work to more women and minorities. Nearly 33 percent of all the contracts let on the hospital project have gone to finns owned by women or minorities.

He has a reputation for being a loyal, political partisan, who also finds ways to work with a wide range of people across the political spectrum. "He's a bridge-builder," says Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who grew up in Illinois politics alongside Stroger and has effusive praise for the county board president. "He's able to achieve consensus among very different viewpoints."

That ability, combined with Stroger's determination and political savvy, has enabled him to ascend the political ladder in Illinois. While some of his peers burned out on public service, Stroger remains energized by the possibilities. "In the main, politics is a good place to educate people about what's going on and change their lives," he says. "If you're really dedicated and hard-working, you can do a good job and make a difference for everybody."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, another longtime associate, calls Stroger's personal and political rise "an amazing journey."

"For him to come from the Arkansas Delta while growing up under the rigid laws of oppressive apartheid and to keep right on walking shows the strength of his character and faith," Jackson says

John Henry Stroger Jr., the oldest of four children, grew up in Helena, Ark., an impoverished, delta town caught in the vise of Jim Crow segregation. "Where I came from, politics didn't include African-Americans," he says. "They did everything they could to discourage us from participating."

But Stroger's parents, his mother especially, weren't easily discouraged. Though the family was poor--they lived in a three-room shack without indoor plumbing or electricity--the elder Strogers stoked their children's ambitions and nurtured their dreams.

John Jr., an avid reader who devoured books on politics, went on to Xavier University and upon graduation returned to Helena to teach high school math. He became active in the Civil Rights Movement, organizing voter-registration drives and stumping for desegregation. But with his activism came the kind of scrutiny that caused great concern for his safety. One day, he returned home to find that his mother had packed all of his clothes and arranged for him to go to Chicago with a family friend.