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

Ebony, April, 2000 by Charles Whitaker

"I tried to talk to her, tell her I wanted to stay," Stroger recalls, "but she said, `No. There's nothing for you to do here but get in trouble.'"

He moved to Chicago in 1953 and soon encountered Metcalfe, a Chicago hero and former Olympic track star. Metcalfe had relatives in Helena, Ark., and had been a track coach at Xavier, coincidental associations that helped Stroger bond with him. With Metcalfe's backing, Stroger joined Chicago's powerful Democratic Machine and proved himself to be a hard-working and stalwart member of the Young Democrats, whose ranks included another up-and-coming politician named Harold Washington.

Stroger says he learned much of what he knows about politics during his apprenticeship with Metcalfe. "Mr. Metcalfe was one of the greatest organizers I ever met and truly one of the great leaders in terms of motivating people to do things," he says.

"Many of the things I do in terms of how I run my own political organization I learned from Ralph Metcalfe."

While rising in party politics, Stroger held down a job as assistant warden of Cook County Jail. He married Yonnie Bachelor in 1959 and they began a family, but several judges and other political leaders encouraged Stroger to go to law school. So with a new baby and a young marriage, he attended DePaul Law School at night. He graduated in 1965.

By 1970, his family had grown to three (two boys and a girl) and Stroger was practicing law and beginning his first term as a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. He was known as a hard-working and congenial county legislator who, though fiercely loyal to the Democratic Party, was a clear coalition-builder.

After one unsuccessful run for Congress, he settled into a comfortable life in the middle row of the political pecking order. But his world was rocked in 1982 when his oldest son, Hans, succumbed to a fatal asthma attack. Hans Stroger was 22 and had just graduated from his father's alma mater, Xavier University. "That is probably the most devastating event in my life," Stroger says. "As a father, you never expect that one of your children will go before you. It just tears you up."

Stroger rebounded personally and politically. In 1984, he was tapped to be chairman of the Cook County Board's finance committee. The job had long been considered the steppingstone to the board presidency, and Stroger was the first African-American to hold it. But when the time came for Democratic Party slatemakers to anoint a candidate for Cook County Board president in 1990, they passed over Stroger. Still, he remained true to the party.

"Obviously I was disappointed," he says. "I thought I should have been the guy. My ego was telling me I should have been the guy. But I didn't let that frustrate me. I stayed consistent with my political organization, and I worked hard."

Ultimately, he believes that not getting the nod in 1990 was the best thing that could have happened to him. An independent candidate won the board presidency, and during his tumultuous reign, Stroger heightened his reputation as a coalition-builder. "I got a chance to establish my own identity," he says.