Abstract
By the mid-1970s, many civil rights and Black and Brown Power activists had turned to traditional electoral politics as the primary vehicle for Black and Latino empowerment. But while clearly drawing on earlier civil rights efforts, this transition from “protest to politics,” to quote Bayard Rustin, proved a far more difficult and ultimately greater break from the movement than scholars normally acknowledge. This article analyzes several City Council races in Chicago in 1975, in which three prominent activists from the freedom struggle ran for elected office for the first time. All three lost their races, but each candidacy demonstrated the ways in which civil rights work in the streets translated—and, at times, did not translate—effectively into more inside-the-system electoral work. The lessons learned in each race, including the expansive use of voter registration, the limits of prominent endorsements, and the power of incumbency and charisma, foreshadowed more successful efforts in races for City Council and mayor a decade later. And yet the question remained: how much should one compromise to attain formal power, even in the spirit of civil rights and social justice?
