Billiken crowd jeers Keyes, cheers Obama

Originally published in The Chicago Tribune on August 15, 2004
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

Dissent heats up when GOP Senate hopeful makes appearance at South Side parade

By David Mendell
Tribune staff reporter

If U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes had any notions of capturing the hearts and minds of Chicago's black electorate, the annual Bud Billiken Day Parade on Saturday proved that this task will be nothing short of daunting for the Republican.

Keyes, the conservative political figure from Maryland who entered the Senate race last week after GOP nominee Jack Ryan withdrew his candidacy, made his first trip Saturday into the heart of Chicago's black community. Keyes, an African-American, was greeted with a resounding chorus of jeers and boos that bordered on outright hostility.

"Go back to Maryland!" and "Down with Keyes!" were the most common refrains.

The 75-year-old Billiken parade, which ran south along Martin Luther King Drive from Pershing Road to 55th Street, is touted as the largest African-American parade in the country and the biggest in Chicago. Besides baton twirlers, cowboys on horseback and colorful floats, politicians seeking black votes are wise not to forgo the gathering on the South Side.

By contrast, Democrat Barack Obama was treated to a king's welcome, with thousands of parade-goers hoisting blue-and-white Obama signs, wearing Obama stickers and shrieking in pure joy as his float passed by. They serenaded the Hyde Park Democrat with chants of "O-Ba-Ma! O-Ba-Ma! O-Ba-Ma!"

Obama, a state senator, has achieved celebrity status among national Democrats after his much-ballyhooed keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. And in Chicago's black community, Obama, also an African-American, apparently has ascended to supercelebrity status.

So when Obama's political challenger appeared Saturday, the reception was not pretty. Over the first couple of blocks of the parade route, Keyes got a few down-turned thumbs and groans of dissent.

Up-close opposition

But as the crowds grew thicker and Keyes inched closer to a sea of Obama supporters, spectators grew more aggressive in denouncing him. As Keyes tried to shake hands between 47th and 48th Streets, a woman ran up to him, lifted an Obama sign above her head and screamed repeatedly into Keyes' face: "Obama for president! Obama for president!"

Another man briefly grabbed Keyes' arm and advised Keyes, "Take your [expletive] back to Maryland."

Yet others were courteous, shaking Keyes' hand and flashing a smile at him. A few requested his autograph, and he obliged in each instance.

Indeed, through all the mayhem, Keyes kept a smile on his face. Always a fiery speaker, he even stopped on occasion to preach to his naysayers.

"Why are you representing hate?" he asked, wagging a finger at a throng of people dressed in Obama T-shirts who were jeering him.

Keyes referred to Obama's abortion rights' position. Thus far, Keyes, a conservative Christian who on Saturday wore a gold crucifix around his neck, has centered his many attacks on Obama around the Democrat's support of abortion rights.

Before stepping off on the parade route, Keyes charged in an interview that Obama is indirectly supporting the "genocide" of African-Americans by endorsing a woman's legal right to an abortion.

"We're the first people who have ever been pushed into genocide before our babies are born," Keyes said. "So the people who are supporting that position are actually supporting the systematic extermination of black America."

Many spectators said such views, along with his conservative economic policies, place Keyes at the extreme right end of the political spectrum, far from the beliefs of black Americans, perhaps the most loyal of all Democratic voting blocs.

"It's just hard to come from where we come from, from the working class, and be a Republican," said Jay Little, 33, an electrician from the South Shore neighborhood. "Mr. Keyes doesn't reach me at all. I don't think he will ever see things from our perspective."

One of Keyes' supporters, Ceasar LeFlore, responded that blacks were foolhardy to be nearly uniform in their support of Obama.

"Alan Keyes is a nationally known individual who is pro-life, pro-family and doesn't want to waste our tax money or de-incentivize our businesses," said LeFlore, who runs a non-profit agency in South Holland. "We need to be a free-thinking people who discuss the issues and then vote on our values. Once we refuse to disagree, then we are lost as a people."

Tense moment halts parade

There was one incident even more tense than the heckling of Keyes. About 2:15 p.m., the parade was halted for about 45 minutes when a man threatened to jump from the high scaffolding erected around Corpus Christi Church at 49th Street and King Drive. It took police nearly an hour to talk him down.

Obama's float, meanwhile, was two blocks ahead of Keyes, and the two candidates never crossed paths. Before the parade, Obama said Keyes has been so strident in his criticism of the Democrat because Keyes' campaign is "underfunded and undermanned" and he is desperate to gain free media attention. On Saturday, there was no disputing that Keyes received much attention, but whether he picked up any votes is another question.

Still, Lee Walker, a Keyes supporter who directs a conservative Chicago-based think tank, observed that Keyes could have been forgiven had he ducked out of the parade when things got tough. "He's not running from all this, and I think folks will eventually realize that," Walker said. "You have to give him credit for courage."