Monday, December 12, 2022

More than just the Tumblers


     Jesse White argued with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., trying to push back against this nonviolence nonsense.
     In 1955, when King came to lead the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, White was a junior at Alabama State.
     “He wrapped his arms around me, I was special to him,” said White, Illinois secretary of state since 1999. He’ll be replaced by Alexi Giannoulias in January.
     Why was White special to Dr. King? Because White was such a good basketball player, the man who, it is said, brought the jump shot to the Southland when players still shot underhand.
     King was not beyond showing his favor in direct, tangible form.
     “After every basketball game he’d give me $20,” remembered White. “I was on public aid here in Chicago. Came from a family of seven; that was big money then. It was legal then, not legal now.”
     That was at Thursday night services, the same ones where King told the students dragooned to fill up the room about Rosa Parks.
     “ ‘I’ve been asked by the city fathers to desegregate the transit system and have agreed to do so,’ ” King said, in White’s recollection. “ ‘I’m going to use the nonviolent means approach.’”
     The tactics of Gandhi did not sit well with young White.
     “I raised my hand. He said, ‘Jesse White, what can I do for you?’” said White, with impressive specificity after 67 years. “I said, ‘Dr. King, you know me, you know me well. I’m from Chicago, and we don’t operate like that.’”
     That’s a good story, and to sit in White’s memento-, award- and photo-lined office in the Thompson Center, itself about to pass from government service, is to be plunged into a series of complicated tales about dramatic moments in his life — playing baseball for the Cubs organization, his 35 parachute jumps with the 101st Airborne Division — two realities that were interconnected. Fresh out of college, he was drafted four days before he was to start playing with the Cubs.
     “It killed me,” he said. “I did all I could to keep from going. Finally, I went.”

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9 comments:

  1. Sorry Neil, but good riddance to Jesse White!
    The office he runs is inefficient & utterly incompetent at doing its job.
    I remember selling a car to someone & we had to go to four different clerks at four different parts of the Elston Ave. office to complete the job. It was back & forth, from one to another & then back to the original one with even more insane & unnecessary paperwork. All the while waiting in long lines!
    The sole reason for that was to employ as many political hacks as possible, not to make life easy for the public.
    I also remember the insane two way envelopes the SOS office sent out for license renewals every year. If I need instructions on how to open an envelope, then the problem is the envelope & not me!
    I honestly don't have much hope for Giannoilias either, as he was involved in his family's failed Broadway Bank years ago.

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    1. You're an idiot The Secretary of States office is a model 9f efficiency and TOTALLY reorganized from how it was before Jesse took over. Jesse has my utmost respect as a bureaucrat who NEVER stooped to patronage, nepotism or scandalous behavior. He will be missed.

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    2. As a rule, I don't encourage name-calling in the comments section. However, I do see where Mike is coming from. What I believe Mike is trying to say is, "Ah Clark Street. You seem to be basing your opinion of the secretary of state's office, a sprawling operation that touches upon the lives of every person in Illinois, on a single frustrating experience and an envelope you had difficulty with. At least that is the evidence you offer for your opinion. If that is the case, your view would seem to betray the sort of egocentrism that has caused so much trouble for our nation of late, and perhaps you would do yourself, and us, a service by reflecting upon that."

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    3. Sorry you had to go through all those hassles, dude. I lived in Illinois for decades, and I never had any trouble with the Secretary of State folks. You want hassles, try Ohio.

      If you buy a car in Ohio, from someone who bought it at an auto auction and then repaired it, it's considered to be "salvage" Then the seller has to have documentation for every part, and every nut and bolt that went into that car, before the buyer can take title to it. This is because there's such a thriving underground market for the chop shops that produce uncountable numbers of stolen and/or defective parts.

      The paperwork for each part has to be presented to the state cops, who inspect the vehicle to see if it's safe and that the parts are legal. If it doesn't pass, or the paperwork doesn't have every I dotted or T crossed, then there's no sale, and the seller is stuck with the car until everything is kosher, and the buyer is out of luck.

      Worse still, Ohio has only a handful of inspection stations, in a state that has almost 12 million people. Six-week waits for appointments are the norm. If you miss your appointment, or your ducks are not in a row, then you go to the back of the line and start over.

      I have been waiting since mid-October to take possession of a Ford that my mechanic bought and fixed up to sell. I won't be able to own, insure, and register the car until after Christmas. Maybe. All because some hard-assed Highway Patrolman wasn't satisfied with the bill of sale that went with the replacement of the front bumper. Meanwhile, I'm still driving my 13-year-old beater, until further notice.

      All this bureaucratic bullshit has made me wish I still lived in Illinois. So a previous officeholder, decades before Jesse White, had shoeboxes stuffed with millions of dollars in cash...so what? Didn't matter to me. At least I was able to buy my '65 Mustang from my neighbor in a couple of days. Not weeks. Not months. Days.

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    4. I have no doubt that mikejaz is one of the numerous political hacks that White employs, to do nothing but push paper around all day, while those of us who must use the office, stand in line after line after line, for what, to watch White's political hacks push paper around?
      And once again, if I or anyone else has difficulty with an envelope, the problem is with the envelope, not us! We all learn how to open an envelope at a very young age, so we don't need multiple lines of instructions on how to do so!
      And "a bureaucrat who NEVER stooped to patronage"?
      Ha, total bullshit!

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    5. Paul Powell left only $750,000 in his shoeboxes. Not millions.

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    6. Three-quarters of a million in 1970 dollars is roughly $5.5 million today.

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    7. C’mon, Clark St. So the SOS office uses an envelope that saves the taxpayers probably tens of thousands of dollars per year in paper costs, but may take you an extra 15 seconds to open per the provided instructions, and you think this is a legitimate complaint?

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  2. I'd have to say that I've been mostly impressed with the efficiency of the office when I've schlepped out to 5401 Elston for something. And obtaining a license plate sticker through the mail via an emailed reminder is quick and easy, seemingly employing few political hacks. (The cost, on the other hand...)

    Regardless, this wide-ranging profile seems like a fine tribute to a guy who's led a very full and meaningful life. Lord, may we all look like that and be as sharp as he is when we're 88!

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