![]() ![]() Rush could easily have been killed in the same hail of police bullets, but he survived.Īlthough he was imprisoned for six months in 1972 on a weapons charge, Rush also worked energetically on the non-violent projects that built support for the At a Glance …īorn in Albany, Georgia, on Novemraised in Chicago. One of them was a young organizer, Fred Hampton, whom Rush himself had recruited. ” Indeed, Rush might have felt his suspicions justified when Chicago police raided a Panther meeting in 1969, killing two local party leaders. “We were reacting to police brutality, to the historical relationship between African-Americans and recalcitrant racist whites, ” Rush later told People. His son, Huey, was named after Panther leader Huey Newton. He worked in civil-disobedience campaigns in the South, and founded the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers in 1967. ![]() Army in 1963 and became involved in the great civil-rights struggles of the 1960s. Founded Panthers Chicago ChapterĪfter dropping out of high school, Rush joined the U.S. ![]() When Rush won election to Congress in 1992, it was from one of the most Democratic-leaning districts in the entire United States. He was a member of the Boy Scouts, and got an early introduction to politics from his mother, who ironically was a precinct-level organizer for the Republican Party. Although the venerable African American community of the city ’s South Side would later become his political base, Rush grew up on the city ’s North Side. Rush was born in Albany, Georgia, on November 23, 1946, but grew up in Chicago. “I am consistent in working on behalf of people, ” he told Black Enterprise, “and my move into politics was gradual. Yet Rush saw no total metamorphosis in his evolution from community activist to mainstream politician. The former gun-toting radical emerged as a leading spokesman for gun control after the murder of his son in 1999 and, as a Congressman, supported the positions of the Illinois business community on several key issues. In the process, he moderated some of his militant beliefs. A leader of the militant Black Panther Party in the 1960s who narrowly escaped with his life after a notorious police raid on the party ’s Chicago headquarters, Bobby Rush became part of the city ’s political establishment, winning election to the city council and then to the U.S. ![]()
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