This was in direct contrast to Black Democrats in Chicago in 1988 who flashed a handgun and used police to take down a painting of the late Mayor Harold Washington that depicted him wearing only women’s underwear. Washington had recently died in office from a massive heart attack. One of those involved in taking down the painting, Bobby Rush, is now a congressman representing Chicago.
The painting, by art student David K. Nelson, titled Mirth and Girth, showed the African-American Washington wearing white lingerie including a bra, stockings, garter belt and G-string style panties.
He created the painting in about a night, standing in his underwear in his apartment. It was a portrait of the late Mayor Harold Washington wearing women`s underwear. David K. Nelson thought his painting might ``stir some interest.`` He didn`t realize how much. Almost moments after Nelson, a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, hung the Washington portrait in a private exhibition in a school corridor early in the morning of May 11, the whirlwind of controversy began.
A group of angry armed Chicago aldermen stormed into the school and demanded that police confiscate the painting (which they did, though Nelson got it back the next day.) In a volatile shouting match with the students, the aldermen yelled: How could an artist paint such an insult, how could the School of the Art Institute give display space to such racism?
Where are the artist`s constitutional rights to free expression? the students shouted.
When the Mayor dropped dead, the buzz was at his autopsy, the Mayor wore ladies underwear under his business suit.