By Rebecca HuvalThe Daily Northwestern
Evanston Mayor Lorraine H. Morton keeps photos of city residents underneath a glass cover on her desk. The faces in her office range from construction workers to Evanston socialites. When they need help, many of them go to her.
About three years ago, a young man called Morton with an unusual request, she said. He asked if he could have access to the Grosse Point Lighthouse and place rose petals on the steps – he wanted to propose to his girlfriend. Morton called the lighthouse officials and arranged the date.
She said the mayor’s job is to respond to residents. Under a council-manager government, Evanston’s mayor acts more as a liaison than as a ruler. Morton, now in her 14th year as mayor, guides City Council meetings and has the power to break a tie in council votes.
Despite her limited power, many residents blame Morton for the outcome of controversial issues such as downtown development.
“I have spoken with numerous Evanston business people frustrated with her leadership,” said Evanston resident and interior designer Susan Boson, 47. “They felt she was not encouraging the independent downtown businesses. She was prioritizing with bigger developments and chains and not facilitating the independent businesses with easier parking.”
Even aldermen attributed downtown growth to Morton’s leadership. They said she talked with developers and voiced to the council that new businesses would help Evanston.
“A lot of what we see today in the downtown area is thanks to her,” said Ald. Edmund Moran (6th). “And in outlying areas with neighborhood businesses, she gets out there and talks to them. She knows people. She made infrastructure improvements and made them more attractive.”
Residents might see Morton as an influential leader because of the many city residents she knows from her years teaching in various parts of Evanston. She taught at the former Foster School, Chute Middle School and became the first black academic teacher in Evanston at Nichols Middle School. She finished her education career as principal at Haven Middle School.
“I had an opportunity to know people all over Evanston and know the parents,” Morton said. “I got to know their desires, their standards of living and what they wanted for their children.”
Before working in Evanston schools and accumulating residents for her phonebook, Morton graduated with a master’s degree in education from Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy in 1942. She said NU “wasn’t as open to minorities” then, though professors invited her and her husband to dinner.
After graduation, she worked as a substitute teacher in Alabama and participated in the civil rights movement. She carried her activism into Evanston when she went on a teachers’ strike to support Superintendent Gregory Coffin and a school desegregation plan.
“I got so angry, and the next thing I knew my picture was in The Tribune yelling at a lady who voted against (the superintendent),” she said.
Her years of activism and teaching led her to prioritize education, Morton said. But some Evanston residents say that she puts education, specifically NU, before the city’s other needs.
“She’s in the pocket of Northwestern,” said Evanston singer Ruth Granick. “She hasn’t done anything in the city and she has bad manners. She sat down and started talking while we were playing in the ethnic fair two years ago. She sat down with all her sycophants and she trumpeted, talked as loudly as possible.”
Morton said she doesn’t favor NU, even after going there, but she does fight for its students.
“I’m the greatest advocate for Northwestern kids because you’re just kids,” she said. “You’re supposed to make mistakes. There’s an innocence I see there, and maybe it’s just because I’m a grandma and I have college kids.”
She said people are her priority, not institutions or advancing her own political agenda. She spends her time answering phone calls and responding to residents’ requests.
When a furniture store manager had problems with her parking permit, she called Morton’s office. Police didn’t know the store had special permission to unload furniture on the street, the manager said.
“We would call once every six months for about two years,” said Avis Behling, the manager of Affordable Portables, 924 Davis St. “She said ‘I’ll take care of it,’ and then everything was fine. She’s responded so well to this small business whenever asked.”
Reach Rebecca Huval at [email protected].
