January 18, 2008

A prominent figure in Illinois politics and the first Black president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, John Herman Stroger Jr. died at the age of eighty-two. A native of Helena (Phillips County), Stroger graduated from Xavier University in 1953. He briefly taught school and worked for the NAACP before moving to Chicago, where he soon became involved in the city’s South Side Democratic Party organization. Stroger received a law degree from DePaul University in 1965 and, by 1970, was appointed to the Cook County Board of Commissions, beginning his thirty-five-year tenure. He was elected board president in 1994.