# Bobby Rush **Bobby Lee Rush** (b. 1946) was a Democratic U.S. Representative from Chicago's South Side (IL-01, 1993–2023) — fifteen terms — and before that a co-founder of the Illinois chapter of the [[Black Panther Party]]. His career is the fullest single embodiment of Black radical politics institutionalizing into congressional power, and it closed with the passage of the [[Emmett Till Antilynching Act]], which he sponsored. ## From Panther to Congressman Rush co-founded the Illinois Black Panther Party in 1968 with Fred Hampton and ran its Free Breakfast for Children program and free medical clinic — the survival-programs side of the Panther model. He was present in the aftermath of the December 1969 Chicago police raid that killed Hampton and Mark Clark, an event that shaped his lifelong distrust of police power. He left the party in the mid-1970s, earned divinity degrees, became a Chicago alderman (1983–1993) in the Harold Washington coalition era, and won the IL-01 seat — the storied district once held by Oscar De Priest and William Dawson, the longest-running Black-represented district in America — in 1992. ## Congressional Career - **Beat Barack Obama.** Rush remains the only person ever to defeat Obama in an election — the 2000 IL-01 Democratic primary, where Rush won by roughly 2-to-1 after framing the young state senator as an outsider to the district's civil-rights generation - **Trayvon Martin hoodie protest (2012).** Rush was escorted off the House floor for wearing a hoodie during a speech against racial profiling - **Energy and telecom legislator.** Long-serving senior member of Energy and Commerce; a pragmatic dealmaker on utility and broadband issues, sometimes criticized from the left for industry closeness - **The Emmett Till Antilynching Act (2022).** Rush — a Chicagoan who was nine years old when [[Emmett Till]]'s open-casket funeral was held in his city — introduced anti-lynching bills repeatedly across his career; H.R. 55 finally passed 422–3 in his final year and was signed March 29, 2022, completing the century-long arc that began with the [[Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill]] ## Post-Congress Rush declined to seek a sixteenth term and left office in January 2023 (succeeded by Jonathan Jackson). He founded the BLR Center for Flourishing Communities and remains active in Illinois Democratic politics, endorsing in the 2026 Senate race. ## Why He Matters for the KB Rush spans the full arc the KB tracks on the resistance side: Panther-era confrontation with state violence (the Hampton raid is a foundational paramilitary-impunity case from the state side), the institutionalization of Black political power through the Washington-era Chicago machine, and the legislative closure of the anti-lynching fight. His 2000 defeat of [[Barack Obama]] is also a useful marker of the generational seam in Black politics — movement-credentialed incumbency versus post-civil-rights professional-class ascent — that shaped the next two decades of Democratic coalition dynamics.