Eugene Parks

The first African-American on the Madison City Council when he was elected in 1969, Parks was a lightning rod for civil rights in the city for the next three decades, never afraid to take a controversial stand or to butt heads with the city's leadership.

When he suddenly died in February 2005, he had become one of Madison's best-known citizens -- loved by some, disliked by others -- and always on the side of those he considered the oppressed and downtrodden.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor on two occasions -- 1988 and 1999 -- but his campaigns always forced Madisonians to examine their own race attitudes and think twice about the direction of the city.

He once remarked that he was like a dose of castor oil for the people of Madison. Nobody likes to take castor oil, but it's good for you, he said.

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Eugene Parks, who died in 2005, was Madison's first African-American City Council member and one of the city's most controversial civil rights leaders, who relished his political role as a gadfly and welcomed the controversy he engendered. As a high school student, Parks criticized racial injustices in Madison, writing a letter to the State Journal that served notice he would be a force. Parks served on the City Council during the Vietnam War and was later the city's first affirmative action director. His criticism of how Madison Area Technical College handled the hiring of a new president -- and its inability to keep a qualified black finalist -- eventually led to his firing in 1988. Parks claimed the firing was illegal and filed suit against the city. He eventually won his case, was awarded more than $400,000, and was reinstated as a city employee working in the municipal sign shop. Parks ran for mayor in 1988 and then again in 1999, when he made it to the general election against incumbent Mayor Sue Bauman. He was the first black person to advance that far in a Madison mayoral race. He ran his campaign out of his shuttered tavern, Mr. P's, raising money by passing a pickle jar at Purlie's Cafe South. He faxed out rapid-fire press releases, composed on his manual typewriter. Parks, who often challenged city decisions by examining government records, vowed to make government more open. But he lost the mayoral election, with Bauman receiving 80 percent to Parks' 19 percent. "I am, for many people in this city, like a dose of castor oil," he said during the campaign. "Nobody likes to take castor oil. But it's good for you."