Black clergy in Chicago denounce Trump DOJ’s probe into city’s hiring practices
May 28, 2025
By Tonia Hill, Published on May 23, 2025, The Tribe Weekly
On Friday morning, dozens of Black clergy condemned what’s being described as a probe by President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) into the city of Chicago’s hiring practices. The group says they enthusiastically support Mayor Brandon Johnson.
“The attacks on our state and our city are premeditated because Chicago stands at the epicenter of justice,” said Jonathan Brooks, Johnson’s longtime pastor and leader of Lawndale Christian Community Church. “Dr. [Martin Luther] King was here, and you got all of these voices like Reverend [Jesse] Jackson. This is a space where, if you can discredit the movement of civil rights and justice here, you can begin to crack it across the country.”
About 100 people gathered at the historic Quinn Chapel AME Church on the South Side for a press conference. The church served as a station on the Underground Railroad, helping people escape the horrors of slavery in the 1800s. The original chapel was destroyed during the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. However, parishioners rebuilt the church in 1892 at its current location on 24th Street and Wabash Avenue.
Organizers were in attendance, too, like Xavier Ramey, who describes the Trump administration’s attack on Chicago as not only a threat to Johnson but also a threat to the city as a whole.
“We have a continual history of people who have not just been curious about what America can be, but optimistic about making it happen,” said Ramey, who is the CEO of Justice Informed and the leader of the Chicagoland DEI Alliance. “Chicago has consistently shown that we’re willing to have a strategy. We’re willing to put effort behind it, we’re willing to put numbers and dollars behind it, and that specificity is an attack on the lie of American supremacy and American innocence as it relates to integration and race.”
Johnson didn’t attend the press conference, but Pastor Billy Evans, his chief of faith engagement, was in the crowd.
Trump’s interest in Johnson’s hiring practices began after the mayor spoke at a Lakeside Chat with Bishop Byron Brazier at the Apostolic Church of God in Woodlawn on May 18. During his remarks, Johnson highlighted Black members of his administration who he’s tapped to lead various city agencies.
“So when we say, our people, hire our people. I just want to name this. Two administrations ago, 70 to 75 percent of the administration was primarily made up of white [people] and white men,” Johnson told Brazier.
Johnson shared with the crowd that his deputy mayor for Business, Neighborhood and Economic Development is a Black woman, and his commissioner for the Department of Planning and Development is also a Black woman. “Infrastructure deputy mayor is a Black woman,” Johnson continued. “Chief Operations Officer is a Black man. Budget Director is a Black woman. My Senior Advisor is a Black man. I’m laying that out because how do we ensure that our people have the chance to grow their business? Having people in my administration that will look out for the interests of everyone and everyone means you have to look out for the interests of Black folks, because that hasn’t happened.”
Johnson has been open about the diversity of his administration for nearly a year. In 2024, The TRiiBE photographed the mayor and his administration for its feature story, “The Blackest Administration.” At the time, Johnson told The TRiiBE, “This is not something that I went into with, ‘oh, hire a bunch of Black people.’ It’s far more sophisticated than that, where we are putting people in strategic positions.”
On May 19, the day after the Lakeside Chat at Apostolic, a letter was published on the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division page on X (formerly known as Twitter). In the letter, Harmeet Dhillon, the division’s assistant attorney general, announced that the office would be opening an investigation to determine if the city “is engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination based on race in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
Dhillon also points out that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination based on race, but leaves out the remaining language of Title VII, which also prohibits discrimination based on religion, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation and national origin.
“Our investigation is based on information suggesting that you have made hiring decisions solely on the basis of race,” Dhillon wrote.
Though the letter was shared on social media through the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division’s X (formerly Twitter) account, the Johnson administration said they haven’t received a letter directly from the DOJ.
Targeting Chicago isn’t new for the Trump administration. During his first presidential term, Trump routinely mentioned Chicago’s violence, calling it worse than Afghanistan and blaming President Barack Obama for the violence in the city. Some pastors, like Brooks, see Trump’s latest attempt as a continuation of a conservative effort to discredit Chicago and silence its political power.
At Quinn Chapel, pastors like Michael Eaddy, of People’s Church of the Harvest Church of God in Christ, made remarks pointing out the hypocrisy of the DOJ Civil Rights Division launching such an investigation, considering that the division was launched to end segregation and enforce laws prohibiting discrimination in areas such as hiring, housing and voting rights.
“The action taken by the DOJ is hypocrisy at its height and a mockery of what the Civil Rights Division was conceived to represent,” Eaddy said.
The Johnson administration is about 34% Black, 30% white, 24% Latiné and about 6% Asian, according to the Mayor’s Office. It’s not far off from the overall demographic makeup of Chicago, which is 39% white, 29% Latiné and 28% Black, according to the most recent 2020 census.
“Every person who held a position in the cabinets during each presidential term, going back to Bill Clinton, you, sir, had the least diverse administration, with over 87% of your appointees filled with people who look nothing like us,” said Senior Pastor Torrey Barrett, of the Life Center Church of C.O.G.I.C. in Washington Park.
According to the Washington Post, though 40% of Americans are people of color, only 17% of Trump’s cabinet nominees are non-white.
“Let’s dig deeper into this moment’s profound hypocrisy. For centuries, white leadership filled rooms with white faces and called it merit,” COV Chicago Pastor Stephen Thurston said. “No investigations, no federal oversight, no questions about pattern and practice. Thus we must ask ourselves, why is it that only when qualified black leadership is placed in proximity to power that we begin to hear whispers of investigation?”
Eaddy said the focus should instead be on what Johnson is doing to solve Chicago’s challenges. During his remarks, Eaddy touted Johnson’s policy accomplishments, such as the $1.25 billion housing and development bond, reduced crime and violence, youth jobs and housing.
Though the intention was to denounce Trump’s DOJ investigation, it was impossible for faith leaders not to acknowledge Quinn Chapel’s pivotal role in history. The church was instrumental in the start of Chicago’s Black political movement amid the abolition movement.
Troy Venning, Quinn Chapel’s senior pastor, pointed to that history.
“That place has always stood for resistance. It was in this place that Frederick Douglass brought Susan B. Anthony when she wanted to talk about rights for women. It was in this place that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Ida B. Wells had come. For those of you who sit in the pews, it’s the oils of your ancestors that are there,” Venning said.
Today was a launch pad for further action to rally around Johnson. Some of the Black clergy are leading mobilization efforts to support Johnson and protect Black political leadership in Chicago.
“You will see press conferences, you will see marches and you will see different events that take place,” Barrett said, explaining next steps.
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