A collection of politicians, community activists, family, friends and co-workers filled a majestic University of Chicago chapel Sunday to say goodbye to the late Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough and remember her trailblazing spirit.
Hundreds gathered inside Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on the university’s Hyde Park campus to bid farewell to Yarbrough, a fixture in state and local Democratic Party politics who died April 7 with more than two years left in her second term in office.
Yarbrough, 73, had been hospitalized at the time, battling an undisclosed medical condition.
Amid stories about her compassion and determination, Yarbrough was eulogized Sunday at a public funeral replete with the tributes bestowed upon an elected public official who championed causes that helped veterans, homeowners, public health and social justice.
She was elected in 2018 as the county’s first African American and female clerk. Voters reelected her in 2022. Though the tributes largely focused on Yarbrough as an innovator in Illinois politics who helped open the door for other women, her personal life as a wife, mother and grandmother also were honored.
Yarbrough is survived by her husband, Henderson, and the couple’s blended family of six children, 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
In a stirring eulogy, former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun said Illinois has lost a visionary and a “beacon of light.” Braun said she was in North Africa when she learned of her beloved friend’s passing and moved “heaven and earth “ to make it in time for Sunday’s funeral. She said the two met more than two decades ago when Yarbrough became a state lawmaker.
“You’d have to be blind not to recognize the transcendent intelligence and curiosity about life that she had,” Braun said. She remembered how the two would commiserate how Black women in politics were often “kicked around for the kinds of things that seem to escape notice” when done by their white male colleagues.
“No offense, white men in the audience,” Braun said, drawing laughter from mourners in the nearly 100-year-old medieval-style cathedral. “But she survived all that and came out even stronger.”
Among those who attended were Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, U.S. Sens. Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other dignitaries.
Pritzker called Yarbrough “a trailblazer” and “a great public servant.”
“Hers was a storied career in which she tirelessly championed bold causes and toiled behind the scenes to get things done,” Pritzker said. “Compassionate, determined, undaunted. She knew that the most important things … had critics and enemies that would tear you down along the road to success.”
Born Aug. 22, 1950, in Washington, D.C., Yarbrough came to Maywood with her family in the early 1960s. She received her bachelor’s degree in business management at Chicago State University and a master’s in inner-city studies from Northeastern Illinois University. She also studied advanced leadership studies at Harvard-Kennedy School of Government.
Yarbrough first ran for the Illinois House in 1998 against incumbent Rep. Eugene Moore but lost in a four-way primary. In 2000, after Moore left to become recorder of deeds, Yarbrough soon won the legislative seat. After serving as a state lawmaker for more than a decade, ascending to assistant House majority leader, Yarbrough left the legislature when she succeeded Moore as recorder in 2012 upon his retirement.
Her most high-profile accomplishments in Springfield included securing money for local projects and successfully working on legislation to…
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