Laura S. Washington, chairwoman of the Woods Fund, called it "ridiculous to suggest there's anything inappropriate" about Ayers and Obama serving on the nine-member board of directors. The Woods Fund issued $3.4 million in grants to local arts, housing and civic groups last year from an endowment of about $70 million, she said.
Obama joined the board in 1993 and stepped down in 2002, three years after Ayers was appointed, she said. The board met four times a year to discuss policy and new grant proposals, she said.
"Bill Ayers is very respected and prominent in Chicago as a civic activist," Washington added. "He has a national reputation as an educator. That's why he's on our board."
Obama's latest predicament stirred Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to issue a strong defense of Obama and Ayers, which Obama's campaign passed on to reporters.
"There are a lot of reasons that Americans are angry about Washington politics," Daley's statement said. "One more example is the way Sen. Obama's opponents are playing guilt-by-association, tarring him because he happens to know Bill Ayers."
Daley said Ayers "worked with me in shaping our now nationally renowned school reform program."
"I don't condone what he did 40 years ago, but I remember that period well," the mayor said. "It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep re-fighting 40-year-old battles."
Hyde Park, on Chicago's South Side, is home to the University of Chicago, an arts center, museums and other cultural institutions. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's home and the headquarters of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH are within a few blocks of Obama's red-brick home. The neighborhood's politics are vibrant and decidedly liberal.
As a result, what is normal in Hyde Park may sound odd elsewhere in America.
Adolph Reed Jr., a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, knows both Ayers and Obama from his days in Chicago. He plans to vote for Clinton in Pennsylvania's primary Tuesday. But he called the Ayers-Obama link a "bogus story."
Reed nonetheless predicted that the relationship would "haunt" the candidate and "be used to attack him from now until his place in the race ends."
In the debate Wednesday, Obama described Ayers as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of [education] in Chicago, who I know, and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."
He added: "And the notion that . . . knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."
Obama later pointed out that Clinton's husband commuted the sentences of two former Weather Underground members, which Obama called "a slightly more significant act" than his simply knowing Ayers.
Shortly before President Clinton left office in 2001, he granted clemency to Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, who were serving prison sentences after having been caught decades earlier with 740 pounds of dynamite and weapons.
Rosenberg also had been indicted, but never tried, for her alleged involvement in the botched 1981 robbery of an armored car in upstate New York that left three people dead, including two police officers.
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bob.drogin@latimes.com
dan.morain@latimes.com
Drogin reported from Chicago and Morain from Sacramento.
