(1985–2007) Dorothy Tillman was appointed by Mayor Harold Washington and later elected as an alderman representing the city's third ward in February 1985, being the first woman elected for that ward. Tillman pioneered the first TIF to be used in the black community, with the construction of the 55th and Dan Ryan shopping center. She helped to found the African American Home Builders Association and advocated for a 70/30 plan to make certain that African Americans received the majority of the contracts. Amid the Democratic primary of the 1989 Chicago mayoral special election, in which she was supporting Timothy C. Evans, Tillman called incumbent mayor Eugene Sawyer an "Uncle Tom". In July 1988, after months of attacks on him from Tillman, Evans himself, and other allies of Evans such as Bobby Rush, Sawyer retaliated by stripping them of their committee chairmanships in a City Council restructuring. In this, Tillman was removed as chairman of the Housing Committee. In 2000, Tillman requested that two waiters at the Palmer House hotel in Chicago be replaced with African-American waiters for a banquet hosted by Alderman Tillman. Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley delivered a strongly worded rebuke in the media. Tillman was an advocate of reparations for slavery and was successful in having a number of resolutions passed in support of the concept. She authored a bill, passed unanimously in 2002, forcing companies who perform contracts with the council to declare any past ties with slavery. In early 2005, Tillman led a campaign against a $500 million refinancing deal with the Bank of America because of its alleged links with slavery. In the case of the Bank of America, these links are allegedly through FleetBoston Financial, a company which it acquired in 2004. Providene, a predecessor of Fleet Boston, was supposedly founded by a slave owner in 1791. During one loud session of the City Council, Tillman gained the attention of the entire floor when she produced a pistol from her handbag and brandished it about. This led some aldermen and Chicago citizens to call for a censure on Tillman's professional ethics, and possible mandatory gun safety training. Tillman has been involved in the Harold Washington Cultural Center (HWCC) since its inception. A 2006 three-part investigative report by the Chicago local paper Lakefront Outlook reported accounting irregularities and conflicts of interest by Tillman and her family. Despite the controversy and his stand on ethics