American Pharaoh (57 page)

In late November, the machine moved its headquarters from the Morrison Hotel to the Sherman Hotel across the street from City
Hall. The Morrison, the machine’s home for the last thirty-five years, was being torn down to make room for the First National
Bank of Chicago building. A few weeks later, Daley scheduled a meeting in his office with the city’s Committee on Organized
Crime Legislation. The committee, which was headed by an associate dean at Northwestern University Law School, recommended
making certain kinds of gambling a felony. A bill drafted by the committee that provided for prison sentences for bookmaking
and policy games was signed into law a few months later by Governor Kerner. Coming after Daley’s decision to locate the University
of Illinois campus in the 1st Ward — which had led to a large piece of the syndicate’s home neighborhood being torn down —
the latest round of legislation seemed to signal that Daley was finally making his break with organized crime. Daley’s turning
against the syndicate appeared to be largely political. He had gladly used it to help him get to City Hall, but now that he
no longer needed it he had to worry — as he had with Dawson — that it might at some point use its power against him. The syndicate
was also proving increasingly embarrassing to the machine, with round after round of newspaper stories revealing that it had
placed gambling operators and juice men in patronage jobs. The syndicate was well aware that its relations with the mayor’s
office had grown chillier. The FBI was picking up that “the criminal element” in Chicago had begun to express dissatisfaction
with Daley and “felt it should have more control over him since it helped him attain the position.” Daley’s FBI file reports
on a conversation between an unnamed political figure and syndicate leader Sam Giancana. The political figure complained that
Daley would not listen when he tried to prevent a particular nominee from being slated for Cook County sheriff. He “claimed
that Daley was the most powerful political figure in Chicago history and he bemoaned the fact that prominent Chicago Ward
politicians were no longer able to influence the Mayor,” the FBI report says.
⁸⁰

CHAPTER

9

We’re Going to Have a
Movement in Chicago

D
aley left for Washington on January 17, 1965, to attend President Johnson’s inauguration. In the pecking order of inauguration
VIPs, Daley ranked near the top: the Daleys were invited to sit on the platform during the swearing-in ceremony, and to sit
in the presidential box during the Inaugural Ball. At a party at the Shoreham Hotel, Daley was chosen to introduce the new
president, and Johnson exclaimed: “This looks like a real Dick Daley crowd here, all enthusiastic, all happy, and all Democrats.”
When Daley returned to Chicago, however, the mood was less festive. Willis’s contract was due to expire on August 31, and
the battle was already under way over whether it would be renewed. Professor Philip Hauser, a respected voice on education
issues, had joined the anti-Willis camp, declaring that “in light of recent developments and the animosity of a large part
of the population toward him, it would be unreasonable for him to stay on.” Willis’s defenders were equally committed, and
it seemed clear that Daley was quietly in their camp.
Chicago Sun-Times
columnist John Drieske had predicted in late December that Willis would end up keeping his job if he wanted it because Daley
had selected him and the mayor was “not one to admit he was ever wrong in anything.”
¹

In the spring, with the time drawing nearer for a decision over Willis’s fate, both sides were actively mobilizing. There
were the usual anti-Willis protests, including a Good Friday march on City Hall organized by a new group called Clergy for
Quality and Equality in Our Public Schools. But now Willis’s white supporters were also speaking out. A citywide group of
mothers organized a Tribute to Dr. Benjamin Willis Committee. The committee’s president conceded that it was all white, but
added that “we welcome any Negroes who wish to support Dr. Willis.” White PTAs, property owners’ organizations on the South
and West sides, and business leaders also weighed in, and more than 100,000 pro-Willis leaflets entitled “The Chicago Public
Schools and Benjamin C. Willis” were distributed throughout the city. Political observers handicapping the school board’s
politics were saying that it was deeply divided: four for Willis, three against, and three in the middle. The swing votes
— Wild, Adams, and Louise Malis — were all recent Daley appointees. Cyrus Adams was typical of this group. He favored integration
in theory, but he was convinced it always ended up badly because white parents simply took their children out of the public
schools. The more he saw of actual attempts to integrate public schools, he told a meeting of the Citizens’ School Committee,
the more convinced he became that the best course was simply to work on “preserving such integration as existed.”
²

In April 1965, the city took a break from its civil rights turmoil to mark Daley’s tenth anniversary as mayor. The City Council
held a ninety-minute tribute to “The Daley Decade.” Even by the extravagant standards of the City Council, this ceremony set
new records for mayoral flattery. Keane lauded Daley for building new highways, completing O’Hare Airport, and luring the
University of Illinois– Chicago campus. Claude Holman breathlessly told Daley that “the city has a rendezvous with destiny,”
and that “you are the north star that leads us.” But it was Casimir “Casey” Laskowski, the alderman-mortician from the Northwest
Side 35th Ward, whose encomiums reached the highest level. “I hate to speak of this and make a comparison, but once on this
earth there walked a man named Jesus Christ,” Laskowski said.
³

In mid-May, it appeared that Willis was finally on the brink of dismissal. The
Chicago Sun-Times
declared in a banner headline, “Board Refuses Willis Contract.” The word leaking out of the school board was that the board
had voted in a secret session not to renew his contract. These reports of Willis’s demise turned out to be premature. His
supporters on the board managed to stall the resolution for two weeks, and in the interim both sides launched heavy lobbying
campaigns. At a Witness Against Willis rally on the South Side, University of Chicago professors Hauser and Alvin Pitcher
called for Willis’s ouster. But on May 22, at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, 1,100 people gathered for a dinner honoring Willis.
Machine congressman Roman Pucinski declared that “[t]he children of this city have had a rare experience from his profound
wisdom and experience.” During this tense time, rumors were rampant that Daley was secretly working to keep Willis in office.
He was overheard by a reporter telling his newly appointed school board members that he hoped they would “be able to sit down
and work this thing out.” When the two-week cooling-off period ended, a compromise was reached that allowed Willis to remain
in office another sixteen months, until he turned sixty-five. The three votes that changed came from Daley’s recent appointees
— Wild, Adams, and Malis.
⁴

Willis’s opponents were outraged, and they called another school boycott for June 10 and 11. The city’s political and business
establishment once again lined up against the boycott. The Board of Education went to court and got an injunction prohibiting
the CCCO and the NAACP from leading the boycott. The
Sun-Times
advised organizers to negotiate instead, asking “Of What Avail a Boycott?” And Daley urged parents to send their children
to school. “It is only through education that we will have the type of society we want,” he said. Despite the opposition,
on the appointed days 100,000 students stayed away from classes. CCCO head Al Raby, barred by the court order from working
on the boycott, led several hundred protesters on a march on City Hall. No one was arrested, but Daley vowed that there would
be no more protests. The next day, when the marchers returned, the police arrested more than 250 of them. Daley had limited
patience with political demonstrations. He believed that the political process was the appropriate way of making decisions
and allocating benefits. The leaders elected by the black wards were the machine politicians who were supporting him and opposing
the school boycotts. If civil rights activists wanted their views to prevail, Daley believed, they should present themselves
to the voters and win in an election. “Who is this man Raby?” Daley asked after the march on City Hall. “He doesn’t represent
the people of Chicago.” Daley also believed in authority, as he was taught to in his traditional IrishCatholic upbringing
in Bridgeport, and he was offended by the tactics of the Al Rabys of the world. “I come from a people who had no say in their
government and so they came to this country,” Daley told an annual meeting of the South Shore Commission days after Raby’s
City Hall march. “When they elected an official here, they had respect for him. But people today have forgotten this. Unless
we have free men and women who uphold order and the law and have respect for the public officials they elect, then we have
anarchy and conflict.”
⁵

Daley also blamed the media for the protests. “Consider the millions that are spent by commercial enterprises to get their
messages before the readers and viewers of the mass media,” Daley told a graduating class at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
“Then consider a lone picket marching around one public building and the publicity he gets. Would all these pickets be willing
to march if they didn’t get their pictures on television? Would they stay if the reporters and television cameramen were to
leave?” Daley found new villains to blame over the next few weeks. Some of the money for the anti-Willis protests might well
be coming from Republicans, he charged at a press conference. And he announced that police files showed that many of the participants
in the civil rights marches were Communists. “You know, these people take part in any disturbing thing they can,” Daley said.
Raby responded by accusing Daley of engaging in “witch-hunting.” On June 28, school protest leaders met with Daley and the
school board to try to work out their differences. Daley opened the meeting with a plea for negotiations “around the table,
in the true American way, and not in the streets.”
⁶
The civil rights activists brought a nine-point list of demands, including immediate removal of Willis and adoption of a
plan for integrating the Chicago school system. But it soon became clear Daley did not intend to offer much, and Raby called
the two-hour session “fruitless.” The following day, Daley and the civil rights activists met with the school board. After
Daley urged “cooperation,” one CCCO member responded, “We stand ready to cooperate ... if the board will give us anything
to cooperate with.” The meetings ended in stalemate, and with the CCCO vowing to take its case against the school system to
the federal government.
⁷

Down South, the civil rights movement had begun to enter a new phase in the spring of 1965. It had been an arduous struggle,
but it was finally being won. Popular opinion had steadily shifted in favor of King and his followers. In 1963,
Time
had named King its “Man of the Year.” In December 1964, he had received the Nobel Peace Prize. And in early 1965, the Selma-to-Montgomery
voting rights marches — which brought televised images of Alabama state troopers beating marchers into living rooms across
the country — had solidified national support for the cause. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, Congress had put the country firmly on the side of civil rights. There was still important work to be
done implementing these new laws. Many schools and public accommodations needed to be integrated, and millions of blacks would
have to be registered to vote. But the legal system of Jim Crow had gone down to defeat.
⁸

These successes had brought division in the ranks of the civil rights movement. Prominent members of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference leadership were urging King to declare victory in the South and bring the movement up to the big cities
in the North. The debate was about ideology as much as geography. The problems of the urban centers in the North were mainly
poverty and ghetto living conditions, not legal discrimination, so taking the civil rights movement north would mean reorienting
it toward a greater focus on economic issues. James Bevel, an SCLC staff member with family ties to Chicago, was the most
outspoken proponent of heading north. “Chicago is not that different from the South,” he argued. “Black Chicago
is
Mississippi moved north a few hundred miles.” But other influential activists argued that the SCLC should maintain its focus
on the South. Bayard Rustin, the architect of the August 1963 March on Washington and one of the SCLC’s most respected strategists,
maintained that the organization’s work in the South was not yet done. “SCLC’s special mission is to transform the eleven
southern states,” Rustin argued. “There won’t be any real change in American politics and in the American social situation
until that is done.” Andrew Young agreed, arguing that even with good laws on the books, the Justice Department could not
be trusted to bring the lawsuits and apply the pressure that would be needed to dismantle the Jim Crow system. Young also
worried that the move north was beyond the group’s limited resources. The SCLC was operating with a staff of only about one
hundred and an annual budget of less than $1 million. “We’re just kidding ourselves if we say we can do Chicago and maintain
the same presence in the South,” he insisted.
⁹