American Pharaoh (61 page)

The Watts riots stunned the nation. The sheer fury that had been unleashed was unprecedented. Only the Detroit race riots
of 1943 had produced as many fatalities, and they had resulted in far less physical damage. King traveled to Watts just as
the unrest was ending, and when he toured the riot-scarred neighborhood he was deeply affected by what he saw. It was not
lost on King and his followers that the uprising had occurred not in the South, where black anger was expected, but in a big-city
ghetto. The depth and breadth of the anger that set off the rioting struck him as a powerful argument for extending the civil
rights movement to the rest of the country, and trying to improve the condition of blacks in places like Watts. Having come
around to the view that he and his followers had mistakenly “neglected the cities of the North,” King now added his powerful
voice to those who were pushing for SCLC to choose a northern site for its next major campaign.
³⁹

The SCLC considered several large cities, including New York, for its historic journey north. But there were many compelling
reasons for choosing Chicago. In terms of racial segregation, it was as bad as any major city, north or south. In 1959, the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights had called Chicago “the most residentially segregated large city in the nation.” The racial
separation that the Jim Crow system preserved by law, Chicago had simply achieved through other means: racial steering by
real estate brokers; racially restrictive covenants on house sales; and the ever-present threat of violence if established
racial boundaries were crossed. Blacks were no more welcome in working-class white neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago
than they were in white neighborhoods in Alabama. To King, Chicago was “the Birmingham of the North,” and he said that if
the civil rights movement could “break the system in Chicago, it can be broken anywhere in the country.”
⁴⁰

The SCLC staff was also impressed by Chicago’s indigenous civil rights activists. The CCCO was the largest local civil rights
network in any northern city. And it had already scored some notable successes, with its two school boycotts and the anti-Willis
campaign, which had succeeded in getting the superintendent of schools to resign, if only briefly. Chicago’s civil rights
community had received King warmly on his last visit, which had not been the case in every city he stopped in. On the same
trip, King and the SCLC had been greeted warily by black leaders in other cities. In New York, Adam Clayton Powell, the influential
Harlem congressman, had been critical of King and publicly warned him against bringing the movement to New York. The head
of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP, Cecil Moore, had also warned King away, protesting loudly that his visit would only
serve to help the white power structure to diminish “my stature in the Negro community” and pit blacks against blacks. Chicago’s
civil rights leadership, by contrast, had been actively campaigning for the SCLC to come to town. The SCLC had learned hard
lessons in the South about the importance of working closely with the local leadership, and the CCCO seemed to offer the best
new allies for what would be a difficult campaign.
⁴¹

A decision was reached, but it was not unanimous. Some SCLC activists were skeptical about the movement’s chances of succeeding
in the north, and they did not agree that Chicago was hospitable terrain. At a meeting in Atlanta, Rustin and SCLC staffer
Tom Kahn tried to persuade King he was underestimating the difficulty of prevailing in Chicago — and underestimating Daley.
“King had this naive faith that he could do in Chicago what he had done in the South, that he could reach down and inspire
them, and so forth,” says Kahn. “And Bayard kept saying, ‘You don’t know what you are talking about. You don’t know what Chicago
is like.... You’re going to get wiped out.’”
⁴²

The day after the rioting began in Watts, Chicago had its own ghetto uprising. On August 12, 1965, a speeding hook-and-ladder
truck lost control on its way out of a fire station, knocking over a stop sign, and a young woman in the West Garfield Park
neighborhood was killed. West Garfield Park had deteriorated considerably since Daley stopped the University of Illinois from
locating its Chicago campus in the area. In just five years, it had changed from being 84 percent white and solidly middle-class
to 85 percent black and desperately poor. The fire station involved in the accident was staffed entirely by whites, and civil
rights protesters had been picketing outside it for weeks, protesting its employment policies. Neighborhood residents, prodded
by rumors and leaflets alleging that a “drunken white fireman” had caused the fatal accident, began to riot and did not stop
for the next four nights. Roving bands of neighborhood residents threw rocks and bricks at white pedestrians and drivers,
and a white plainclothes policeman was beaten up.
⁴³

At a City Hall press conference, Police Superintendent Wilson, flanked by Daley, warned that unless West Side residents did
“all in their power” to assist the police, the situation was in danger of becoming as bad as Watts. When the violence finally
ended, there were 80 injuries and 169 arrests. Together with Watts, the rioting was a sign of the growing level of desperation
in black ghettos across the country. And like Watts, it showed the chasm of mistrust that had developed between poor blacks
and the largely white police and fire departments that worked in their neighborhoods. Raby and other black leaders regarded
the riots as a warning of serious social problems that had to be addressed before more violence occurred. But Daley viewed
the unrest in less complicated terms. “It was a question of lawlessness and hooliganism,” he said.
⁴⁴
Raby asked for a meeting to discuss the situation, and Daley agreed. But rather than engaging in the substantive discussion
Raby was hoping for, Daley had various city officials explain how much was already being done for the black community. “This
was not the meeting I had requested,” Raby said bitterly. The riots did succeed in getting the first black firefighters assigned
to the West Garfield Park station. “We have been trying to integrate that firehouse for 10 years,” said National Urban League
executive director Edwin Berry, “and with a killing and a riot they integrated it in two minutes.” Six weeks after the riot,
40 of the city’s 132 fire-houses were racially integrated. But of the 4,446 uniformed firemen only 209, or at least minimally
less than 5 percent, were black.
⁴⁵

In response to the CCCO complaint about the school system, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare sent a team
of investigators to Chicago. It was a chance for Willis to respond to the civil rights group’s charges, but he refused to
cooperate. Even before the CCCO complaint, Willis had a history of defying federal requests for education information. He
would not let Chicago school-children take achievement tests given nationally in connection with a U.S. Office of Education
survey mandated by the Civil Rights Act. And he would not meet with a Northwestern University professor working on a federal
report, even though he came with a letter of introduction from Office of Education commissioner Keppel. After four months,
the professor finally got a phone call. “It consisted of a denunciation of my mission and myself,” the professor wrote later.
“He refused at that time to discuss any matter of substance, but indicated that I could call for an appointment this week.”
He was never given an appointment, and was not allowed to see published reports prepared by Willis’s staff. Even with the
city’s federal education aid at risk, Willis remained defiant. He refused to provide the Office of Education investigators
with attendance data to evaluate the claims of segregation. He would have to consult with the Illinois congressional delegation
first, he said, and if he did respond “the answer might well be two months in coming — if that soon.” The Office of Education
was also hearing that Willis intended to use the new federal education money, which was earmarked for economically disadvantaged
students, for middle-class white districts — and to build more Willis Wagons. Keppel took these reports seriously because
they went to “the fundamental purposes” of the earmarked federal aid, “which was to put money behind the poor kids.” Willis,
it seemed, was all but daring the federal government to rule against Chicago on the CCCO complaint.
⁴⁶

On October 1, 1965, Keppel did just that. In letters to Willis and to the state superintendent of public instruction, he declared
that the Chicago school system was in “probable non-compliance” with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He said he
believed the matter could be investigated quickly, if Willis’s department cooperated, but that it would have to be “satisfactorily
resolved before any new commitments are made of funds.” Keppel had put millions of dollars in federal education aid to a major
Democratic city, presided over by the nation’s most powerful mayor, in jeopardy. That was, as Keppel recalls, “when everything
happened.” Daley was irate that the federal government had taken the side of a ragtag group of civil rights activists against
Chicago’s mayor and school board. Keppel’s irresponsible action had “done irreparable damage,” Daley seethed, “to the whole
concept of federal aid to education.” A furious Willis sent Keppel a telegram asking “What is ‘probable non-compliance’” and
“When will you let us know?” The Chicago congressional delegation immediately applied pressure to get Keppel’s order reversed.
Representative Pucinski demanded an investigation by the General Accounting Office, and vowed that “Congress won’t appropriate
another nickel for education programs” unless the federal government backed down. Illinois Democrats also threatened that
William Dawson’s House Government Operations Committee would begin an investigation of Keppel.
⁴⁷

But the key to resolving the standoff between the Office of Education and the Chicago school system was Daley’s relationship
with President Johnson. Johnson had treated Daley with great deference since becoming president. “I’m a Dick Daley man,” he
had said in a phone call after the 1964 elections. “I always have a warm spot for you.” Daley returned the good feeling, saying,
“My wife said that never did we meet a finer couple than you and Mrs. Johnson.” There may have been some real affection between
these two men. Lady Bird Johnson wrote in an April 21, 1964, diary entry that Daley was “one of her husband’s ‘favorite people,’”
and went on to describe Daley as “a very arch type of political boss, ruddy-faced, emanating efficiency and friendliness.”
But Johnson also had clear political reasons for cultivating Daley. He was still planning on running for reelection in 1968,
and would want Daley’s help in winning Illinois. And Johnson had grown to appreciate Daley’s control over the machine’s sizable
congressional delegation. “Daley was critical to the success of the Great Society,” former Johnson domestic adviser Joseph
Califano recalled. “A call to Daley was all that was needed to deliver the fourteen votes of the Illinois Democratic delegation.
Johnson and others of us had made many calls to the Mayor and Daley had always come through.”
⁴⁸

Daley insisted on taking the matter to the president directly. Johnson was in New York on October 3, to sign an immigration
bill at the Statue of Liberty, and then to visit with the pope. Daley rushed to New York, and waited for the president in
Ambassador Arthur Goldberg’s apartment at the Waldorf Towers. When Johnson arrived, Daley was seething. He “was so mad,” Keppel
said later, that he was “just sputtering.” Johnson said later that Daley was so unrelenting in his arguments that the money
be restored that the meeting between the president and the pope was delayed by ten minutes. Johnson assured Daley he would
look into the matter as soon as he returned to Washington. The next day, the president called in HEW secretary John W. Gardner
and Keppel and “gave them unstinted hell.”
⁴⁹
Gardner sent undersecretary Wilber Cohen to Chicago to investigate. Cohen found that Daley was deeply offended with how the
federal government had proceeded. “You’re taking away the funds from me without ever having consulting me,” Cohen recalls
Daley protesting. “You never told me about the issue; you never consulted me or asked me what my views are; you never tried
to get me to resolve it; all you do is send a telegram and I read it in the newspapers.”
⁵⁰