American Pharaoh (81 page)

The Chicago police were also infiltrating peace groups. The Chicago Police Department’s “Red Squad,” formally known as the
Security Section of the department’s Intelligence Division, had about 850 informants spying on groups like the National Lawyers
Guild and the League of Women Voters. Red Squad agents also engaged in disruptive behavior and worked to set different anti-war
groups against each other. In an incident in late 1967, an undercover Chicago police officer who had joined the Chicago Peace
Council broke into the group’s offices — to which he had obtained a key — stealing money and equipment and spray-painting
slogans purporting to come from the Students for a Democratic Society. “The police have a perfect right to spy on private
citizens,” Daley insisted. “How else are they going to detect possible trouble before it happens?”
⁹

Despite the attention the anti-war movement was getting, Daley was at least as concerned about black uprisings during the
convention. Any illusions he once held that Chicago’s ghettos were not susceptible to rioting had been put to rest with the
chaos after Martin Luther King’s assassination. There were also several specific rumors about gang activity that was being
planned to coincide with the convention. City officials were worried about the Blackstone Rangers, a large South Side gang,
and a militant black group called the Black Turks that had come to Chicago from Cincinnati and Cleveland in August. They had
reportedly been holding meetings that included dry runs for guerrilla warfare. The 7,500 soldiers who had been airlifted to
Chicago were put through an exercise dubbed “Operation Jackson Park,” in which they acted out how to respond to rioting. The
Jackson Park of the title is located on the South Side, near poor black neighborhoods like Woodlawn — an indication of where
the threat was perceived to be coming from. Daley was particularly worried that blacks would disrupt the convention by firing
guns from the housing projects along State Street, which lay just across the Dan Ryan Expressway from the International Amphitheatre.
Throughout the convention, he had two police helicopters flying up and down the area, patrolling for snipers.
¹⁰

Daley used carrots as well as sticks to keep the city’s black neighborhoods in line. The months leading up to the convention
were a time of extraordinary generosity from City Hall. Daley’s office arranged for Gale Sayers, the immensely popular Chicago
Bears running back, to direct a touch football program in twenty playgrounds and parks across the city. “To be blunt about
it, it grew out of the riots following the assassination of Dr. King,” concedes Deputy Mayor David Stahl. “We said we’ve got
to do something in the predominantly black part of the city where there was a huge degree of social disorganization.”
¹¹
In May, Daley ordered up a $27.5 million program to modernize older public housing buildings and install more social centers.
He personally addressed hundreds of public housing residents in the City Council chambers, telling them that the goal was
“to upgrade Chicago public housing developments and to improve the quality of life for residents.” And Daley ordered housing
officials to rush to build sixteen prefabricated houses for low-income tenants, which he wanted ready before the convention
began.
¹²

Daley also drew on his influence in Washington. In another of Daley’s well-timed grants, it was shortly before the convention
that the federal government found $500,000 to fund a three-year program to help blacks find housing in the suburbs. Ten days
before the convention started, machine congressman John Kluczynski scheduled hearings for the House Small Business Committee
at the Stock-yard Inn, just blocks from the International Amphitheatre. Daley showed up to testify in favor of building a
77-acre industrial park for the impoverished neighborhoods of East Garfield Park and Lawn-dale. Daley’s concerns about having
a peaceful convention also led him to do something he had resisted for years: expand the city’s fair housing law. On June
19, Daley proposed a change in the law that would finally extend it beyond brokers to include owners, renters, and other parties
to real estate transactions. Daley was determined to get all the credit for the change. Alderman William Cousins, an independent
who had tried to introduce a similar bill a year earlier, asked if he could be put down as a cosponsor. “No,” Daley’s floor
leader said bluntly. “We are the sponsors.”
¹³

Most disingenuous of all, Daley began to wrap himself in the mantle of his old foe Martin Luther King. Daley introduced a
City Council resolution to rename South Parkway, a major South Side thoroughfare that ran only through black neighborhoods,
in honor of King. He took the occasion to indicate that King, who was talking about returning to Chicago to lead protests
shortly before he died, would be delighted by the state of race relations in Chicago if he were only still alive. “He told
me Chicago had made more progress than his own Atlanta or other cities,” said Daley. “He visited projects on the South Side.
He visited hospital developments. And he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if the entire city was like this?’” Daley advised that
the important thing for blacks to do now was to let go of their bad feelings. “We could talk of the persecution of the past
of the Jews and the Irish,” he said. “When I was in Ireland a few years ago, I was told they had no feelings against the English
because that was all behind them. That’s how it should be here.” Independents on the council grumbled about Daley’s insincerity
— and the fact that the street being dedicated to the integrationist King went through only the black ghetto. (Independent
alderman Leon Despres proposed naming a street in the Loop after King — a suggestion that went nowhere.) In the end, the resolution
to rename South Parkway for King passed unanimously. A week before the start of the convention, Daley spoke at ceremonies
dedicating “Martin Luther King Drive.” He invoked King’s devotion to nonviolence in a verbal formulation that made it sound
as if Daley had the idea first. “I once told him, and he agreed, ‘Doctor, we will never do it in conflict and violence.’”
¹⁴

At the same time Daley was rolling out the red carpet for his convention visitors, the city was sending clear signals that
it would not welcome those with whose politics and lifestyles it disagreed. “We didn’t want the hippies to come,” Daley press
secretary Earl Bush recalled. In a moment of unusual candor, William McFetridge, Daley’s friend and head of the Chicago Park
District, remarked that Chicago simply would not make its parks available to unpatriotic groups. In an era when public spaces
around the country, from New York’s Central Park to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, were being used by hundreds of thousands
of hippies and political protesters, Chicago’s approach opened the city up to nationwide criticism. “The host city, under
Mayor Daley’s tight control, is showing no hospitality to demonstrations of any kind — legal as well as illegal,” the
New York Times
objected in an editorial.
¹⁵

Welcome or not, the hippies and Yippies were coming. They began arriving in Chicago on Saturday, August 17, a week before
the delegates were to show up. The Yippies had announced plans to hold a Festival of Life, to contrast with the pro–Vietnam
War festival of death they expected to be held at the Amphitheatre. They made their central gathering spot Lincoln Park, a
1,185-acre expanse of green along Lake Michigan on the North Side. When the Yippies showed up, the sleepy neighborhood park
was transformed into a massive be-in of tie-dyed shirts, meditation, poetry readings, folk songs, and political orations.
The Yippies engaged in their trademark brand of street theater. Jerry Rubin and several other members of his Youth International
Party were arrested when they took a 125-pound pig named Pigasus, whom they were nominating for president, to a press conference
at Civic Center Plaza. When the Chicago police arrested the pig, the Yippies announced that they would instead nominate a
sow named Mrs. Pig. Later in the week, Abbie Hoffman would be arrested by Chicago police in the coffee shop of the Lincoln
Hotel for having an obscene word written across his forehead.
¹⁶

The peace movement’s more serious agenda for convention week was still up in the air. MOBE and the Yippies were still trying
to obtain permits for anti-war marches and rallies, but City Hall was dragging its feet. “[I]t was very conciliatory, very
‘Yes, you’ll get it — the permit is being processed,’” Abbie Hoffman recalled. “When anyone called, they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s
definitely set — we’ve just met with this commissioner and that one and they assure us it’s coming next week.’” Yet the permits
never came. Eventually, the 150-member Coalition for an Open Convention filed suit in federal court to force the Chicago Park
District to grant a permit for a rally in Soldier Field or Grant Park. Not surprisingly, the case ended up being assigned
to U.S. District Court judge William J. Lynch, Daley’s former law partner. Lynch ruled that the Park District had the discretion
to deny permits whenever it felt that was appropriate to “safeguard public comfort, convenience, and welfare.” Even if denying
the permits was legal, it was not clear it was good policy. Allard Lowenstein, the anti-war activist and New York congressional
candidate whose Coalition for an Open Convention had been denied the right to hold a rally at Soldier Field, warned Daley
that by denying the permits the city was “inviting violence.” Lowenstein was not alone in arguing that the permit denials
were counterproductive. Six organizations, led by the ACLU, asked Daley to avoid trouble by meeting with the “responsible
leaders” of the protesters and working out an agreement for demonstrations in the parks. And Judge Hubert Will, one of the
few liberal independents on the federal bench in Chicago, told Daley to allow the protesters to demonstrate.
¹⁷

On Thursday, August 22, Daley struck a deal with the anti-war protesters. After negotiating in Judge Lynch’s chambers, the
city and David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee agreed that an anti-war rally would be held the following
Wednesday during the convention’s third day. But the two sides had trouble agreeing on a location. MOBE wanted to lead a 150,000-strong
march on the International Amphitheatre during the convention. Corporation counsel Ray Simon proposed five alternate routes
that all led to the band shell in Grant Park. When negotiations between the city officials and MOBE reached a deadlock, Lynch
stepped in. It was clear that his sympathies lay with the city. Lynch sided with Simon on the march routes, holding that a
demonstration in the vicinity of the Amphitheatre would interfere with convention security. Dellinger was also seeking an
order lifting the park’s 11:00
P.M.
curfew so demonstrators could camp out on the grounds overnight. Lynch again took the city’s side, ruling that it had no
obligation to allow the park to be used for sleeping accommodations.
¹⁸

Even before the convention began, Daley’s relations with the media were strained. There had been an early round of press reports
anticipating that Daley would use his control over the convention to minimize the role of the peace candidates, senators Eugene
Mc-Carthy and George McGovern. Daley was incensed, and fulminated against reporters he viewed as irresponsible. “Among the
false statements printed and uttered, emanating outside of Chicago, printed in national magazines and certain papers and over
radio and TV, was that there was an attempt on my part to prevent some candidates from holding public gatherings,” Daley declared
in a rambling statement at one pre-convention news conference. “This is a vicious attack on this city and on its mayor.” The
television stations, for their part, were unhappy with the restrictions Daley was imposing on them. Pleading security concerns,
the city refused to allow cameras to be placed in the area outside the Amphitheatre. And police refused to allow television
vehicles to park in front of the hotels where convention delegates were staying. In a statement Walter Cronkite read on the
Evening News,
CBS called the ban a “totally unwarranted restriction of free and rapid access to information.” CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid
added that Chicago “runs the city of Prague a close second right now as the world’s least attractive tourist attraction.”
Daley purported to be unconcerned by the criticism. “Who’s Eric Sevareid?” Jack Reilly asked. “The mayor and I have never
heard of him.” But Daley met with network executives at City Hall on August 24 and agreed to allow their trucks greater access.
¹⁹