American Pharaoh

by Adam Cohen

  The decision was made to break off the summit until 4:00 P.M., to give the real estate representatives time to talk with their board. During the break, King and the Freedom Movement had lunch at the Catholic Interracial Council, and negotiated further over whether to agree to a moratorium on marches. The consensus was that they should accept a moratorium only in exchange for significant concessions on open housing. Daley telephoned Real Estate Board chairman Ross Beatty during the break and made it clear he expected the board to change its stand. “In the interest of the city of Chicago, you cannot come back here this afternoon with a negative answer,” Daley told him. The pressure worked, and Beatty announced that his organization was modifying its position. The Real Estate Board made a general commitment to freedom of choice in housing as the right of every citizen, and promised to withdraw its opposition to state-level open occupancy legislation. It also agreed that the board would remind its members of their duty to obey the Chicago fair housing ordinance. At the same time, the board warned that further marches would “harden bigotry and slow down progress,” and that “if demonstrations do not terminate promptly, we may lose control of our membership, and be unable to fulfill the commitments we have here undertaken.” 11

  The board’s new position was an improvement over its earlier intransigence, but it was unclear how much of an improvement. To some observers, it appeared to be a “complete reversal” and “the most significant result” of the summit. But it was obvious that the board’s concessions had been carefully crafted. Withdrawing opposition to a state open housing law, for example, was an empty gesture. Even if the Chicago Real Estate Board went along, the Illinois Association of Real Estate Boards would ensure that these bills did not become law. Some of the other positions were drawn so fine that they were hard to follow. “We’ve heard your statement,” Raby told Beatty, but “we’re not sure what you’re saying.” After some time spent trying to determine exactly what the board was offering, Bevel said that the real issue was not complicated. “The question is whether Negroes are going to be served at your office tomorrow morning,” he told the Realtors. Several speakers said that concern was already addressed in the city’s existing fair-housing ordinance, but Bevel kept pressing for concrete changes. “Gentlemen, in Memphis, in 1960, we had a series of marches to try to open up the restaurants, and finally, we had a meeting like this and what was agreed was not that they were going to pass a law or anything like that,” Bevel said, now standing up. “The power structure said that they were going to see to it that we could eat in Memphis and one week later we went out and we ate and we have been eating in Memphis ever since. Now that’s what we want here today. I want to re-emphasize that we need Negroes to be served in real estate offices. And you people here can see that will happen.” 12

  To some on the civil rights side, the Chicago Real Estate Board’s new position was still inadequate. King had whispered, “This is nothing” when Beatty finished talking. Perhaps sensing that it had been a mistake to let Daley get out of the negotiations early simply because he had said yes to everything, Raby tried to pull Daley back in from the sidelines. “Now, I want to know when the mayor will see that an ordinance is enacted to require that all real estate dealers post in their windows the open-occupancy law and a statement of policy on nondiscrimination,” Raby demanded. But Daley had no interest in being drawn back in. “I said already this morning that I would do that,” Daley responded testily, “and I keep my word.” Daley once again underscored the need for a regional solution. What was needed was a fair-housing law that covered the whole metropolitan area, he said, and such a law would have to be passed at the state level. “The Democrats have always supported a state open-occupancy law,” he said, again trying to shift the focus away from himself. “The Republicans have fought it.” Edwin Berry, branding the Realtors’ offer “totally unacceptable,” also pressed Daley to be part of the solution. “I want to ask Mayor Daley, if the Chicago Real Estate Board can’t do something about our demands, can you?” Daley made a vague statement about how the city would “act as an agency through the Human Relations Commission” and again shifted the focus to the Real Estate Board. “I think they’ve done a lot,” Daley said. “It shows a real change that they’ve come in here indicating that they will no longer oppose open occupancy.” In light of the concessions from the Realtors, Daley insisted that it was now time for the Chicago Freedom Movement to settle. “We have agreed to virtually all the points here and everyone says that they are going to move ahead,” he said. “Now let’s not quibble over words; the intent is the important thing. We’re here in good faith and the city is asking for your help.” Heineman again lined up with Daley in pushing the Freedom Movement toward an agreement. “Bill, now you said the statement is worthless,” Heineman said to Berry, whom he knew well. “But isn’t point three, the willingness of the board to stop opposing the state open-occupancy law, a significant change?” Under continuing pressure from Heineman, Berry began to back down. “Well, on fourth reading I would have to concede that the third statement is something.” Yes, Heineman said, “It is a concession.” 13

  The talk turned next to whether to institute a moratorium on open-housing marches. Heineman expressed his view that since the negotiators appeared to be “well on our way to realization” of an agreement acceptable to all sides,” it would be appropriate for the demonstrations to “cease until we see if these agreements are working out.” But the Freedom Movement was less certain about how much progress had really been made. “I don’t think we’re nearly so clear on all of these things as Mr. Heineman thinks,” Raby said. Andrew Young spoke of the critical importance of desegregating the city, which he believed was getting lost in all the talk about stopping the marches. The violence surrounding the open-housing marches had prompted this summit, Young argued, but everyday life in the ghetto was more violent than the marches. “It is more dangerous in Lawndale with those jammed-up, neurotic, psychotic Negroes than it is in Gage Park,” Young said. “To white people who don’t face the violence which is created by the degradation of the ghetto, this violence that you see in Gage Park may seem like a terrible thing. But I live in Lawndale and it is safer for me in Gage Park than it is in Lawndale. For the Negro in the ghetto, violence is the rule. So, when you say, cease these demonstrations, you’re saying to us, go back to a place where there is more violence than where you see violence taking place outside the ghetto.” It was an eloquent statement, but Daley missed its point. “Did I hear you say that we are going to have more violence in this city?” he asked. No, Young said, he was just saying that the ghetto was inherently a breeding ground for violence. “The city didn’t create this frustration, or this situation,” Daley said. “We want to try to do what you say.” 14

  The discussion was threatening to move away from open housing to the larger, and far more complicated, issue of general conditions in the ghetto. Raby asked whether the Cook County Department of Public Aid would place the families in its charge in housing outside of poor, black neighborhoods. And he wanted to talk about the CHA’s policy of building high-rises in the ghetto. Heineman tried to steer the negotiations back to the question of open housing, saying, “We understood that your proposals were on these two pages.” But Young insisted that the real issue was “a plan to implement what is on these two pages.” Swibel said the marches should be stopped immediately, for a period of twelve months, a suggestion that elicited groans from across the table. Charles Hayes, a black representative of the Packinghouse Workers Union, warned that empty promises were not enough, and that the civil rights negotiators had to have something concrete to take back to black people outside the closed doors of the summit. “I think that you need to be a Negro to really understand what the situation is here,” Hayes said. “[W]e can’t go out after these negotiations and tell the guy on the street that what we got was an agreement from the Chicago Real Estate Board that they philosophically agree with open occupancy. The people want to hear what we’re going to do
for them now. If I as a union negotiator ever came back to my men and said, ‘I got the company to agree that philosophically they were in support of seniority,’ I’d be laughed out of court.” 15

  The summit broke for a fifteen-minute recess, at Raby’s request, so the Freedom Movement could discuss how to proceed. The civil rights delegates were well aware, Ralph Abernathy says, of Daley’s habit of “mak[ing] vague promises about an unspecified future, while refusing to be pinned down about any specific goals and timetables.” None of them favored a moratorium based on what had been offered so far. “In your mind the question may be a moratorium,” Raby told the summit after the recess, “but we would have to say that we would have a moratorium on demonstrations if we had a moratorium on housing segregation.” Under questioning from Heineman, Raby said the demonstrations would continue. At this, Daley leaped up:

  I thought we were meeting to see if we couldn’t, if there couldn’t be a halt to what is happening in our neighborhoods because of the use of all the police and the crime rate rising throughout our city,” he said. “I repeat, as far as the city is concerned, we are prepared to do what is asked for. I appeal to you to understand that we are trying. I ask you why you picked Chicago? I make no apologies for our city. In the name of all our citizens I ask for a moratorium and that we set up a committee.

  It was classic Daley vagueness, a style one summit participant described as “many words, but they have so little content, they’re so general, that you are not sure that anything has been said when [he] is done.” Raby tried once more to move the discussion to specific remedies. “[L]et me give you an example,” Raby said. “Is the mayor going to ask for the legislation to require brokers to post the ordinance in their windows? Will he ask for that legislation next Tuesday and will he get it? Will that actually be implemented?” But Daley responded that the Freedom Movement first had to show the City Council it was doing something. It was the first time Daley had expressly made a halt in the marches a quid pro quo for progress on fair housing. Raby was irate. “If I come before the Mayor of Chicago some day, I hope I can come . . . with what is just and that he will implement it because it is right rather than trading it politically for a moratorium.” Heineman jumped to Daley’s defense. “In a cooler moment, I think you’ll realize that the Mayor cannot help but want fewer demonstrations, he’s concerned about the safety of the people. And the Mayor is accustomed to having his word taken.” 16

  With Raby and Daley at loggerheads, the prospects for a summit agreement were beginning to look grim. It was King who broke the tension by delivering a moving, but ultimately conciliatory, explanation of why Raby and the others were so reluctant to give in on the moratorium issue. “This has been a constructive and creative beginning,” King said. And if Daley was tired of demonstrations, he should realize that the Chicago Freedom Movement was equally tired of demonstrating. But the marches were necessary, King contended, in order to change conditions. “Now, gentlemen, you know we don’t have much,” King said. “We don’t have much money. We don’t really have much education, and we don’t have political power. We have only our bodies and you are asking us to give up the one thing that we have when you say, ‘Don’t march.’ We want to be visible. We are not trying to overthrow you; we are trying to get in.” By the time King was done, the tension in the room had broken considerably. 17

  Young suggested that a working committee be appointed to consider the kind of specific measures that Raby and the other members of the Freedom Movement were demanding. Heineman, who had been pushing the two sides to keep talking, agreed. He named a committee that included representatives from the Freedom Movement, the Chicago Real Estate Board, business, labor, and City Hall. Heineman directed them to return after a nine-day recess with “proposals designed to provide an open city.” Before the summit could adjourn, an issue had to be resolved: What would be said to the reporters massed outside about the day’s progress? Heineman hoped to say something about the marches. If he could not announce a moratorium on the protests, he at least wanted to say that “the movement would proceed with great restraint” and with “the overall interests of the city” in mind. Swibel pressed the issue further, trying one last time to extract an agreement that there would be no marches at all, but Raby snapped, “[T]hat question has already been answered.” Eventually, Daley stood up and said, “I think everybody should be allowed to say anything they want to, that it be made clear this is a continuing meeting, and that this has been a beginning.” It was almost 9:00 P.M. when the summit participants filed out of the meeting room. 18

  Both King and Daley were skeptical after the first day of the summit meeting. King was not convinced that the Real Estate Board would be willing or able to deliver on its promise to change its members’ ways. The following day, he announced plans for a sweeping new program of racial testing. The Chicago Freedom Movement was going to send 250 testers to 100 realty firms on the Northwest and Southwest sides to see if anything had changed as a result of the summit. “The real estate people indicated in our meeting on Wednesday that they wanted to do something about open housing in Chicago,” King told an overflow crowd of 1,000 at the Greater Mount Hope Baptist Church. “We want to see if they are serious. Some people have high blood pressure when it comes to words and anemia when it comes to action.” The Freedom Movement also resolved the moratorium issue by announcing that it was resuming its open-housing marches. In a public utterance clearly designed to get under Daley’s skin, Bevel declared, “We will demonstrate in the communities, until every white person out there joins the Republican Party.” 19

  Daley, for his part, was also unhappy with how things were going with the summit. He was angry that King and Raby had still not agreed to a march moratorium, which he regarded as an affront to his control over the city. He was also furious at the damage the Freedom Movement was doing to the machine’s political base. The white neighborhoods that King and Raby were targeting with the latest round of marches had already started drifting toward the Republicans in the 1963 elections. And ward committeemen and precinct captains were reporting that the civil rights activity since then had done even more damage to the machine. “We lose white votes every time there’s an outburst like this,” one precinct captain complained after a march came to his neighborhood. At the same time, the civil rights movement was tearing loyal black voters away from the black machine. Every successful open-housing march increased the standing of the Al Rabys of the black community, and hurt the Dawsons and the Metcalfes. Daley had agreed to the summit to get a moratorium on marches, and now he had no confidence he would get one from the negotiations. 20

  Tired of waiting for the civil rights movement to agree to a moratorium, Daley decided to go to court. On August 19, 1966, city lawyers showed up in Cook County Circuit Court Chancery Division seeking a court order stopping the fair-housing marches. Daley was in friendly territory when he went into the county court system. Most of the judges had made it to the bench by performing years of service for the machine, and Daley had slated many of them. Daley did not hesitate to tell judges how to rule in the cases before them. Senator Paul Simon recalls visiting Daley at City Hall and hearing him ask a judge, in a telephone call, to rule in favor of a party in a pending case. Weeks later, Simon saw a newspaper article reporting that the judge had done as Daley asked. Daley was known to punish judges who ruled against him, just as he retaliated against officeholders who failed to toe the machine line. Daley had approached one judge, Daniel Covelli, early in his career, about a case. Daley asked Covelli if he was not inclined to rule the machine’s way to give the case up to a judge who would. Covelli refused to give up the case and ended up ruling against the machine. Daley unslated him in the next election. 21

  The march moratorium case went more smoothly. Cases filed in the Chancery Court went to Chief Justice Cornelius J. Harrington for assignment. Harrington was a product of the same world as Daley. He was a director of Catholic Charities, vice president of the Catholic Lawyers G
uild, a trustee of DePaul University, and a member of the Knights of Columbus. As a young soldier, he vowed that if he survived World War I he would go to church every day, which he did for the next fifty years of his life. He graduated from Daley’s alma mater, DePaul University’s law school. Most important, he was strongly aligned with the machine. Cornelius was a “political animal,” recalls Jerome Torshen, a lawyer with close ties to Tom Keane, and a frequent litigant before the Chancery Division. “In order to have that position you had to be extremely tied in, and they had to be able to rely on you in cases like that.” Harrington decided to assign the march moratorium case to himself. Daley’s lawyers told Harrington the marchers were a threat to the “order, peace, and quiet, health, safety, morals, and welfare of the city.” The Freedom Movement would have responded that it was the white counterdemonstrators who posed the real threat, but they never got a chance to make the argument. Hours after Daley’s motion was filed, before Raby and the others could even be located, Harrington granted the injunction. Depriving the Chicago Campaign of their constitutional right to demonstrate without even allowing them to state their case was an outrageous way for the court to proceed, but it prompted little reaction from the Chicago press or white Chicago. 22