American Pharaoh

by Adam Cohen

  In the end, Judge Austin was convinced. “Given the trend of Negro population movement, 99#189; per cent of the CHA family units are located in areas which are or soon will be substantially all-Negro,” Judge Austin wrote. “It is incredible that this dismal prospect of an all-Negro public housing system in all-Negro areas came about without the persistent application of a deliberate policy to confine public housing to all-Negro or immediately adjacent areas.” Judge Austin directed the parties to work out a plan to address the illegal racial discrimination.

  Daley’s initial reaction was restrained. He was concerned, he said, that placing restrictions on site selection would slow down the building of new housing. “We are facing a difficult situation,” Daley said. “We need more housing immediately, but how do we get it?” 7 That was a problem Chicago and other cities were faced with long before the Gautreaux decision was handed down. Federal money for large-scale public housing was far below the levels of the 1950s and early 1960s. The CHA’s last significant construction had been a modest 1967 project, known simply as “Scattered Sites,” consisting of 300 apartments in nineteen low-rise buildings scattered throughout the Black Belt. Daley also argued, as the Daley camp had at the housing summit with King, that the real answer was to come up with a solution that involved the entire Chicago metropolitan area. Experts were saying, Daley noted, “that there also should be public housing in the suburbs as well as Chicago.” 8

  When the parties were unable to agree on a plan to implement the court’s judgment, on July 1, 1969, Judge Austin issued his own instructions to the CHA. Judge Austin not only ordered the CHA to stop discriminating prospectively, he imposed an affirmative requirement that the CHA redress its past misdeeds by placing a disproportionate number of new units in white neighborhoods. The court divided the city into different racial spheres. It designated the city’s minority census tracts — those with 30 percent or more nonwhite population — as a “Limited Public Housing Area.” The rest of the city it called the “General Public Housing Area.” Judge Austin ordered that the next 700 units of public housing be built in the General Public Housing Area. After that, 75 percent of all units would have to be built in the General Public Housing Area. Housing projects could rise no more than three stories and contain no more than 120 residents, the court ordered, and they could make up no more than 15 percent of the total housing in their census tract. 9

  Judge Austin’s July 1 remedial order, with its detailed plans for building housing in white neighborhoods, provoked an angrier response than his earlier ruling that discrimination had taken place. Residents of white neighborhoods lashed out at Judge Austin — it was noted often that he lived in the suburbs, which were neither a “Limited Public Housing Area” nor a “General Public Housing Area.” And they flooded elected officials with demands that his orders be resisted. “If I wanted my wife and family to live near blacks, I would have moved closer to Cabrini-Green,” one white man wrote his alderman. Congressman Pucinski said the ruling “probably has dealt the death blow to public housing here.” The CHA made a few gestures toward accepting the court’s decision. It hired a Chicago community relations agency, Community Programs, Inc., to put together a public relations campaign to try to change white perceptions about public housing. The cornerstone of the campaign was an attempt to persuade whites that the “new look” in public housing would fit in well in their neighborhoods. 10

  While Judge Austin was issuing his first Gautreaux ruling, Daley was squaring off with neighborhood activists over the Model Cities Program. Model Cities was a federal anti-poverty program that picked up where the Community Action Program had left off. Its goal was to create demonstration programs — or “models”— of what kind of urban programs could work to alleviate the problems of the ghetto. The architects of the program intended for it to be politically savvier than the ill-fated CAP. It was to be run out of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, rather than the more ideologically driven OEO, and its community participation requirements were considerably less demanding than CAP’s “maximum feasible participation.” Nixon HUD secretary George Romney said bluntly that “it will be up to the mayors how they spread the money.” Finally, a federal guideline Daley could live with. He took full advantage of his new prerogatives. 11

  From the outset, it was clear that Chicago’s Model Cities Program would operate along the same lines as the Chicago model developed for CAP. To direct Chicago’s Model Cities, Daley had installed Erwin France, a state employment bureaucrat who would soon run for Congress with the machine’s backing. The application the city submitted to HUD more than a year earlier was prepared by city agencies that were firmly under Daley’s control. Daley did not solicit input from the four neighborhoods — Woodlawn, Lawndale, Grand Boulevard, and Uptown — that he was proposing as Model Cities sites. The Woodlawn Organization objected to Daley’s heavy-handed approach and in December 1968 announced that it had submitted its own application. Two months later, Daley and TWO worked out a compromise under which TWO got limited representation on the Model Area Planning Councils that ran Chicago’s Model Cities program, and TWO withdrew its application for Model Cities funding. As with the CAP councils, Daley made sure the Model Cities planning councils remained firmly under his control. He appointed half of the members outright, and the ward organizations were able to control most of the remaining elected seats. More than 10 percent of council members held Model Cities jobs — in violation of HUD rules — and many more held government patronage jobs. “This is a perfect example of the way the machine tries to control things,” the executive director of the Better Government Association charged. “There are nearly 50 council members in Model Cities and other jobs who probably believe they must go along with the [political] bosses to avoid getting fired.” 12

  Daley and the machine siphoned off much of the Model Cities money before it could reach the needy. A 1972 investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that almost half of the program’s $53 million budget went to administrative expenditures, many of dubious value. France set up a costly central-office bureaucracy, with nine staff members assigned to public relations. Delegates from the four Model Area councils attended a conference at the Conrad Hilton in downtown Chicago, and spent thousands of dollars to stay overnight at the hotel. But the greatest beneficiaries of the program were Daley’s machine cronies. The single biggest recipient of Model Cities money was the insurance company founded by Joe Gill, Daley’s predecessor as machine boss, which received at least $195,000 in premiums on contracts for which there was no bidding. Another $185,000 in insurance premiums was awarded to a firm that shared an office and telephone switchboard with Gill’s firm. Model Cities money was funneled to an array of other machine leaders and Daley allies: $140,000 to the Real Estate Research Corp., headed by Daley housing aide James Downs; $127,000 to Urban Associates, Inc., headed by former city planning commissioner Ira Bach; and $30,000 to Crown Office Supply Co., whose president was Reuben Arvey, brother of former machine boss Jacob Arvey. Model Cities jobs were handed out as machine patronage, to applicants who came with sponsorship letters from their ward committeemen. Despite the Hatch Act’s prohibition on federal employees participating in partisan politics, the Chicago Model Cities Program payroll was filled with machine politicians and hangers-on, including Cook County sheriff Richard Elrod’s uncle Samuel Elrod, a precinct captain in the 48th Ward; and a rabbi at the temple attended by 46th Ward committeeman and state senator Robert Cherry. 13

  In the end, Daley and the machine had no trouble crushing the idealistic vision behind Model Cities. Much of the money that was not wasted on administrative expenses and sweetheart contracts was simply sent out in the form of checks to poor people, a large number of whom used the money not to improve their neighborhoods but to move out of them. All four Model Cities neighborhoods lost a large percentage of their population during the course of the program. 14

  In the March 1969 aldermanic elections, the machine was facing an increasingly restles
s electorate. Daley’s hard line on the Chicago Freedom Movement and the anti-war demonstrators had restored the machine’s traditional hold on the Bungalow Belt wards that had begun to drift away in the 1963 election over civil rights. But the machine was now facing defections in two other areas: the black wards and the liberal lakefront neighborhoods. These weaknesses were evident in the aldermanic elections. On the South Side, there was a hotly contested battle for 2nd Ward alderman. The 2nd Ward, Bill Dawson’s longtime political base and home of the State Street Corridor, was one of the machine’s “Automatic Eleven.” But independent former social worker Fred Hubbard was running a dissident campaign against the machine’s candidate, Dawson administrative assistant Lawrence Woods. “We’re a sure winner,” Dawson declared. “We always are.” But Dawson, who was seriously ill back in Washington, could do little for Woods, who turned out to be a lackluster candidate, hampered by a bribery indictment on his record. Hubbard, who campaigned especially energetically in the ward’s many housing projects, won by better than 2 to 1. Hubbard’s victory was a serious setback for the machine. With black voters making up a growing percentage of the citywide electorate, Daley could not afford to have the black wards break away. 15

  Liberal whites were also growing increasingly disenchanted with the machine. Along the lakefront on the North Side, another reform-versus-machine face-off had developed in Paddy Bauler’s redistricted old ward. When the incumbent alderman was appointed judge, a young lawyer named William Singer jumped in to challenge the new machine candidate. Singer was a native of Jake Arvey’s West Side, and had grown up in the middle-class South Shore neighborhood. He had not come up through a ward organization, and had an unlikely pedigree for an alderman. He was a graduate of Brandeis and Columbia Law School, and worked for U.S. District Court judge Hubert Will and Senator Paul Douglas. Singer had also worked for Robert Kennedy in his Senate race, and again in his 1968 presidential campaign. After Kennedy’s assassination, he had been recruited to run George McGovern’s Chicago campaign office.

  Singer had the backing of the Independent Precinct Organization, a fledgling anti-machine group. Just so there were no misunderstandings, Singer appeared before the 44th Ward Democratic Organization to tell them he would run with or without their endorsement. Not surprisingly, they did not support him. Understanding Daley’s popularity, Singer did not run an anti-Daley campaign, but instead tried to articulate a new vision for the city, arguing that residents of the ward should have an independent voice in City Hall. He emphasized issues like good schools, that cut across machine-versus-reform lines. The result was that he landed in a runoff election with James Gaughan, deputy county controller and a machine stalwart, for the seat. Singer and Gaughan reflected a new fault line that was emerging in Chicago Democratic politics. Singer relied on a campaign army of students and reformers, while Gaughan imported precinct workers from across the city. Singer raised money at coffee klatches in high-rise buildings, and employed such unmachinelike methods as a group of girls called the Singer Singers, who belted out campaign theme songs on street corners. Revealing a dark side of Chicago machine politics, Gaughan and his followers made blatant anti-Jewish appeals to working-class Catholic voters in the non-lakefront end of the district. Singer’s campaign was run, one Gaughan campaign worker said, by “a brigade of porcupines whose snout is their most prominent feature.” Singer printed up “Porcupine Power” buttons, and had his campaign workers wear them in Jewish parts of the ward. State treasurer Adlai Stevenson III campaigned for Singer. “A few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought a grubby aldermanic election could be a great occasion for citizen participation,” Stevenson said. “But you have to use the opportunities at hand.” The turnout on election day was enormous, and Singer eked out a victory, winning 11,983 of the 23,263 votes cast. 16

  The machine’s hold on the city remained secure. Even with Hubbard and Singer joining the City Council, Daley still controlled at least 37 of its 50 seats. But there was no denying the powerful symbolism of both Dawson’s and Bauler’s old seats falling to reformers. After the election, Daley indignantly denied reports that his machine was in decline — they were, he said, a “hallucination of some segments of the press.” Daley may not have admitted the machine’s setback publicly, but he did not ignore it. Shortly after Singer was elected, Seymour Simon, who was now a North Side alderman, asserted that county clerk Edward Barrett had fired three of his 44th Ward precinct captains from their county jobs because they had campaigned for Singer. Daley also lashed out at Stevenson for working for Singer, saying outsiders should not get involved in a ward’s politics. Daley was angry not only at Stevenson, but at the larger political realities the aldermanic elections had revealed. Daley’s handling of the 1968 Democratic convention may have been popular with his core constituency, but it had hurt him and the machine in the city’s liberal precincts. And his hard line on civil rights, and pronouncements like “shoot to kill,” played well in the Bungalow Belt, but they had alienated other parts of the old machine coalition.

  Daley had not yet put the Democratic convention behind him. In March, U.S. attorney Thomas Foran, a machine Democrat put in office by Daley, handed up a series of indictments in connection with the convention week disturbances. In sharp contrast with the Walker Commission findings, Foran’s indictments were directed solely at the anti-war demonstrators. The defendants, who would come to be known as the Chicago 8, were a motley assortment. Yippie organizers Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and MOBE leaders David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, and Tom Hayden were among those indicted. But so was Black Panther Party minister Bobby Seale, who had been in Chicago for less than a day during the convention and had said and done little. Lee Weiner and John Froines were minor protesters, whose connection to the weeks’ disturbances was equally tenuous. Foran’s indictments were also a legal stretch, the first ever returned under a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that made it a felony to “travel in interstate commerce .... with the intent to incite, promote, encourage, participate in and carry on a riot.” 17

  On April 23, 1969, after fourteen years and three days in office, Daley became the longest-serving mayor in Chicago history, beating Mayor Kelly’s record. Baskets filled the corridors of his office in City Hall. Daley’s favorite Irish band, the Shannon Rovers, played Gaelic tunes as he and Sis came out of his private office to greet the throngs of well-wishers. After the band broke into “Chicago,” Daley delivered a short homily. “I’ve had the blessing of a fine wife and family, and I’ve tried to do the best I could while I was mayor. None of us is perfect. But as my good mother and dad would say, do the best you can.” In a moment of emotion, he added: “I hope that wherever they are Lill and Mike are proud of me.” Daley kissed his wife and had tears in his eyes. Richard, John, William, and Patricia joined him in the receiving line. 18

  April also marked the one-year anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination. On April 3, the day before the anniversary, unrest broke out in the Chicago schools by noon, and before the day was over black neighborhoods had once again broken out in rioting, looting, and sniper fire. Daley cracked down quickly, talking tough and calling out the National Guard. This time, the conflict ended by nightfall. Nor were the anti-war protests entirely over. More than 10,000 demonstrators marched down State Street on April 5 to call for an end to the Vietnam War. The march included some dramatic street theater. Demonstrators ran into a truck called the “war machine” and came out the other end with makeup looking like blood and burns; one group of marchers held an oversized Uncle Sam covered with simulated dead children. The Chicago police along the route were under instructions to show restraint. The protesters were told by march organizers not to taunt police, and not to carry “defensive equipment,” such as helmets or gas masks. 19

  The opposition to the machine that had shown surprising strength in the March 1969 aldermanic elections continued to increase throughout 1970. Adlai Stevenson III was becoming a central figure in this reform movement. Like his f
ather, the younger Stevenson had a complex relationship with Daley and the Democratic machine. He had finished first in the statewide at-large election of 177 state legislators in 1964, and two years later bucked the Republican tide and was elected state treasurer with Daley’s backing. In 1968, when Governor Kerner was made a federal judge, Stevenson had made a blunt pitch to machine slate-makers for the party’s gubernatorial nomination. But Daley had preferred Lieutenant Governor Sam Shapiro, who had worked closely with him on state legislation. Stevenson then expressed interest in challenging Senator Everett Dirksen in 1968, but Daley slated state attorney general William Clark instead. After these rejections, Stevenson began to speak out publicly against Daley, criticizing his handling of protesters during the Democratic convention and later accusing him of maintaining a “feudal” political system of “patronage and fear.” An informal group called the Committee on Illinois Government — which included Stevenson, Singer, and Abner Mikva — had begun meeting in Stevenson’s Near North Side home. The committee planned an enormous picnic in September 1969, in Libertyville, Illinois, at the Stevenson farm. Organizers invited 15,000 reform-minded people and planned to offer up a manifesto called the Libertyville Proclamation for signatures. A key proviso of the proclamation was that the Democratic Party should “end reliance upon the purchased loyalties of patronage.” 20