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Remembering Richard J. Daley

Interview transcript: Ed Burke, August 5, 2014

Interview with Ed Burke, August 5, 2014. RJDOH_01_burke_ed_20140805. Richard J. Daley Oral History collection, University of Illinois Chicago.

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Loyalty in Politics As mayor of Chicago and chair of the Cook County Democratic Party, Richard J. Daley controlled the hiring and firing of thousands of city and county employees. For some of those positions, proven loyalty to the Democratic Party was necessary for getting and keeping a job. This system was not expressly illegal, and supporters argued that it fostered hard work and loyalty to the city.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter argues that political hiring helped the city be responsive to neighborhood needs:
He’d go out to his ward meetings on Saturday mornings; he’d have two hundred precinct captains at 37th and Halsted at the 11th Ward. And we’d pull up on the corner there. And the precinct captains would come up and say “Mr. Mayor, can you help Joe? His son needs a job.” And the mayor would say, “Have him call so and so. We’d be glad to help him out.”

Vince Gavin, Security Chief for Richard J. Daley, interview excerpt, July 19, 2014
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter explains how loyalty in politics worked:
He wanted to run the show. Of course, the organizations were strong then. We had a patronage system.

Burton Natarus, interview excerpt, June 16, 2010
Thomas Donovan explains the role of loyalty in politics under Mayor Daley:
Former corporation counsel, Ray Simon, argues that loyalty in politics often connected everyday citizens to the political process:
Now keep in mind, at that time I hadn’t even started law school yet. I was walking out. And in great Chicago political style, as I was walking away ready to become a precinct captain, Mr. Huppert said, “And Art, do a good job. I’ll make you a judge.”

Arthur Berman, Illinois Legislator, interview excerpt, October 8, 2003
He knew that I wasn’t a registered Democrat. And this was probably a good year or so that I’d been working there. He’d approved my hiring and all that. It never got into anything political. It’s amazing.

Marshall Suloway, Chief Engineer City of Chicago, interview excerpt, August 11, 2003
I do remember specifically one case of a family over on 51st Street in the Back of the Yards, where the only breadwinner in the family was a worker in the stockyards, and he cut his hand off on a saw in a meatpacking plant. I called Tom Donovan and within a couple of days a brother in the family was working for the city and keeping that little family together. But there are thousands of those stories. It was just a different time and a different city. I know there’s a lot of criticism about the abuses of the political patronage system, but in truth there were a lot of families that benefited from the ability to access work of some kind.

Ed Burke, Alderman, interview excerpt, August 5, 2014
U.S. Senator Richard Durbin offers his thoughts on loyalty in politics: By the late 1970s, new federal and state laws and court decisions had curtailed the patronage system. Most notably, in 1969, Michael Shakman, a candidate to the Illinois Constitutional Convention, filled a lawsuit that successfully challenged politically influenced personnel decisions. In the ensuing years, that lawsuit resulted in what became known as the "Shakman Decrees." They limited the mayor's prerogative to hire and fire employees.
But one former colleague of Mayor Daley, looking back on the era, believed that such revisions worked best when balanced against the need for responsive government:
1968: A Key Year
I think 1968 was a key year, if not the most important, in recent history. And people forget how tense things were, how fluid. One of my memories from that week was being at home and seeing jets fly overhead. Military jets. And at the office, there were all these maps of the city laid out. There were maps like this of Vietnam, and now there were maps of Chicago. People forget how close the country was to tearing itself apart. Chicago suffered some of its worst race riots during the 1960s, most notably in April 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

William Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, interview excerpt, December 5, 2008
The April 1968 riots
In this audio clip, Joseph Fitzgerald, former Chicago Building Commissioner, remembers the riots:
Ray Simon, Chicago corporation counsel under Mayor Daley, and the mayor's son, William, discuss Daley's controversial decisions during the riots:

Democratic National Convention
In 1968, Chicago hosted the Democratic National Convention at the International Amphitheater.

Thousands demonstrated the week before and the week of the convention to protest the Vietnam War and the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, Hubert Humphrey. They and the Chicago police clashed on numerous occasions during this two-week period.
Ray Simon presents the city's side of the dispute over where protestors would be allowed to demonstrate:
Well, do you know what? Everybody played their parts. The mayor played his part. The police played their part. The protestors played their part. The media played their part. And it all blew up. The pot finally boiled over. It had been boiling and bubbling. And terrible things had happened around the world in 1968. The whole thing blew up and boiled over in Chicago for those five days. Nobody was killed. In his mind, the city didn’t riot. The outsiders rioted.

William Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, interview excerpt, January 12, 2009
I believe that some forward planning could have averted the disaster that happened. I don’t know.

Newton Minow, Chair of Federal Communications Commission 1961-1963, interview excerpt, October 2, 2003

After the convention, the mayor’s office was getting sacks upon sacks of mail. The sacks would probably fill this entire room with mail from around the country saying, “God bless you.”

Ed Bedore, City Budget Director, interview excerpt, May 18, 2009
The Eastern liberal media that came to Chicago to cover the convention didn’t like Daley. They didn’t like his reputation. But after the convention, Daley could never be defeated. The people of Chicago viewed him as standing up almost like a paterfamilias concept and protecting his city. And he truly did love Chicago, and he wanted nothing more than to be the mayor of Chicago. He could have been Secretary of HEW or whatever if he wanted to, but he never wanted to leave Chicago.

Ed Burke, Alderman, interview excerpt, August 5, 2014

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Interview with Ed Burke, August 5, 2014