Richard J. Daley

From his first election in 1955 to 1976, Mayor Richard J. Daley dominated Chicago's political landscape. The story of Daley is also the story of Chicago. Faced with issues confronting many American cities in the twentieth century - civil rights, integration, race riots, fiscal crisis, housing, suburban flight, urban renewal - Daley conducted Chicago's business with a steadfast resolve to withstand the many changes that threatened to engulf his city. In particular, his atavistic approach to racial issues, typified in his opposition to Martin Luther King's campaign to desegregate schools and housing, moderated social change. Through such policies shaping the development of Chicago, he resisted social forces and preserved his city, effectively slowing the pace of change. Even as Daley resisted social change, he was building a new Chicago that under his guidance became known as "the city that works." Daley earned this title for the city by championing civic infrastructure projects that modernized the skyline and improved the quality of life for those who lived and worked there. On the national front, in the meantime, Daley was gaining a reputation. Though as a fellow Irish Catholic Daley had enjoyed high visibility for his support of Kennedy's presidential campaign, it was not until 1968 that his national image as a tough law-and-order mayor emerged fully. During the nationally televised 1968 Democratic Convention, his seeming tolerance of police brutality toward protesters outside the convention hall and his overall repression of dissent formed the public impression of him as a bully. It was an image, wrongly ascribed or not, that tainted the final years of his service to Chicago. RichardJ. Daley portrays one of the most prominent of American mayors in a balanced perspective and sheds new light on his place in urban history.