"Make Love Not War."
Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley might have been the Boss, as columnist Mike Royko wrote, but at the start of the 1960s he was losing his grip.
Daley had delivered Chicago and the surrounding Cook County for the Democratic ticket and helped elect John F. Kennedy president. As the "kingmaker," he got a prime spot at Kennedy's inauguration and an invitation to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that evening. "We were the first family invited to the White House," he boasted on the way out.
But back in the Windy City unpredictable gusts awaited the mayor. While he was trying to avoid damage from massive police and public works corruption, the "Negroes," as they were called in those days, were getting restive. Thirty percent of black families in Chicago were squeezed into ghettoes and living in poverty, with a median annual income of $4,800. Years before the civil rights movement gained traction in the South and urban areas of the North, African Americans in Chicago started protesting discrimination. They organized marches against restrictive housing policies and lousy public schools. Community groups founded by the legendary community activist Saul Alinsky staged protests at City Hall.
When Eleanor Roosevelt suggested that northern cities set an example by beginning to desegregate neighborhoods, Daley responded, "I don't believe Chicago is as bad as some people say it is. We are making progress in race relations."
Neither Daley nor Roosevelt nor anyone else could foresee the massive changes that were about to wrench Chicago and the rest of the nation out of the quiescent 1950s and into the turbulent 1960s. The country was headed into a decade of protest, civil rights battles, assassinations, and cultural shifts. The Vietnam War would unleash passions that unnerved adults and gave birth to a counterculture beyond their control. Bob Dylan captured the moment when he crooned: "For the times they are a changin'."
Still, in 1960 Chicago was relatively calm. Daley ruled by patronage and managed to keep a lid on racial tensions. But if he had held a magnifying glass over the campus of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park he would have seen the first ripples of student unrest.
• • •
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Why Bernie Sanders Matters by Harry Jaffe
غير روائيMissionary. Radical. Hippy. Revolutionary. Red Mayor. Pragmatist. Socialist. Hot from the campaign trail, a vivid new biography that goes inside Bernie Sanders's contradictions, his unusual life, and his electrifying quest to make the American dream...
