American Pharaoh (19 page)

Tensions in South Deering ratcheted up in the fall, after Wood announced plans to move another three black families into Trumbull
Park. The rabidly anti-integrationist South Deering Improvement Association stirred up opposition among neighborhood residents,
cheered on by the hate-filled reportage of the
South Deering Bulletin.
Elected officials from the area aimed their most inflammatory rhetoric at the CHA. The local alderman denounced Wood for
seeking to “cause racial tension” and demanded her resignation. Another, from a nearby ward, joined in, declaring that “there’s
vindictiveness and revenge in this picture because we have pinkoes in the CHA.” On October 13, 1953, the day the three new
families were scheduled to move in, the police presence was increased to twelve hundred and the new tenants were brought in
“in a caravan under police escort.” About two hundred protesters were on hand, pelting the new arrivals with an array of projectiles,
but the police were able to contain the conflict. The CHA instituted a brief moratorium on new black tenants to quell the
demonstrations, but in February 1954, the housing authority once again began moving small numbers of black families into Trumbull
Park Homes, without prior announcement, under heavy police guard.
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The Howards moved out of Trumbull Park on May 3, 1954, after it was determined that they did not meet the project’s income
requirements. But by the time they left, another ten black families were living in the project. Over the summer, the battle
of Trumbull Park shifted to the actual park. On June 22, a mob of whites attacked two blacks who were trying to play ball
in the park. When blacks came to the park on July 10 to use a baseball diamond, the police had nearly four hundred officers
on hand to keep the peace. Still, a riot broke out, and police ended up arresting fifteen white demonstrators and one black
baseball player. The Trumbull Park disturbances, which started out as a neighborhood controversy, were increasingly gaining
national attention. On July 4, 1954, Eric Sevareid devoted his entire CBS news review,
American Week,
to the conflict.
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Adding to her political troubles, Elizabeth Wood had continued to flout the machine on personnel matters. The reform-minded
Wood always refused to hire the patronage workers that other agency heads understood they had to make room for. As long as
Mayor Kelly was protecting her, there was little the machine could do but complain. But without a strong patron in City Hall,
Wood found herself increasingly being “subjected to the opposition and attack of persons and interests who would wish the
situation otherwise,” she said. Wood’s strong stand against patronage and favoritism had made headlines in the spring of 1953,
when she refused to hire one particularly well-connected office-seeker: Richard Daley’s cousin, John

M. Daley. Kennelly had urged the CHA to hire John Daley as the agency’s general counsel, no doubt in an effort to curry favor
with the county clerk and powerful 11th Ward committeeman, and to enlist his support for a third term as mayor. John Daley
was approved by the CHA, but Wood refused to make the appointment. She told the press he was not even technically qualified
for the job, since he had only five years of legal experience, while the CHA’s rules required that the general counsel have
eight. Wood also pointed out that Daley had graduated 183rd in a law school class of 193. “Up to now, the commissioners have
taken pride in the fact that the CHA has been untainted by politics,” Wood said. “The commissioners do not set a very good
example for the staff when they make a political appointment of this nature.” Daley eventually withdrew himself from consideration.
Wood was, of course, correct about Daley’s utter lack of qualification for the job, but he chose to present himself as a victim
of bias against Irish-Catholics at the hands of the patrician Wood. “As a young American,” Daley said in a statement, “I thought
I would be entitled to the same fair play that any person, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, or nationalistic origin,
is entitled to.”
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It was time for the machine to choose its candidates for the 1954 elections, Daley’s first slating decision since becoming
boss of the machine. Slating was inherently undemocratic. Rather than give the voters a choice among candidates in a primary
election, the Cook County Democratic Central Committee selected the Democratic Party’s nominees. The actual selection process
was even more autocratic: Daley, in his capacity as machine boss, handpicked a subcommittee of ward committeemen who served
as a slating committee. The slating committee joined Daley in meeting with and evaluating candidates seeking the machine’s
support. The interview process under Daley, a reform member of the Central Committee recalled, was far from substantive:

The candidate would come forward and make a speech, and answer some very perfunctory questions. Usually, there are two questions.
One, “If you were not to be slated for the office you seek, would you accept slating for any other office?” And the right
kind of a guy would be expected to say, “I’m a loyal Democrat, and if, in the wisdom of this committee, I’m chosen for some
other post, I can assure you that every bit of energy and talent that I have will be devoted,” and so on. Another question
is, “If you are not slated, will you support the guy that is slated?” And you are supposed to say, “I will be disappointed
if I were not chosen, but I am a loyal Democrat and I will support whomever you choose.” And another question is, “Will you
support the candidate of the party after the primary against the Republican opponent?” And you say, “Of course I will.”

Daley’s handpicked committee always followed his lead, slating whomever he wanted on the ticket. The slate chosen by the committee
was later presented to the full Central Committee for ratification, but that was a mere formality. “Ordinarily there was no
discussion at all,” one participant observed. “I don’t think I can remember a time when there was anyone but myself who spoke
against anybody. When I did, the hostility was unbelievable.’”
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The greatest dilemma confronting Daley in 1954 was whether to reslate Senator Paul Douglas. Douglas had distinguished himself
as an outspoken liberal in his six years in the Senate, where he had championed labor unions in their battle against the Taft-Hartley
Act, fought for civil rights, and advocated higher capital gains and corporate taxes. Douglas’s forthright stands had won
him enemies among Chicago conservatives, including the
Chicago Tribune
editorial board. Daley defied the critics and reslated Douglas, though probably not for ideological reasons. In slating the
top of a ticket, Daley’s primary consideration was always how strongly the candidate would run and what kind of coattails
he would provide for machine candidates lower down the ballot. Daley expected that Douglas, a fairly popular incumbent, would
run strongly in Chicago, and would help the rest of the ticket. He also understood, as Arvey had, the practical value of running
“good government” candidates for the top offices. There was no harm in selecting a reformer for an office like U.S. senator,
since it was not a position that carried a significant number of patronage jobs with it. And Daley knew that a reform candidate
for senator or governor could help the machine elect its candidates for positions like county clerk — offices that came with
considerable patronage, and were therefore of real importance. Daley also understood the value of keeping on good terms with
independent voters. He knew that as powerful as the machine was, it had to reach out to unaffiliated voters to win citywide
and countywide offices. Men like Douglas and Stevenson could lend the machine their credibility and help to reach these voters.
A year later, when Daley was running for mayor and trying to convince voters he was not a machine hack, his close ties to
Douglas would prove invaluable.

Daley also wanted a “blue-ribbon” candidate to run for Cook County sheriff. The voters were well aware how corrupt this office
had been over the years, and they had registered their unhappiness four years earlier by roundly rejecting the hapless “Tubbo”
Gilbert. Daley decided to try to win the office back from the Republicans by slating a candidate who would be so clearly qualified
and nonpolitical as to be above reproach. Just as Arvey had found Douglas on the University of Chicago faculty, Daley found
Joseph Lohman, a well-regarded criminologist who looked nothing like a typical machine candidate for sheriff. Lohman did not
want to enter politics, and only after Daley met with Lohman personally did he agree to run.

When the time came to launch the 1954 campaign, Daley quickly demonstrated his skill at political organization. He instituted
weekly meetings of all the machine candidates, something that had never been tried before, to coordinate campaign strategy.
And he broadcast a fifteen-minute nightly “Democratic News Report to the People,” which precinct captains were encouraged
to tune in to so they would know the official party line on important issues. Daley also inaugurated a speakers’ bureau, which
arranged appearances by candidates and surrogates at citizens’ groups and neighborhood organizations across the city and into
the suburbs. Since Daley held a countywide position, he understood better than most machine politicians the importance of
cultivating suburban voters. He also saw sooner than most the increasing influence the fast-growing suburbs would have on
Cook County politics. Daley began to meet regularly with the thirty Democratic township committeemen, the suburban equivalent
of ward committeemen, and drew them more closely into the dayto-day operations of the machine.

Daley was himself a candidate for reelection as county clerk, opposed by North Side Republican alderman John J. Hoellen. Daley
began campaigning immediately after the April primary, not waiting for the traditional Labor Day kickoff. His primary focus
was ward organizations, and he instructed each ward office to schedule at least three meetings at which candidates could speak
to precinct captains and other machine workers, who would turn out voters on election day. Daley also experimented with some
of the populist rhetoric he would employ a year later in his campaign for mayor. “Special interests dominate the Republican
party nationally and locally,” Daley told a kickoff rally of the machine faithful at the Morrison Hotel. “For too long a time
— much too long — Illinois has been represented by a majority of reactionary special interests Congressmen.” To help with
fund-raising, he brought in a charismatic Democratic senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy to speak at a $100-a-plate
dinner at the Conrad Hilton Hotel.
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Daley made a concerted effort during the campaign to raise his public profile through the increasingly important medium of
television. He eagerly appeared on the local NBC show
City Desk.
To smooth his rough Bridgeport edges, he took diction lessons through the Northwestern University speech department. Even
with this expert advice, however, Daley still badly mangled syntax and vocabulary, at times fading into incomprehensibility.
At a televised roundtable, he was asked whether he would serve out his term if reelected or whether he might run for mayor
in a year. “Well . . . that question is highly problematically and loaded, as you know,” Daley responded.He added that the
question, which seemed straightforward enough, “had too many contingencies and too many possibilities for any intelligent
man to answer it at the present time.” Despite Daley’s weak performance on television, he won reelection as county clerk handily.
²⁹

Daley’s reelection campaign had all the markings of a dry-run for a mayoral race the following year. Most tellingly, he seemed
to be quietly working to undermine Mayor Kennelly. Party regulars had never liked Kennelly, but some viewed him as a necessary
evil — a reformer they needed to keep their hold on City Hall. Kennelly was, for better or worse, an integral part of the
machine’s operations. This changed, however, once Daley became machine boss. Kennelly’s views were no longer considered in
slating decisions, and the mayor was suddenly frozen out of the traditional preelection precinct captains’ luncheons and from
the traditional round of “speak for the ticket” rallies at the ward offices. When a Daley loyalist was asked about Kennelly
not being invited to the precinct captains’ luncheons, he responded that “Kennelly’s not a committeeman” — something that
had been equally true in years when he had been invited. These attempts to push Kennelly out bore all the hallmarks of a classic
Daley betrayal. Kennelly had consistently supported Daley. Desperate to be slated for county clerk in 1950, Daley had Kennelly
call Arvey to lobby for him. The same year, when Daley was maneuvering to be slated for Cook County Board president, Kennelly
was one of the allies Daley tried to sneak onto the slating committee. On October 31, 1954, Daley declared, “I am not and
never was a candidate for mayor.” He was, he insisted, only “a candidate for the important office of County Clerk” — words
of reassurance to help lull his old ally Kennelly into a false sense of security.
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