by Adam Cohen
Despite the attention the anti-war movement was getting, Daley was at least as concerned about black uprisings during the convention. Any illusions he once held that Chicago’s ghettos were not susceptible to rioting had been put to rest with the chaos after Martin Luther King’s assassination. There were also several specific rumors about gang activity that was being planned to coincide with the convention. City officials were worried about the Blackstone Rangers, a large South Side gang, and a militant black group called the Black Turks that had come to Chicago from Cincinnati and Cleveland in August. They had reportedly been holding meetings that included dry runs for guerrilla warfare. The 7,500 soldiers who had been airlifted to Chicago were put through an exercise dubbed “Operation Jackson Park,” in which they acted out how to respond to rioting. The Jackson Park of the title is located on the South Side, near poor black neighborhoods like Woodlawn — an indication of where the threat was perceived to be coming from. Daley was particularly worried that blacks would disrupt the convention by firing guns from the housing projects along State Street, which lay just across the Dan Ryan Expressway from the International Amphitheatre. Throughout the convention, he had two police helicopters flying up and down the area, patrolling for snipers. 10
Daley used carrots as well as sticks to keep the city’s black neighborhoods in line. The months leading up to the convention were a time of extraordinary generosity from City Hall. Daley’s office arranged for Gale Sayers, the immensely popular Chicago Bears running back, to direct a touch football program in twenty playgrounds and parks across the city. “To be blunt about it, it grew out of the riots following the assassination of Dr. King,” concedes Deputy Mayor David Stahl. “We said we’ve got to do something in the predominantly black part of the city where there was a huge degree of social disorganization.” 11 In May, Daley ordered up a $27.5 million program to modernize older public housing buildings and install more social centers. He personally addressed hundreds of public housing residents in the City Council chambers, telling them that the goal was “to upgrade Chicago public housing developments and to improve the quality of life for residents.” And Daley ordered housing officials to rush to build sixteen prefabricated houses for low-income tenants, which he wanted ready before the convention began. 12
Daley also drew on his influence in Washington. In another of Daley’s well-timed grants, it was shortly before the convention that the federal government found $500,000 to fund a three-year program to help blacks find housing in the suburbs. Ten days before the convention started, machine congressman John Kluczynski scheduled hearings for the House Small Business Committee at the Stock-yard Inn, just blocks from the International Amphitheatre. Daley showed up to testify in favor of building a 77-acre industrial park for the impoverished neighborhoods of East Garfield Park and Lawn-dale. Daley’s concerns about having a peaceful convention also led him to do something he had resisted for years: expand the city’s fair housing law. On June 19, Daley proposed a change in the law that would finally extend it beyond brokers to include owners, renters, and other parties to real estate transactions. Daley was determined to get all the credit for the change. Alderman William Cousins, an independent who had tried to introduce a similar bill a year earlier, asked if he could be put down as a cosponsor. “No,” Daley’s floor leader said bluntly. “We are the sponsors.” 13
Most disingenuous of all, Daley began to wrap himself in the mantle of his old foe Martin Luther King. Daley introduced a City Council resolution to rename South Parkway, a major South Side thoroughfare that ran only through black neighborhoods, in honor of King. He took the occasion to indicate that King, who was talking about returning to Chicago to lead protests shortly before he died, would be delighted by the state of race relations in Chicago if he were only still alive. “He told me Chicago had made more progress than his own Atlanta or other cities,” said Daley. “He visited projects on the South Side. He visited hospital developments. And he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if the entire city was like this?’” Daley advised that the important thing for blacks to do now was to let go of their bad feelings. “We could talk of the persecution of the past of the Jews and the Irish,” he said. “When I was in Ireland a few years ago, I was told they had no feelings against the English because that was all behind them. That’s how it should be here.” Independents on the council grumbled about Daley’s insincerity — and the fact that the street being dedicated to the integrationist King went through only the black ghetto. (Independent alderman Leon Despres proposed naming a street in the Loop after King — a suggestion that went nowhere.) In the end, the resolution to rename South Parkway for King passed unanimously. A week before the start of the convention, Daley spoke at ceremonies dedicating “Martin Luther King Drive.” He invoked King’s devotion to nonviolence in a verbal formulation that made it sound as if Daley had the idea first. “I once told him, and he agreed, ‘Doctor, we will never do it in conflict and violence.’” 14
At the same time Daley was rolling out the red carpet for his convention visitors, the city was sending clear signals that it would not welcome those with whose politics and lifestyles it disagreed. “We didn’t want the hippies to come,” Daley press secretary Earl Bush recalled. In a moment of unusual candor, William McFetridge, Daley’s friend and head of the Chicago Park District, remarked that Chicago simply would not make its parks available to unpatriotic groups. In an era when public spaces around the country, from New York’s Central Park to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, were being used by hundreds of thousands of hippies and political protesters, Chicago’s approach opened the city up to nationwide criticism. “The host city, under Mayor Daley’s tight control, is showing no hospitality to demonstrations of any kind — legal as well as illegal,” the New York Times objected in an editorial. 15
Welcome or not, the hippies and Yippies were coming. They began arriving in Chicago on Saturday, August 17, a week before the delegates were to show up. The Yippies had announced plans to hold a Festival of Life, to contrast with the pro–Vietnam War festival of death they expected to be held at the Amphitheatre. They made their central gathering spot Lincoln Park, a 1,185-acre expanse of green along Lake Michigan on the North Side. When the Yippies showed up, the sleepy neighborhood park was transformed into a massive be-in of tie-dyed shirts, meditation, poetry readings, folk songs, and political orations. The Yippies engaged in their trademark brand of street theater. Jerry Rubin and several other members of his Youth International Party were arrested when they took a 125-pound pig named Pigasus, whom they were nominating for president, to a press conference at Civic Center Plaza. When the Chicago police arrested the pig, the Yippies announced that they would instead nominate a sow named Mrs. Pig. Later in the week, Abbie Hoffman would be arrested by Chicago police in the coffee shop of the Lincoln Hotel for having an obscene word written across his forehead. 16
The peace movement’s more serious agenda for convention week was still up in the air. MOBE and the Yippies were still trying to obtain permits for anti-war marches and rallies, but City Hall was dragging its feet. “[I]t was very conciliatory, very ‘Yes, you’ll get it — the permit is being processed,’” Abbie Hoffman recalled. “When anyone called, they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s definitely set — we’ve just met with this commissioner and that one and they assure us it’s coming next week.’” Yet the permits never came. Eventually, the 150-member Coalition for an Open Convention filed suit in federal court to force the Chicago Park District to grant a permit for a rally in Soldier Field or Grant Park. Not surprisingly, the case ended up being assigned to U.S. District Court judge William J. Lynch, Daley’s former law partner. Lynch ruled that the Park District had the discretion to deny permits whenever it felt that was appropriate to “safeguard public comfort, convenience, and welfare.” Even if denying the permits was legal, it was not clear it was good policy. Allard Lowenstein, the anti-war activist and New York congressional candidate whose Coalition for an Open Convention had been denied the right to
hold a rally at Soldier Field, warned Daley that by denying the permits the city was “inviting violence.” Lowenstein was not alone in arguing that the permit denials were counterproductive. Six organizations, led by the ACLU, asked Daley to avoid trouble by meeting with the “responsible leaders” of the protesters and working out an agreement for demonstrations in the parks. And Judge Hubert Will, one of the few liberal independents on the federal bench in Chicago, told Daley to allow the protesters to demonstrate. 17
On Thursday, August 22, Daley struck a deal with the anti-war protesters. After negotiating in Judge Lynch’s chambers, the city and David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee agreed that an anti-war rally would be held the following Wednesday during the convention’s third day. But the two sides had trouble agreeing on a location. MOBE wanted to lead a 150,000-strong march on the International Amphitheatre during the convention. Corporation counsel Ray Simon proposed five alternate routes that all led to the band shell in Grant Park. When negotiations between the city officials and MOBE reached a deadlock, Lynch stepped in. It was clear that his sympathies lay with the city. Lynch sided with Simon on the march routes, holding that a demonstration in the vicinity of the Amphitheatre would interfere with convention security. Dellinger was also seeking an order lifting the park’s 11:00 P.M. curfew so demonstrators could camp out on the grounds overnight. Lynch again took the city’s side, ruling that it had no obligation to allow the park to be used for sleeping accommodations. 18
Even before the convention began, Daley’s relations with the media were strained. There had been an early round of press reports anticipating that Daley would use his control over the convention to minimize the role of the peace candidates, senators Eugene Mc-Carthy and George McGovern. Daley was incensed, and fulminated against reporters he viewed as irresponsible. “Among the false statements printed and uttered, emanating outside of Chicago, printed in national magazines and certain papers and over radio and TV, was that there was an attempt on my part to prevent some candidates from holding public gatherings,” Daley declared in a rambling statement at one pre-convention news conference. “This is a vicious attack on this city and on its mayor.” The television stations, for their part, were unhappy with the restrictions Daley was imposing on them. Pleading security concerns, the city refused to allow cameras to be placed in the area outside the Amphitheatre. And police refused to allow television vehicles to park in front of the hotels where convention delegates were staying. In a statement Walter Cronkite read on the Evening News, CBS called the ban a “totally unwarranted restriction of free and rapid access to information.” CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid added that Chicago “runs the city of Prague a close second right now as the world’s least attractive tourist attraction.” Daley purported to be unconcerned by the criticism. “Who’s Eric Sevareid?” Jack Reilly asked. “The mayor and I have never heard of him.” But Daley met with network executives at City Hall on August 24 and agreed to allow their trucks greater access. 19
With the national press streaming in, Daley tried to project an image of a busy city executive calmly leading a world-class metropolis. John Swearingen, chairman of Standard Oil of Indiana, came to City Hall to announce plans to build a $100 million office building downtown. Daley also found time on August 20 to appear in person at the dedication of the first eight low-cost prefabricated homes being built for Chicago’s poor. The new homes were, he said, “symbolic of the spirit of Chicago.” He urged his audience to “build, not burn,” and to “construct, not riot.” But the first violence of the convention came from the Chicago police. On August 22, just four days before the convention opened, Dean Johnson of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, one of the young people who had thronged to Chicago for the excitement, was shot to death by the police. They said they shot him after he fired a .32 caliber revolver at them. Of more concern to Daley, several Blackstone Rangers were arrested after appearing as witnesses in an investigation of an alleged plot to disrupt the convention. Their plan, according to a jailed gang member, was to assassinate Vice President Humphrey and Senator McCarthy, the leading contenders for the nomination. Thomas Foran, the U.S. attorney for Chicago installed by Daley, launched a secret probe of the charges. Evidence of the “plot” was extremely thin. Initially, Foran called the story “completely unverified,” but a few days later he ordered a grand jury investigation, citing “new information.” Nothing ever came of the inquiries, which seemed designed to justify oppressive levels of convention security. In the days leading up to the convention, Warsaw Pact troops were marching into Czechoslovakia to crush the liberal reforms that had been ushered in by Prague Spring. Daley denounced the invasion as a “dastardly act of suppression of freedom and liberty.” To Daley, it was a Cold War lesson in the evils of communism. He failed to see any parallels between how the Soviets had used force to crush liberal young Czechs, and how he was planning to unleash the Chicago police and Daley dozers on liberal young Americans. Asked by a reporter what effect the events in Prague would have on the convention, Daley said, “I think it will affect a lot of doves that are flying around here.” 20
In addition to serving as host of the convention, Daley would also be playing his traditional role of kingmaker. His ability to deliver 118 Illinois delegates made him one of the few individuals who could actually affect the outcome. There was considerable speculation about which way Daley was leaning. It seemed unlikely he would back either McCarthy or McGovern, but he did not seem to be in a rush to endorse Humphrey. Daley was convinced a Democratic ticket headed by Humphrey would lose Illinois badly. He had been talking to politicians from around the country, and they shared his concerns about Humphrey’s electability. There were rumors Daley was trying to draft Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, perhaps working with Jesse Unruh, the California party boss who controlled the lion’s share of his state’s 174 delegates. Daley had been hatching a plan to draft Kennedy for some time. John Criswell, an aide to President Johnson, was at a press conference Daley held in July about the status of the convention preparations. In a report to Johnson, Criswell recounted: “We were finished and a reporter asked him if he agreed with Bailey that Ted Kennedy would be a help to the ticket. He said he agreed and then, almost under his breath, added, ‘I hope the convention drafts him.’”
On the Saturday before the convention began, Daley called Kennedy at Hyannis Port and urged him to run. Daley told Kennedy that the politicians he was speaking with were not enthusiastic about Humphrey. The thing for Kennedy to do, Daley said, was to come out to Chicago for the convention, or at least to make it known that he would accept a draft. The only problem with Daley’s plan was that Kennedy did not want to run. He was only thirty-six, a freshman U.S. senator, and he was still grieving for the second of his brothers to be taken by an assassin’s bullet. Kennedy told Daley he would not be attending the convention, and that he would not be available for a draft. But if there was any need to get in contact with him, his brother-in-law Stephen Smith, who was a delegate from New York, would be on hand to represent his interests. At the same time as the Kennedy draft rumors were circulating, there were also reports that Daley had not given up hope of convincing President Johnson to accept a draft to run for reelection. Johnson’s birthday fell on the second day of the convention, and Daley continued to make birthday plans for the president. He was ready with a Texas-sized birthday cake, and a reservation at the Stockyard Inn, near the Amphitheatre, for a party. Daley had also hidden a cache of signs in the convention hall with the inscriptions “Birthday Greetings” and “We Love You LBJ.” But Johnson’s mind was made up. He remained in Texas, and on August 24 he assured a college audience that he was “not a candidate for anything except maybe a rocking chair.” 21
On Sunday, August 25, Daley was scheduled to announce his presidential choice at a 3:00 P.M. meeting of the Illinois delegation in a ballroom at the Sherman House. Humphrey, McCarthy, and McGovern all addressed the delegates, many of whom wore blue-and-white “Daley for President”
buttons. Humphrey spoke for thirty-seven minutes. McCarthy and McGovern each spoke for seventeen minutes. Lester Maddox, Georgia’s segregationist governor, was sent away the first time he showed up, but when he returned he was allowed to address the delegates. After twenty-five minutes, Daley put an arm around Maddox’s shoulder and said: “Governor, I know you’ll understand when I tell you our wives have been waiting for us at the reception for some time.” There was no great enthusiasm in the room for any of the candidates. Some delegates could be heard grumbling out loud that Humphrey, the front-runner, was a weak candidate. Though Daley had said repeatedly he would announce his decision at this meeting, he had already told Stephen Smith that “the boys might decide to hold off for forty-eight hours.” In other words, he was going to put off his decision by two days to allow more time for a groundswell to develop around Edward Kennedy. Bill Daley says that, at least at one point during convention week, his father seemed to be working to draft Kennedy. “When I got home [one night of the convention], I was planning to go out. There were lots of parties. My dad said, ‘Why don’t you stick around?’ I asked ‘Why?’ He said, ‘I think we’re going to endorse Teddy Kennedy tomorrow morning.’” 22
Out on the streets, tensions were rising between protesters and the police. The anti-war movement was by now divided into two separate camps: the Yippies were still up in Lincoln Park on the North Side, while the more political MOBE was using Grant Park, located down the lakeshore closer to the Loop, as a base of operations. On Saturday night, the police had cleared Lincoln Park of demonstrators. The 200 who were ejected formed a line along Clark Street, on the west side of the park, and taunted the police: “Red Rover, Red Rover, Send Daley right over.” On Sunday afternoon, August 25 — the last day before the convention started — about 100 anti-war demonstrators marched through downtown chanting “Peace now” and “Dump the Hump.” Delegates checking in at the Hilton Hotel, headquarters for out-of-town delegates, were greeted by 800 protesters, more than half of whom had made the two-and-a-half-mile march from Lincoln Park. The first major clash between police and demonstrators occurred later that night in Lincoln Park. The police charged in at 11:00 P.M. and, invoking the rarely enforced curfew, began clearing out the park. The Yippies and other demonstrators who had settled in for the evening were taken by surprise. “I honestly believed that nothing was going to happen in Lincoln Park — that people who stayed in Lincoln Park would be relatively safe,” Abbie Hoffman said later. “It was inconceivable to me, up until that Sunday night at six o’clock, when the police first charged into the park, that they were not going to let us sleep in the park that night.” 23 For the next three hours, police beat unarmed protesters and reporters until the park was finally empty. During the attacks, two policemen told a reporter that “the word is out to get newsmen.” Daley insisted later that journalists had not been singled out, but added: “We ask the men of the news media to follow the instructions of the police as other citizens should.” The Sunday night skirmish in Lincoln Park was the first time convention reporters were roughed up, and it helped turn press coverage against Daley. Mike Royko, in a column entitled “Cops Threaten Law and Order,” took it upon himself to explain Daley to his national colleagues. “He’s been conning people so easily, I’m sorry to say about my fellow Chicagoans, that he thought he could keep it up this week,” Royko wrote. “But sorry, Mayor, when your trained musclemen slapped around the nation’s press I was listening. They think you are nothing but a less articulate version of Governor George Wallace. That’s not much, after 13 years in office.” 24