Richard J. Daley

At 74 years old, Richard J. Daley physical status not available right now. We will update Richard J. Daley's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Richard Joseph Daley (May 15, 1902 – December 20, 1976) was an American politician who served as the Mayor of Chicago from 1955 to his death and the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party Central Committee from 1953 to his death.

Daley was Chicago's third consecutive mayor from the working-class, heavily Irish American South Side neighborhood of Bridgeport, where he lived his entire life.

He was the patriarch of the Daley family, whose members include Richard M. Daley, another former mayor of Chicago; William M. Daley, a former United States Secretary of Commerce; John P. Daley, a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners; and Patrick Daley Thompson, an alderman of the Chicago City Council. Daley is remembered for doing much to save Chicago from the declines that other rust belt cities such as Cleveland, Buffalo, and Detroit experienced during the same period.

He had a strong base of support in Chicago's Irish Catholic community and was treated by national politicians such as Lyndon B. Johnson as a pre-eminent Irish American, with special connections to the Kennedy family.

Daley played a major role in the history of the United States Democratic Party, especially with his support of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and of Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

He would be the longest-serving mayor in Chicago history until his record was broken by his son Richard M. Daley in 2011. On the other hand, his legacy is complicated by criticisms of his response to riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and his handling of the notorious 1968 Democratic National Convention that happened in his city.

He also had enemies within the Democratic Party.

In addition, many members of Daley's administration were charged with corruption and convicted, although Daley himself was never charged with corruption.

Early life

Richard J. Daley was born in Bridgeport, a working-class neighborhood of Chicago. He was the only child of Michael and Lillian (Dunne) Daley, whose families had both arrived from the Old Parish area, near Dungarvan, County Waterford, Ireland, during the Great Famine. Richard's father was a sheet metal worker with a reserved demeanor. Michael's father, James E. Daley, was a butcher born in New York City, while his mother, Delia Gallagher Daley, was an Irish immigrant. Richard's mother was outgoing and outspoken. Before women obtained the right to vote in 1920, Lillian Daley was an active suffragette, participating in marches and often bringing her son to them. She hoped her son's life would be more professionally successful than that of his parents. Before his mother's death, Daley had won the Democratic nomination for Cook County sheriff. Lillian wanted more than this for her son, telling a friend, "I didn't raise my son to be a policeman." Daley would later state that his wellsprings were his religion, his family, his neighborhood, the Democratic Party, and his love of the city.

Daley attended the elementary school of his parish, Nativity of Our Lord, and De La Salle Institute (where he learned clerical skills) and took night classes at DePaul University College of Law to earn a Bachelor of Laws in 1933. As a young man, Daley's jobs included selling newspapers and making deliveries for a door to door peddler; he worked in Chicago's Union stock yards to pay his law school expenses. He spent his free time at the Hamburg Athletic Club, an athletic, social and political organization near his home. Hamburg and similar clubs were funded, at least in part, by local Democratic politicians. Daley made his mark there, not in sports, but in organization as the club manager. At age 22, he was elected president of the club and served in that office until 1939. Although he practiced law with partner William J. Lynch, he dedicated the majority of his time to his political career.

Personal life and family

Daley met Eleanor "Sis" Guilfoyle at a local ball game. He courted "Sis" for six years, during which time he finished law school and was established in his legal profession. They were married on June 17, 1936, and lived in a modest brick bungalow at 3536 South Lowe Avenue in the heavily Irish and Polish neighborhood of Bridgeport, a few blocks from his birthplace. They had three daughters and four sons, in that order. Their eldest son, Richard M. Daley, was elected mayor of Chicago in 1989, and served in that position until his retirement in 2011. The youngest son, William M. Daley, served as White House Chief of Staff under President Barack Obama and as US Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton. Another son, John P. Daley, is a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. The other progeny have stayed out of public life. Michael Daley is a partner in the law firm Daley & George, and Patricia (Daley) Martino and Mary Carol (Daley) Vanecko are teachers, as was Eleanor, who died in 1998.

Daley, who never lost his blue-collar Chicago accent, was known for often mangling his syntax and other verbal gaffes. Daley made one of his most memorable verbal missteps in 1968, while defending what the news media reported as police misconduct during that year's violent Democratic convention, stating, "Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all – the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder." Daley's reputation for misspeaking was such that his press secretary Earl Bush would tell reporters, "Write what he means, not what he says."

Source

Political career

Daley's political career began when he was elected as the head of the Democratic precinct. Joseph B. McDonough, Thomas D. Nash, Robert M. Sweitzer, and Joseph L. Gill had been named Chief Deputy Comptroller of Cook County on December 17, 1936, to replace Michael J. O'Connor, who died on December 9.

Daley's first elected seat was in the Illinois House of Representatives, to which he was elected for the 9th district along Democratic incumbents William J. Gormley and Peter P. Jezierny. Despite being a lifelong Democrat, he was elected to the office as a Republican. This was a question of political opportunism and the peculiar configuration for legislative elections in Illinois at the time, which allowed Daley to take the place on the ballot of recently deceased Republican candidate David Shanahan. Daley's name was not on the ballot due to Shanahan's death so close to the election, but he was able to defeat Shanahan's colleague Robert E. Rodgers.

Daley nascently returned to the Democratic side of the aisle after his election. Daley was elected to the Illinois Senate following the death of former Democratic Senator Patrick J. Carroll in 1938. With Republican William S. Finucane taking the third spot, Gormley and Jezierny were comfortably reelected this year. "You shouldn't give him a nickel, that's how honest he is" in 1939, Illinois State Senator William "Botchy" Connors remarked about Daley. Daley served as the Illinois Senate Minority Leader from 1941 to 1946. In 1946, he suffered his first political defeat when he failed to register as Cook County sheriff after losing a bid to become Cook County sheriff.

Daley served as a member of the 11th Ward's Democratic Ward Committee in the late 1940s, a position he retained until his death. He was appointed by Governor Adlai Stevenson II as the head of the Illinois Department of Finance from 1949 to 1950, the year he ran for Cook County Clerk. Daley served as the Chicago mayor before being elected to serve as the city's mayor.

Daley, i.e., became chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party's Central Committee. In 1953, the political machine's chief took power. Daley's popularity increased as a result of his time as mayoralty in later years. Daley's recorded phone talk with President Lyndon Johnson on January 27, 1968 revealed that despite his Irish Catholic upbringing, he also had tense connections with the Kennedy family and that he turned down an invitation to vote against President Harry Truman while he was delegate at the 1948 Democratic National Convention.

Daley was first elected mayor of Chicago, the 48th in 1955. He was re-elected to the office five times and had been mayor for 21 years at the time of his death. Daley ruled the political arena of the city and, to a lesser extent, that of the entire state during his reign. Officially, Chicago has a "weak-mayor" system, in which the bulk of the city council's power is vested. However, Daley's service as de facto leader of the Chicago Democratic Party enabled him to rule the city with an iron hand and gave him a sway over the city's ward groups, which in turn gave him a large presence in Democratic primary elections—in most instances, the genuine contest in Chicago's Democratic stronghold was not inward.

In Illinois, Daley was a participant in John F. Kennedy's narrow, 8,000 vote win.

During Daley's tenure in office, major construction was completed, including O'Hare International Airport, McCormick Place, the University of Illinois, numerous expressways, and subway construction projects, as well as other major Chicago landmarks. Daley's O'Hare was a point of pride for the department, with him and his staff creating new ways to honor it on a weekly basis. It was the source of one of Daley's numerous clashes with community organizer Saul Alinsky. His Black-neighborhood Woodlawn Group threatened a mass "piss in" at the airport (a cramming of its toilets) to press calls for open employment.

The Daley's construction of a modern Chicago rested on the pledge of racial segregation. To divide White and Black communities, housing, highways, and schools were constructed. To revitalize downtown Chicago Daley, the city's business executives worked with business executives to push out poor Black residents and replace them with middle-class White people. Daley oversaw the construction of public housing in the form of high-rise towers like the Robert Taylor Homes, which he placed within Chicago's Black ghettos to discourage Black people from moving into White neighborhoods. Many were found along a single street in Chicago's South Side, which became known as the "State Street Corridor" and had the nation's largest concentration of public housing. Daley was also responsible for routing the Dan Ryan Expressway through the neighborhood's established racial divide, so that it distinguished the State Street Corridor from the South Side's white communities. Daley received 70% support among the Black community before the late 1960s in municipal elections. Black voters in Chicago extended their party loyalty and voted for political patronage, as many ethnic groups have.

The Chicago Freedom Movement brought Mayor Daley's bleak ghettos to a better place. On the one hand, the Chicago civil rights movement emerged to fight for improved schools. On the other hand, the group, on the other hand, opposed open housing in Chicago. Martin Luther King Jr. led the effort, which became known as the Chicago Freedom Movement, and it was determined that he used peaceful marches like he did in the South. Daley avoided violent confrontations with the help of Black political figures who did not want to break with Daley's political machine and the local press. Through a series of meetings in mid-August 1966, the "Summit Agreement" was reached. The founding of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities was one of the many things that were involved in the establishment of the Council. Although this is a contentious topic, the Chicago Freedom Movement is often regarded as a failure or at worst a draw.

After an episode of M Squad (aired on January 30, 1959) depicted an officer of CPD receiving bribes, Daley discouraged motion picture and television filming in Chicago. This policy lasted until the end of his term and would be reversed under new mayor Jane Byrne if The Blues Brothers were filmed in Chicago. However, he appeared in office films, including Cooley High, and others, which were shot in Chicago.

Daley's year 1968 was a landmark one. Daley told President Johnson on January 27, 1968 that Robert Kennedy had visited him and asked for his help in the forthcoming Democratic primaries, which he declined. He also compelled the President to accept an invitation to remain in the Democratic primaries or be nominated as Hubert Humphrey's Vice President at the Democratic National Convention. Daley and Johnson would continue to campaign for president Kennedy to support this scheme and feed Kennedy's ego by making him believe there was a "revolution" in the group. Many people chastised Daley in April for his scathing speech in the aftermath of the King's assassination. Daley chastised police superintendent James B. Conlisk and subsequently related their discussion at a City Hall press conference as follows: Displeased with what he saw as an over-cautious police response to the riots, he chastised them.

This statement sparked a lot of controversy. For example, Reverend Jesse Jackson called it "a fascist's reaction." In an address to the City Council later this week, Daley relinquished his words, saying, "We should not repeat his words."

Later that month, Daley asserted,

In June 1968, Robert Kennedy was assassinated, jeopardizing Daley's original decision to make Johnson, who withdrew his re-election bid in March, Vice President Robert Kennedy.

The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was held in August. The convention's efforts were supposed to showcase Daley's accomplishments to national Democrats and the media, but instead of earning praise for the mayor and city, escalated into verbal spats between participants and the media, as well as a media circus. With the country divided by the Vietnam War and King and Kennedy's assassinations behind him, the city became a battleground for anti-war demonstrators who promised to boycott the convention. Demonstrations between demonstrators and police became violent in some cases, with videos of the unrest broadcast on national television. Anti-war activists Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and three other supporters of the "Chicago Seven" were found guilty of crossing state lines with the intention of inciting a riot as a result of these confrontations, but the charges were reversed on appeal.

Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff went off-script during his address nominating George McGovern as President of the United States, so we didn't have to have Gestapo tactics in Chicago's streets." We don't have to have a National Guard with George McGovern as president. Ribicoff booed Ribicoff, whose voice erupted, "How difficult it is to tell the truth, when we know the problems facing this world." Ribicoff also attempted to pass a motion to bring the convention to a different city. Many conventioneers applauded Ribicoff's remarks, but an outraged Daley threatened to shout down the speaker. Later, as television cameras mainly focusing on Daley, lip-readers later reported, "You Jew son of a bitch, you lousy motherfucker, go home." Later, mayor Terry Johnson denied a charge accusing Ribicoff as a faker and debunked by Mike Royko's reporting. The operations surrounding the convention were investigated by a federal commission, led by local attorney and party activist Dan Walker, who referred to them as a "police riot." "The confrontation was not caused by the police," Daley said of his police force with the following remark, which was also a slip of the tongue: "The confrontation was not triggered by the police." Many people had charged the police, causing the altercation. Gentlemen, let's get this thing straight for the first and for all. The policeman is not here to cause chaos. The policeman is here to maintain order."

Following the convention's findings, public opinion polls revealed that the overwhelming number of Americans supported Daley's policies. Daley was re-elected for the fifth time in 1971. However, some have argued that this was due to a lack of a strong opposition rather than Daley's own fame. Daley was kicked out of the 1972 Democratic National Convention by McGovern, who replaced his delegation with one led by Jesse Jackson. This event arguably marked a decline in Daley's rank and authority within the Democratic Party, but McGovern made amends by including Daley loyalist (and Kennedy in-law) Sargent Shriver on his ticket later this year. Former Illinois Racing Board Chairman William S. Miller testified in January 1973 that Daley had "induced" him to bribe Illinois Governor Otto Kerner.

Daley, a 1970 special election that would determine whether or not Illinois would adopt its then-proposed state constitution, spoke out in favor of the adoption of the state constitution. His involvement may have influenced Illinois voters in their decision to finally adopt the new constitution. Daley was a proponent of Illinois' home rule for local government, and this law codified the possibility for local governments to become home rule units.

In 1975, Daley was elected mayor for a (then-record) sixth term.

Source