Mayor Daley relished the year 1967. Around the country, blacks trapped and packed in steaming, stinking ghettos lashed out–in Newark, in Detroit, in more than 140 cities that summer. Not in Chicago, though. In Chicago, we had programs–“positive, constructive programs,” Daley said. In his successful bid to bring the Democratic National Convention to Chicago, he boasted of his city’s racial harmony.
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The day following King’s assassination in 1968–the first day of the rioting–was Daley’s 13th anniversary as mayor, but he knew better than to spend his day celebrating. He called a special memorial service for the City Council chambers, only the third in the city’s history, and he praised King to the skies; he ordered the flag flown at halfmast. Jesse Jackson, wearing dark glasses and a turtleneck said to be smeared with King’s blood, addressed the City Council: “A fitting memorial to King would not be to sit here looking sad and pious but to behave differently.”
He spoke over and over again, in the ensuing weeks, of his programs. Forget the documented cases of police brutality against blacks; forget that he opposed open housing for blacks; forget that the black community’s terribly overcrowded schools were on double shifts while white schools a short ride away had room for more students. He had programs.
