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Elections in Illinois |
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The Chicago mayoral election of 1963 was held on April 2, 1963. The election saw Richard J. Daley elected to a third term as mayor, defeating Republican Ben Adamowski by a double-digit margin.
The party was preceded by primary elections held on February 26, 1963[2] to determine the nominees of both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Daley was unopposed in the Democratic primary and former Cook County State's Attorney Adamowski faced only weak opposition in the Republican primary.
YouTube Encyclopedic
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The 1960s in America: Crash Course US History #40
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John F. Kennedy: The New Frontier (1961 - 1963)
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The Mayoral Race & Chicago Public Schools
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Lecture 25: Tough Nuts - Education and Health Insurance
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Black Republicans and the Civil Rights Movement
Transcription
Episode 40: The Sixties LOCKED Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course US History and today we’re gonna talk about the 1960s. Mr. Green, Mr. Green. Great. The decade made famous by the narcissists who lived through it. Hey, Me From the Past, finally you and I agree about something wholeheartedly. But while I don’t wish to indulge the baby-boomers’ fantasies about their centrality to world history, the sixties were an important time. I mean, there was the Cold War, Vietnam, a rising tide of conservatism (despite Woodstock), racism. There were the Kennedy’s and Camelot, John, Paul, George, and to a lesser extent, Ringo. And of course, there was also Martin Luther King Jr. intro So, the 1960s saw people organizing and actively working for change both in the social order and in government. This included the student movement, the women’s movement, movements for gay rights, and a push by the courts to expand rights in general. But, by the end of the 1960s, the anti-war movement seemed to have overshadowed all the rest. So as you’ll no doubt remember from last week, the civil rights movement began in the 1950s if not before, but many of its key moments happened in the sixties. And this really began with sit-ins that took place in Greensboro North Carolina. Black university students walked into Woolworths and waited at the lunch counters to be served, or, more likely, arrested. After 5 months of that, those students eventually got Woolworths to serve black customers. Then, in 1961 leaders from the Congress On Racial Equality launched Freedom Rides to integrate interstate buses. Volunteers rode the buses into the Deep South where they faced violence including beatings and a bombing in Anniston AL. But despite that, those freedom rides also proved successful and eventually the ICC desegregated interstate buses. In fact, by the end of the 60s over 70,000 people had taken part in demonstrations, from sit-ins, to teach-ins, to marches. But they weren’t all successful. Martin Luther King’s year-long protests in Albany, GA didn’t end discrimination in the city. And it took JFK ordering federal troops to escort James Meredith to class for him to attend the University of Mississippi. The University of Mississippi: America’s fallback college. Sorry, I’m from Alabama. So, the Civil Rights movement reached its greatest national prominence in 1963 when Martin Luther King came to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, where there had been more than 50 racially-motivated bombings since WWII. Television brought the reality of the Jim Crow South into people’s homes as images of Bull Connor’s police dogs and water cannons being turned on peaceful marchers, many of them children, horrified viewers and eventually led Kennedy to endorse the movement’s goals. Probably should mention that John F. Kennedy was president of the United States at the time, having been elected in 1960. He was assassinated in 1963 leading to Lyndon Johnson. Alright, politics over. Anyway, in response to these peaceful protests, Birmingham jailed Martin Luther King where he wrote one of the great letters in American history (doesn’t have a great name): Letter from Birmingham Jail. 1963 also saw the March on Washington, the largest public demonstration in American history up to that time where King gave his famous speech, “I have a Dream.” King and the other organizers called for a civil rights bill and help for the poor, demanding public works, a higher minimum wage, and an end to discrimination in employment. Which eventually, in one of the great bright spots in American history, did sort of happen with the Civil Rights Act. So, one reason American history teachers focus on the Civil Rights Movement so much is that it successfully brought actual legislative change. After being elected president, John F. Kennedy was initially cool to civil rights, but to be fair, the Cold War occupied a lot of his time, what with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs and whatnot. But the demonstrations of 1963 pushed John F. Kennedy to support civil rights more actively. According to our dear friend, the historian Eric Foner, “Kennedy realized that the United States simply could not declare itself the champion of freedom throughout the world while maintaining a system of racial inequality at home.”[1] So that June he appeared on TV and called on Congress to pass a law that would ban discrimination in all public accommodations. And then he was assassinated. Thanks, Lee Harvey Oswald. Or possibly someone else. But probably Lee Harvey Oswald. So then, Lyndon Johnson became president and he pushed Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law prohibited discrimination in employment, schools, hospitals, and privately owned public places like restaurants, and hotels and theaters, and it also banned discrimination on the basis of sex. The Civil Rights Act was a major moment in American legislative history, but it hardly made the United States a haven of equality. So, Civil Rights leaders continued to push for the enfranchisement of African Americans. After Freedom Summer workers registered people in Mississippi to vote, King launched a march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama in January, 1965. And television swayed public opinion in favor of the demonstrators. Thank you, TV, for your one and only gift to humanity. Just kidding. Battlestar Galactica. So, in 1965 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which gave the federal government the power to oversee voting in places where discrimination was practiced. In 1965, Congress also passed the Hart-Cellar Act, which got rid of national origin quotas and allowed Asian immigrants to immigrate to the United States. Unfortunately the law also introduced quotas on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. Lyndon Johnson’s domestic initiatives from 1965 through 1967 are known as the Great Society, and it’s possible that if he hadn’t been responsible for America escalating the war in Vietnam, he might have been remembered, at least by liberals, as one of America’s greatest presidents. Because the Great Society expanded a lot of the promises of the New Deal, especially in the creation of health insurance programs, like Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. He also went to War on Poverty. Never go to war with a noun. You will always lose. Johnson treated poverty as a social problem, rather than an economic one. So instead of focusing on jobs or guaranteed income, his initiatives stressed things like training. That unfortunately failed to take into account shifts in the economy away from high wage union manufacturing jobs toward more lower-wage service jobs. [2] Here’s what Eric Foner had to say about Johnson’s domestic accomplishments: “By the 1990s […] the historic gap between whites and blacks in education, income, and access to skilled employment narrowed considerably. But with deindustrialization and urban decay affecting numerous families and most suburbs still being off limits to non-white people, the median wealth of white households remained ten times greater than that of African Americans, and nearly a quarter of all black children lived in poverty.” While Congress was busy enacting Johnson’s Great Society programs, the movement for African American freedom was changing. Let’s go to the ThoughtBubble. Persistent poverty and continued discrimination in the workplace, housing, education, and criminal justice system might explain the shift away from integration and toward black power, a celebration of African American culture and criticism of whites’ oppression. 1964 saw the beginnings of riots in city ghettoes, for instance, mostly in Northern cities. The worst riots were in 1965 in Watts, in southern California. These left 35 people dead, 900 injured, and $30 million in damage. Newark and Detroit also saw devastating riots in 1967. In 1968 the Kerner Report blamed the cause of the rioting on segregation, poverty, and white racism. Then there’s Malcolm X, who many white people regarded as an advocate for violence, but who also called for self-reliance. It’s tempting to see leadership shifting from King to X as the civil rights movement became more militant, but Malcolm X was active in the early 1960s and he was killed in 1965, three years before Martin Luther King was assassinated and before all the major shifts in emphasis towards black power. Older Civil Rights groups like CORE abandoned integration as a goal after 1965 and started to call for black power. The rhetoric of Black Power could be strident, but its message of black empowerment was deeply resonant for many. Oakland’s Black Panther Party did carry guns in self-defense but they also offered a lot of neighborhood services. But the Black Power turned many white people away from the struggle for African American freedom, and by the end of the 1960s, many Americans’ attention had shifted to anti-war movement. Thanks, ThoughtBubble. So it was Vietnam that really galvanized students even though many didn’t have to go to Vietnam because they had student deferments. They just really, really didn’t want their friends to go. The anti-war movement and the civil rights movement inspired other groups to seek an end to oppression. Like, Latinos organized to celebrate their heritage and end discrimination. Latino activism was like black power, but much more explicitly linked to labor justice, especially the strike efforts led by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. The American Indian Movement, founded in 1968, took over Alcatraz to symbolize the land that had been taken from Native Americans. And they won greater tribal control over education, economic development, and they also filed suits for restitution. And in June of 1969, after police raided a gay bar, called the Stonewall Inn, members of the gay community began a series of demonstrations in New York City, which touched off the modern gay liberation movement. Oh, it’s time for the Mystery Document? The rules here are pretty simple. I read the Mystery Document, guess the author, I’m either right or I get shocked. Alright, what have we got here. If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials [I already know it!], it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem. Rachel Carson! Silent Spring. YES. I am on such a roll. Silent Spring was a massively important book because it was the first time that anyone really described all of the astonishingly poisonous things we were putting into the air and the ground and the water. Fortunately, that’s all been straightened out now and everything that we do and make as human beings is now sustainable. What’s that? Oh god. The environmental movement gained huge bipartisan support and it resulted in important legislation during the Nixon era, including the Clean Air and Water Acts, and the Endangered Species Act. And yes, I said that environmental legislation was passed during the Nixon administration. But perhaps the most significant freedom movement in terms of number of people involved and long-lasting effects was the American Feminist movement. This is usually said to have begun with the publication of Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, which set out to describe “the problem that has no name.” Turns out the name is “misogyny.” [3] Friedan described a constricting social and economic system that affected mostly middle class women, but it resonated with the educated classes and led to the foundation of the National Organization of Women in 1966. Participation in student and civil rights movements led many women to identify themselves as members of a group that was systematically discriminated against. And by “systemic,” I mean that in 1963, 5.8% of doctors were women and 3.7% of lawyers were women and fewer than 10% of doctoral degrees went to women. They are more than half of the population. While Congress responded with the Equal Pay Act in 1963, younger women sought greater power and autonomy in addition to legislation. Crucially, 60s-era feminists opened America to the idea that the “personal is political,” especially when it came to equal pay, childcare, and abortion. Weirdly, the branch of government that provided most support to the expansion of personal freedom in the 1960s was the most conservative one, the Supreme Court. The Warren Court handed down so many decisions expanding civil rights that the era has sometimes been called a rights revolution. The Warren court expanded the protections of free speech and assembly under the First Amendment and freedom of the press in the New York Times v. Sullivan decision. It struck down a law banning interracial marriage in the most appropriately named case ever, Loving v. Virginia. And although this would become a lightning rod for many conservatives, Supreme Court decisions greatly expanded the protections of people accused of crimes. Gideon v. Wainwright secured the right to attorney, Mapp v. Ohio established the exclusionary rule under the Fourth Amendment, and Miranda v. Arizona provided fodder for Channing Tatum in his great movie, 21 Jump Street, insuring that he would always have to say to every perp, “You have the right to remain silent.” But you can’t silence my heart, Channing Tatum. It beats only for thee. But, the most innovative and controversial decisions actually established a new right where none had existed in the constitution. Griswold v. Connecticut, dealt with contraception, and Roe v. Wade, guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion (at least in the first trimester). And those two decisions formed the basis of a new right, the right to privacy. Protests, the counter culture, and the liberation movements continued well into the early 1970s, losing steam with the end of the Vietnam war and America’s economy plunging into the toilet. For many, though, the year 1968 sums up the decade. 1968 began with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which stirred up the anti-war protests. Then racial violence erupted after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. Then, anti-war demonstrators as well as some counter culture types arrived in large numbers at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago where they were set upon by police and beaten in what was later described as a “police riot.” 1968 also saw the Prague Spring uprising in Czechoslovakia crushed by the Soviets. And student demonstrators were killed by the police in Mexico City where the Olympics were held and Parisian students took to the streets in widespread protests against, you know, France. All this unrest scared a lot of people who ended up voting for Richard Nixon and his promises to return to law and order. Ultimately, like any decade or arbitrary historical “age,” the 60s defies easy categorization. Yes, there were hippies and liberation movements, but there were also reactions to those movements. On this one, I’m just gonna leave it up to Eric Foner to summarize the decade’s legacy: “[The 1960s] made possible the entrance of numerous members of racial minorities into the mainstream of American life, while leaving unsolved the problem of urban poverty. It set in motion a transformation of the status of women. It changed what Americans expected from government – from clean air and water to medical coverage in old age. And at the same time, it undermined confidence in national leaders. Relations between young and old, men and women, and white and non-white, along with every institution in society, changed as a result.” But there’s one last thing I want to emphasize. All of this wasn’t really the result of, like, a radical revolution. It was the result of a process that had been going on for decades. I mean, arguably a process that had been going on for hundreds of years. Thanks for watching, I’ll see you next week. Crash Course is made with the help of all these nice people and it’s possible because of generous support from the Bluth Family Frozen Banana Stand. Just kidding. We don’t have corporate sponsors. We have you. Subbable.com is a voluntary subscription platform (by the way, you can just click on my face) that allows people who care about stuff, like you hopefully care about Crash Course, to support it directly on a monthly basis. I’m over here now, but you should still click on my face. So Subbable has lots of great Crash Course perks, you can get signed posters and all kinds of things, and most importantly, you can help us keep this show free, for ever, for everyone. Thank you again for watching, and as we say in my hometown, there’s always money in the banana stand. ________________ [1] Foner Give me Liberty ebook version p. 1043 [2] [Text Box: The War on Poverty also included popular programs like VISTA, Head Start and food-stamps. Poverty was reduced but probably as much by economic growth as the programs themselves. And they didn’t eradicate poverty.] [3]
Background
Daley had, as mayor, overseen a revitalization of the city's downtown.[3] However, there were negative signs for his prospects of reelection. While Democrats had swept all but one of the major Cook County offices up for election in 1962, the party's candidate's margins of victory in numerous of these races had a vast decrease over their margins-of-victory in the previous 1958 elections for the same offices.[3] This was seen as evidencing a dissipation in Democratic Party support.[3] Additionally, in 1962, six bond issues which were strongly supported by Daley had all been defeated by voters by margins of nearly 3-2 in referendums.[3]
Despite these concerns, even before he announced his reelection effort, Daley was already receiving major endorsements.[3] Chicago's business community strongly stood behind him, and was pushing him to run for another term.[3] Advertising executive Fairfax Mastick Cone announced that he would organize the Non-Partisan Committee to Re-Elect Mayor Daley.[3] Within days of this, a large number of business leaders had publicly declared their support for Daley.[3] Additionally, organized labor continued to support the mayor.[3] On December 4, 1962 the Chicago Federation of Labor president William Lee announced the organization's endorsement of Daley's reelection.[3]
While influential endorsements for his prospective reelection had piled up, Daley remained initially noncommittal over whether he'd run, remarking, "running for a third term is something you don't make your mind up about overnight".[3] However, he would soon announce to a meeting of Democratic ward committeemen on December 14, 1962 that he planned to run for reelection, and received their unanimous support.[3] Days before Daley was to publicly announce his reelection effort, allegations related to Democratic machine connections to crime syndicates arose, tainting Daley's image.[3] To project strength, on January 2, when Daley formally filed his candidacy, he submitted nominating petitions extremely exceeding the requisite signature requirement, with 750,000 signatures.[3]
Primaries
Primary elections were held on February 26, 1963.[2] 48.31% of registered voters participated in the primary elections.[4]
Democratic primary
Incumbent mayor Richard J. Daley was unopposed in the Democratic primary.
Republican primary
Cook County State's Attorney Adamowski won the Republican primary in a landslide. Adamowski had formerly been a Democrat until 1955, the same year in which he had lost the 1955 Democratic mayoral primary. Adamowski was considered to be smart and articulate.[3] He had previously carried Chicago's vote when he was elected Cook County State's Attorney in 1956, and his 1960 reelection loss had been a narrow one (which he alleged was due to vote theft committed by the Democratic machine).[3]
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | Ben Adamowski | 174,742 | 90.54 | |
Republican | Howard J. Doyle | 9,522 | 4.93 | |
Republican | Lawrence "Lar" Daly | 8,746 | 4.53 | |
Turnout | 193,010 |
General election
Adamowski sought to receive the backing of the city's sizable Polish-American electorate.[5] He had a strong backing among this electorate.[3] Adamowski ran a vigorous campaign.[3] Adamowski portrayed Daley as a heavy-taxing liberal.[5] He criticized Daley for what he alleged were government waste and high taxes.[3] He accused Daley of doing too much for the city's impoverished, particularly its expanding black population.[5] Adamowski dismissed Daley's assertions that city services had improved during his tenure.[3] Adamowski was particularly critical of the fire department under Daley's tenure.[3] He even placed blame for the Our Lady of the Angels School fire with Daley's fire department.[3] Adamowski criticized Daley for being a powerful political boss, declaring, "we do not have one party-rule, we have one-man rule."[3]
Daley painted a positive picture of the city of Chicago.[3] He put focus on the work he had done to redevelop Chicago and improve city services.[3] He argued that his police department reform had already resulted in reductions of crime rates.[3] He also boasted of awards won in 1959 and 1961 naming Chicago the "cleanest big city" in the United States.[3] He also boasted that the National Clean-Up, Paint-Up, Fix-Up Bureau had just declared the "cleanest large city" for 1962 as well.[3] Daley positioned himself to be the candidate of both business and labor unions.[3] Adamowski sought to paint himself as the "people's candidate",[3] saying,
I hear State Street is against me, the bankers are against me, and the labor leaders are against me. State street doesn't make Chicago big, it's the other way around. I'll take Western Avenue, Nagle Avenue, Ashland Avenue, and Milwaukee Avenue, where the little people reside. I'll take the bank depositors over the bankers any day. That goes for the little people in labor, too.[3]
A heated issue was "open housing", which referred to the issue of racial integration in Chicago's housing.[5] Daley attempted to skirt the issue, while Adamowski was vocal and clear in his opposition, stating, "I am opposed to so-called open occupancy legislation, because like patriotism it cannot be legislated. I would oppose it because it creates tense situations and can't be enforced."[5] Adamowski criticized Daley over aspects of construction undertaken at O'Hare Airport. Firms involved in the construction of the airport had hired Daley-ally and Democratic machine operative Thomas E. Keane, and Adamowski alleged that the airport was being run as, "a private concession for Tom Keane."[3]
Daley benefited from positive media attention.[3] Chicago's newspapers provided Daley largely positive coverage, assessing his mayoralty very positively.[3] Shortly ahead of the election, Daley graced the cover of the March 15 edition of the magazine Time.[3][6] The cover story, entitled "Clouter with a Conscience", featured photos of new Chicago skyscrapers, O'Hare Airport, and a photo of Daley with president John F. Kennedy.[3] The article gave Daley credit for transforming the city, and awarding it "new stature".[3] The article's mere mention of Adamowski labeled him a former state's attorney who, "distinguished himself by never successfully prosecuting a major campaign".[3] To put Daley in a bind, Republicans introduced a bill to in the state legislature that would place a tax ceiling on the general expenditure fund of Chicago.[3] This meant that Daley, strongly opposed to such a measure, would need to again publicly oppose a measure similar to ones he had successfully helped fight in 1957, 1959, and 1961.[3] This, Republicans hoped, would lead voters to associate Daley with high taxes.[3]
Seeking to place a spotlight on his work on developing O'Hare Airport days before the election, to mark the opening of the airport's circular restaurant, Daley arranged to have an opening ceremony of the restaurant, for which he was able to get US President John F. Kennedy to attend.[3] The presidential visit also featured a motorcade along the seventeen-mile route between the airport and Conrad Hilton Hotel, where Daley hosted a "civic luncheon".[3] In the ceremony at the airport, Kennedy praised the airport and mayor, declaring that the airport, "could be classed as one of the wonders of the modern world" and was, "a tribute to Mayor Daley who kept these interests and resources together, working together, until the job was done".[3] Adamowski's campaign benefited from white backlash amid the civil rights movement.[5]
Result
Daley saw overwhelming support in predominantly African American wards on the city's south and west sides.[7] Adamowski defeated Daley in ethnically white wards by a three to one margin.[5] Daley only won due to his overwhelming support from the city's black voters.[5] Over half of Daley's vote came from black voters.[5] Daley received 81% of the black vote, but only 49% of the white vote.[3] The severity of Daley's decline in support with white voters, however, was partly aided by Adamowski's strong support among his fellow Poles.[3]
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Democratic | Richard J. Daley (incumbent) | 679,497 | 55.69 | |
Republican | Ben Adamowski | 540,705 | 44.31 | |
Turnout | 1,220,202 |
References
- ^ Denvir, Daniel (May 22, 2015). "Voter Turnout in U.S. Mayoral Elections Is Pathetic, But It Wasn't Always This Way". City Lab (The Atlantic). Retrieved December 11, 2018.
- ^ a b c "RaceID=389068". Our Campaigns. Retrieved December 4, 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at Cohen, Adam; Taylor, Elizabeth (2001). American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for Chicago and the Nation. Little, Brown. pp. 160, 168, 170–176. ISBN 978-0-7595-2427-9.
- ^ Franklin, Tim (February 23, 1983). "Voter turnout of 80 percent dwarfs record". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved April 3, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Green, Paul M.; Holli, Melvin G. (January 10, 2013). "The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition, fourth edition". SIU Press. p. 158. Retrieved May 22, 2020.
- ^ "TIME Magazine Cover: Richard J. Daley - Mar. 15, 1963". TIME.com. Retrieved May 29, 2020.
- ^ Fujinaga, Yasumasa (2014). "Black Power at the Polls: The Harold Washington Campaign of 1983 and the Demise of the Democratic Machine in Chicago" (PDF). The Japanese Journal of American Studies (25). Retrieved November 25, 2019.
- ^ "Board of Election Commissioners For the City of Chicago Mayoral Election Results Since 1900 General Elections Only". Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. July 18, 2004. Archived from the original on July 18, 2004. Retrieved March 26, 2023.