LITMIR.BIZ

       Mayor Richard J. Daley on the fl oor of the Democratic National Convention

      Associated Press, 1968

      By 1968, Richard J. Daley had been mayor for more than twenty years, and for much of the nation he was the very image of modern Chicago. After service in the Illinois legislature and state government under Governor Adlai Stevenson, Daley became chair of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee in 1953 and was elected mayor two years later. As mayor and party leader, he commanded an extensive organization that ensured his reelection and helped him efficiently deliver municipal services. Daley also promoted investments in major public works and private construction that helped maintain Chicagos status among American cities. His political influence made him an important player in national Democratic politics. By the time of the Democratic convention, however, Daley’s style of urban leadership was an anachronism and subject to charges of cronyism and machine politics.

      Daley’s reputation suffered a serious blow in the spring of 1968 during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King. The mayor asked the police superintendent to order police to shoot to kill any arsonist and to shoot to maim looters. A national outcry followed. In 1968, Daley’s administration was determined to prevent any kind of civil disturbance during the Democratic convention, and officials refused to issue permits requested by demonstrators. The mayor’s administration also mobilized an over-whelming force of police and National Guard troops to maintain order in the city.

      National media covering the convention criticized the police response to the demonstrators, and the television networks broadcast Daley’s remarkable tantrum on the floor of the convention. Daley responded to the public criticism with a hastily prepared report that blamed the convention violence on “outside agitators” and a “hard core of revolutionaries.”

      In January 1970, Mayor Daley appeared as a witness for the defense, but his testimony did little to support the defense argument. Daley insisted he had not ordered the denial of permits for demonstrators, but for the most part Daley offered little beyond praise for his staff and U.S. Attorney Foran. Judge Hoffman sustained most of the prosecution’s objections to the defense line of questioning of Daley. Defense attorney Kunstler read into the record an “offer of proof,” which allows an attorney to present, away from the presence of the jury, information that the judge had not allowed them to present through examination of a witness. Kunstler’s order of proof alleged a conspiracy of Daley and President Johnson, with the cooperation of the U.S. attorney, to prevent any demonstrations against the Vietnam War and social injustice.

      Despite the damage to his national reputation following the events of 1968, Daley remained popular in much of Chicago and won reelection to a sixth term in 1975.

      Media Coverage and Public Debates

       Table of Contents

      During the Democratic National Convention of August 1968, network television coverage of the confrontations between demonstrators and Chicago police shocked the nation and prompted investigations by the city of Chicago, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and the President’s National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. The media images of the violence disrupting the political process also intensified demands for the criminal prosecution of the police and the demonstrators. The subsequent trial of the demonstrators, closely followed by the media, became the center of a national debate on the fairness of the federal judicial system and on the culture of dissent that arose in the 1960s.

      Media coverage had been central to the debate over the demonstrations surrounding the convention, and it would be a subject of controversy leading up to and throughout the Chicago Seven trial. On the first anniversary of the convention riots and weeks before the opening of the trial, Tom Wicker wrote in the New York Times “The miracle of television made it visible to all—pierced, at last, the isolation of one America from the other, exposed to each the power it faced.”

       Chicago police marshal against demonstrators during the Democratic National Convention, 1968

      Courtesy of the Chicago History Museum.

      The role of the media in the Chicago violence was a polarizing issue. In the days following the convention, Mayor Daley demanded prime time on each of the television networks for a response to what he characterized as distorted coverage of the police violence. Several months later, the Walker Report’s review of police violence concluded that “newsmen and photographers were singled out for assault, and their equipment deliberately damaged.” Shortly after the report was published, U.S. Attorney Thomas Foran alleged that the television networks had staged shots of the demonstrators’ injuries at the hands of the police.

      As the trial began in September 1969, the district court for the Northern District of Illinois attempted to manage the expected media crush. Chief Judge William Campbell prohibited cameras and sound equipment from all but one room of the courthouse, and Judge Richard Austin dismissed a suit by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the ban. Austin announced that “the quickest way to end demonstrations is to have all cameras five blocks from the building.” Campbell denied a request from over 100 attorneys to move the trial to a larger courtroom that could accommodate more of the press and hopeful spectators who lined up daily outside the federal courthouse, and the U.S. court of appeals upheld Campbell’s decision. Judge Hoffman set aside a section of the courtroom for the press with credentials, but he prohibited them from wearing press credentials in the courtroom, explaining that he didn’t want his courtroom to look like “a furniture convention.” The limited access did nothing to deter

Скачать книгу