Mark.

Mark.

OK [inaudible]

OK. Was Mayor Daley a supporter of the national civil rights movement?

The, the mayor supported legislative issues in Springfield and in Washington which advanced the objectives of the civil rights movement. Whether it was employment or any other area. He was a strong, strong supporter of a state fair employment practices law, early supporter of a state fair housing law. And finally under his administration in 1963, the, Chicago passed a fair housing ordinance.

Can you tell me about-there was an existing civil rights movement in Chicago. Was Daley responsive to the Black population in Chicago?

Well, the civil rights movement was an interracial movement. The mayor was responsive to the nine, or ten, or eleven Black, I think there were nine Black alderman at the time. There were estates, there were state representatives, state senators, a congressman. And he saw himself as a political leader responding to the political leadership which the Black community in Chicago had elected. In other words he saw, he saw the civil rights movement as an auxiliary to the basic system for achieving political objectives.

Was there a conflict in, in the administration between working within the system and working without the system? Was he more respectful of one or the other?

Well, the mayor was not only the mayor of the Chicago, he was the head of the Democratic Party. He was a political animal, [laughs] very political. And therefore he was sensitive to the, the concerns and the demands of the ward committeeman and the leadership which surrounded him and which made him the chief of the Cook County Democratic Party. He, he-I think he had a difficult time understanding the political role of people who didn't run for political office [laughs] and who made demands but were not willing to test the, the proposals and the ideas before the people. If-and so he had a natural respect for anybody, even if the person lost or opposed him if the person ran for office. But if, if he or she didn't run for office, his attitude was, Why do I have to pay attention that much? [laughs] I'd rather pay attention to the people who are active in the political system.

OK, stop.

[inaudible]

[unintelligible]

Marker.

Mark.

How did you feel when you learned that SCLC had chosen Chicago as the first city in its northern campaign?

Well, we, we knew for several months that negotiations were going on with the Southern Christian Leadership Council, Conference about Martin Luther King and his friends coming to Chicago. We were, we knew also that they were discussing the issues, the question of money, the question of support. And it was not until-and, and Martin Luther King had come here several times unofficially to Chicago for meetings and so on. And so the question was when will the official [laughs] arrival take place. And I think what we were basically doing is trying to prepare for his appearance and the activities that would be associated with it as well as we could. It was clear I think to us at the time that what the Chicago Freedom Movement wanted was a way to get a confrontation with city hall. And our purpose was to see if we could avoid a confrontation, to, to diffuse any issue that might precipitate a confrontation. This-we were not Birmingham. We were not Selma. We were Chicago. And in Chicago, you don't do it the way they do it in those southern cities in 19, in the 1960's. And consequently what we tried to do was to figure out some way of giving Martin Luther King a, a, a victory [laughs]. So, our planning was what could he come to Chicago for and come out with. That was our basic strategy, to see if we could figure it out.

Did you feel singled out in any way? Was Chicago worse than any other northern city? Did it seem fair that they chose Chicago?

I think the mayor felt put out about the choice of Chicago compared to other cities. [laughs] And I, I, I recall that in the first meeting between Martin Luther King and the mayor, a one on one meeting, there were of us sitting in the back, one of Martin Luther King's aides, and I was sitting in the back in the first meeting in which the mayor and Martin Luther King had their first opportunity to c-chat. And they talked about their fam-their families [laughs]. They talked about what, what, what-they also talked about the question that we just discussed, which was Ma-why was Martin Luther picking Chicago. [laughs] Why? Why? There were other cities in the South which were much worse. Why did he have to come north? I don't think the mayor said anything invidious about other northern cities [laughs], but I think he was wiling to say there are many cities out there where situations are far worse than they are in Chicago.

OK, stop.

Mark.

Mark.

Can you tell me about meeting Dr. King at the airport and about the fears that you and Mayor Daley had that he would stumble in the different-in the North?

Well, when the official arrival date of Dr. Martin Luther King was announced, I went to see the mayor. And I said, I think I ought to go and greet him at the airport. And he said, Fine. So, the police drove me out there. The airport terminal itself was full of Martin Luther King supporters, so they took me up from the outside. [laughs] And I got on the plane before anybody had seen King. And as he was walking down the aisle, I came up to Dr. King, and I said, I'm, I'm here to give you a welcome on behalf of the mayor. And I hope that we can work together in achieving the objectives that you were, you're seeking. I then quietly left so that they could have their public display in the terminal so I wouldn't gum up [laughs] what they were doing in the terminal. And I think Al Raby appreciated that [laughs], that I let, let them, let him come right out of the gate into the terminal. And I had quietly gone down the steps and, with the police, and I had driven away. But that was part of a, that, that welcome was I think both genuine and part of a strategy. The strategy was here was a man coming to a city he didn't know, to a city whose political institutions with which he was not familiar. He was dealing with people basically who were nonpolitical, is suspicious of the political establishment. And so the advice and counsel that he would be getting would be by and large advice that didn't come through the normal political channels. And it was possible that he could stumble. He could make a mistake, a grievous one, that would rip the city apart in such a way that wounds would be hard to heal. And, and I know what the, in-well, I'll leave it at that.

OK. Can you, can you briefly describe the conflicting strategies? The Freedom Movement were going for confrontation, and the mayor was going to avoid it at any cost. What were the conflicting strategies?

Well, I don't know whether, whether it would be at any cost. [laughs]

Well can you-

That may be too high a price [laughs] you know.

-so, there were two strategies going on.

Right.

Can you tell me about the, the potential for conflict?

It was, it was our understanding, our-that the strategy of the Chicago Freedom Movement and Martin Luther King was to come out of Chicago with a victory, with a change in racial segregation and racial discrimination. That they saw that being accomplished by some sort of a confrontation with city hall. On our part, that, that denied I think the basic institutional framework of the city. The mayor wasn't the only person responsible for what went on in the city. The religious institutions were responsible. Business, labor [laughs], civic groups of one kind. And therefore if there was to be any kind of a confrontation, it had to be in the context of the total community responding to Martin Luther King and the freedom movement. And that fit their objectives. Because I think ultimately when the summit agreement [laughs] was reached, all of those parties were at the bargaining table. And the mayor wanted it. Martin Luther King wanted it. And so did the Chicago Freedom Movement. So, that, there were commonalities. The question was how do you engineer whatever was going to be the resolution of his stay in Chicago in a way that didn't make the city blow up. And I know in many of the conversations we had, there, we discussed specific things on which, well-if somebody wanted this, if somebody wanted something else, we discussed whether or not that was a good thing to give on.

Can you tell the, the campaign-

I have to change tape.

OK, stop.

And we're cutting.

Mark.

OK. The Chicago Freedom movement chose housing as its focus. And sometime around February, Mayor Daley announced his own program to end slums in the-

[sighs]

-area. The movement people charged that that was just a ploy to undermine what they were doing. Was he sincere?

Well, the, the, the Chicago Freedom Movement ultimately chose housing as an issue. [laughs] The, the bad housing conditions were there. There is no doubt about it. The, the housing was deteriorated. The stock was substandard. I think the mayor's point was, I'm-you can't hold me responsible [laughs] for the slums of Chicago. There was a, there is a real estate market. There are private landlords. There are private owners. I'm trying to do my best to end these slums, and I'm willing to work with anybody who wants to do something about improving housing. I don't think the mayor was generally [coughs] how shall I put it, the mayor generally wasn't at home with the expression slums. And the reason why he wasn't was that he saw very many people who grew up, had a great life, moved out of the area that they had lived in, their neighborhood, and then later they were told they had lived in a slum. [laughs] And so he didn't wanna create [laughs] in people an image of themselves as being slum dwellers. And so he had a very difficult time with the word slum and using it. And consequently I think he would have used another word because he didn't want to fix an image on a family or person. He wanted that person to feel that he or she could rise out from whatever status they had been in. Whether they were unemployed, or poor, or whether they were new, new migrants to the city, or immigrants, or whoever, that they could get out of there. But he didn't want them stamped with that slum image or, or them to feel that they were in a slum and therefore they couldn't do anything.

But there was seriously substandard housing, and it was Black people who lived in it. And there wasn't a whole lot happening to change that. Or was there?

Well, there, there were Black people living in the, in the slums. There were White people in fewer numbers living in the slums. They weren't all, they weren't all Blacks by, by any stretch of the imagination. The area on the near-north side where there was an Italian community was called Little It, Little, Little Italy. And twenty-five years later, the Italians discovered they were living in a slum. So, those, those weren't the only areas. I think the, the mayor participated very enthusiastically in every federal program which had been initiated to improve housing in the city. I, I visited some of these slum buildings. [laughs] I visited a building, for example, that was gonna be torn down to make room for a public housing project. And there were kinds swarming on the back porches and running up and down. It was a spring day. And I started walking up the steps, and my guide said, Don't go up those steps. And I said, Why? They're unsafe. But yet these kids were running up and down. Well, those buildings went down, so there was a, a considerable amount of slum clearance and the building of new buildings. Like building housing projects. The large scale lo-middle-

-income developments along the lakefront that were put up by men like Ferd Kramer.

Ran out.

We ran out-

Remember the-

[clears throat]

Mark.

Roll seven. OK.

What I'm gonna ask you about is there was a, the rally at Soldier Field followed by the march. And I wanted you to tell me the story about being at city hall and watching the marchers. So, could you, could you describe the march to city hall?

I was at the rally, and I had a place guard take me back to, to city hall. And it was just about dusk. [laughs] And the men and women who were in the march were walking se, ten, twelve, fifteen abreast. They had taken up the sidewalk and street. And they were walking down LaSalle Street, which is already [laughs] a quarter kinda street. And it was, it was a impressive disconcerting sight to see these people 'cause they were not march, marching in regular fashion. They were just marching free flowing down the street. When, when they posted their demands on the doors of city hall, I was inside city hall looking out and watching Martin Luther King and Al Raby putting those demands on the door. And then the flow of the march went by.

You've been critical of those demands. Can you explain why?

Well, to be honest with you, first of all, I don't remember all of it. [laughs] I don't think they were very clear. The one clear impression I had about the demands that they were making is it was fairly general. There were one or two specific ones like a police civilian review board. But other, other than that, they were fairly generally as I recall it. I mean, they, they were not-now, maybe you could refresh my memory on it, but I don't recall them being that specific.

Can you describe the meeting with Mayor Daley the next day? And what you had told me before was that the, the mayor was looking for something he could respond to, and he said yes to-

Well-

I'm sorry. I was talking, so I need you to start-

Yeah, in, in the meeting that was held the next day with the mayor and the leadership of the freedom movement, and Martin Luther King, each of these demands were discussed. And it was very interesting. The freedom movement wanted to get a no out of the mayor on each of the demands, and he refused. And every, every time they tried to get a no out of him, he'd say, Well, we could look at it from this perspective, and maybe we could do something over here. The one place where he almost said no [laughs] was on the, the demand for a police, civilian police review board. And the mayor's answer was, Well, I'm against it because my superintendent of police is against it. But I'd be happy to talk to him about it again. [laughs] And, but that was the tenor of the conversation. And I, I think there were, they were expecting something different. When they came out and met with the press, they said that, the freedom movement said that they didn't get anything. Well, it's true. They didn't get anything 'cause this was not the meeting in which specific things were talked about. Specific things could have been talked about, but they weren't.

Can you-I'm, I'm just not understanding this. The mayor said yes to their demands, and they-

No. He never said no to any of them. He had, he had...

Excuse me [inaudible]

He was moving when you said-

Oh, I'm sorry.

Can you also start with Mayor Daley?

Yeah, May, Mayor Daley in this meeting with the leadership of the freedom movement and Martin Luther King said no to none of their demands. [laughs] What he did was to try to see whether it was possible [laughs] to meet the demand in some way, halfway, minor, in a minor way, but to meet it. And, and they just couldn't take it 'cause they were looking for nos. And I, I remember repeatedly somebody would say, You mean you're saying no? And the mayor would say, No, I'm not. [laughs] Why don't we try it this way? Or whatever, whatever was possible, what, whatever might have been the possibility. He was trying to draw it out of them and come to some meeting on it.

Was it at that meeting that they threatened to start direct action in the neighborhoods? Do you remember?

No, that was not the meeting.

That wasn't it?

No, that was sub, subsequently.

OK. The next day-

Housing was not the major issue at this meting. Just keep that in mind. It was one of seventeen or whatever the number of demands was. It was one of, one of the demands. And it, the demands had to do with schools. It had to do with police. It had to do with public services. A whole host of issues. And that's why they were fairly gen, general.

The next day, rioting breaks out in the city. And Mayor Daley blamed the movement. Can you talk about why or what would lead him to, to connect the two events? The rally and the rioting?

I don't know the forum [sirens] in which the mayor or the way in which the mayor bl, blamed the freedom movement. But I think-

Cut. Cut. I'm sorry. It's a siren.

Sorry.

Oop. Sec-second sticks.

It'll be second stick. Mark.

What most people don't realize-

Hold on one second.

We've gotta set up the mic. OK.

What most people don't realize was the impression that that march created over the television stations. It looked disorderly. It looked disorganized. [laughs] It looked like people were taking over the streets of Chicago. That was the impression. My feeling was that that image was disconcerting to me because I don't know how people out in the communities [laughs] would take, whether the youngsters wouldn't see it in a license to repeat [laughs] what they thought they saw over those television channels. The mayor didn't see this except on television. [laughs] I saw it firsthand, and I saw it later on on the ten o'clock news. And to-secondly the mayor did feel that there was no need for outsiders to stir up the troops [laughs] in Chicago. And therefore I think his natural inclination was to say, Well, we have never had these things before. Now they're happening. [laughs] What's the explanation? It must be these events, and these people, and the way they're doing things that was responsible, that was responsible for the rioting that took place.

OK, cut please.

Marker.

Can you tell me, sort of starting from when they, they spent several months trying a lot of things and looking for a confrontation. And they finally get it, and they start marching through the neighborhoods. Can you describe watching that process take place and then realizing that this was going to be the confrontation?

What we found it difficult to do was to arrive at some sort of an understanding or agreement. [laughs] Our objective was to find some way to give the freedom movement, Martin Luthen [sic] King, a victory that he could take home. [laughs] We weren't able to find it. And they couldn't find a dramatic elements for-or create the dramatic elements for this, this kind of confrontation. When, when they announced the marches, we had a clear cil, city policy at the time, which was that any, if a Black family moved into an all White neighborhood, if it took a thousand police to protect that White family's right to move in that neighborhood, we'd have a thousand police out. [laughs]

OK. Can you tell me that again? We're gonna move in-the city policy-

The city-well, if, if, the city's policy with regard to fair housing was that if a Black family moved in to an all White neighborhood, it was the police's job to protect that family's right to, to move into that home. And if it took a thousand police to do it, we'd, we had a thousand police out there. And Superintendent Orlando Wilson at the time understood that policy and enf-carried it out. And it was our staff who did the community relations work whenever that occurred. There were, there were only one or two cases where we had to have that many police out. Maybe a couple hundred. And if you talk about two or three day shifts, it was a thousand police. But that was an important part of the fair housing policy. It was one thing to say you can't discriminate against a person because of his or her race and the purchase or sale of a home. It's another thing to protect your right if you do move in.

Why did you, do you think they were choosing to march in a White neighborhood?

Because they got a negative reaction. And the television cameras were there to catch the hate and the objections of the people who stood along the streets at Martin Luther King and his people marched by. But this raised the other question that you and I have discussed, which has to do with the other side of the fair housing policy. The city's policy was twofold. We, we needed a fair housing policy, which would guarantee anybody's right to rent or buy. But on the other hand, we wanted to prevent the re-segregation of neighborhoods. We wanted racial integration to work. [laughs] We, we didn't want to move from all White to all Black neighborhoods. And what that set of marches that was, raised the specter of that policy failing. [laughs] Because we had blocked the Black change racially, and that was the, one of the two objectives of the city policy was to try to prevent that.

Can we cut please?

Marker.

I'm-let me se-I'm not sure I followed the last argument. The argument is that the movement, if, if what they were doing was successful, that would have gone against what the, the city's policy was to integrate the-

No, no. The, the marches to the dismay of the residents symbolized total racial change for the neighborhoods in which the freedom movement was marching. It wasn't the question at that point of fair housing. It was a question of would the neighborhood go all Black. And were these marches going to contribute to racial suc, succession, racial change, or racial re-segregation.

And were they?

Pardon me?

Were they?

Were the marches gonna do that? If they lasted long enough, they might. [laughs] 'Cause they might scare the daylights out of the, out of people who just didn't wanna get in-

-involved in violence and who were, may or may not be racially prejudiced or bigoted. I mean, you know, it would have affected a lot of other people besides the people who were on the streets.

Mm-hmm.

There were a lot of people who were not on the streets [laughs] and who didn't like what was going on.

Uh-huh.

[inaudible]

Oh, OK.

[inaudible] ask a question so-

OK.

And we're marking here.

Mark.

Why do you think the neighborhood residents were so afraid of the marchers?

What did the marches mean to neighborhood residents? [laughs] They were worried that the marches were the first step towards turning neighborhoods from, their neighborhood from all White to all Black. And that the marches were saying to them that what had been taking place for the last twenty years in the neighborhoods to the east of them, one block at a time the neighborhood went Black. That that was going to happen here and that that's what these marchers wanted. That it wasn't just the fair housing policy, it was to take over the neighborhood and to change it racially.

What did the marches mean to Mayor Daley, and what, how was he going to respond to them?

What, what the marches meant to Mayor Daley was that there was a potential for violence, a potential for very serious violence, a potential for political ruptures [laughs] between the White leaders, and these communities, and the Black leadership who were leaders in the city council who were espon-espousing a fair housing policy, and which many of the White alderman had voted for. [laughs] And it was being ruptured by the failure, apparent failure of a policy to prevent total racial change. And so the-to the mayor as, as the marches escalated and as they moved to other wards of the city, it meant the, the loss of control, [laughs] the loss of political ability to keep the situation under control, peaceful. And that there was a, a danger of major disorder. And that was, that was the perspective of the mayor.

What was the risk to the mayor in terms of police protection? What was it doing to the police force?

Well, he, he had a superintendent who believes [laughs] in the policies that we're talking about. And therefore his job was to pick people who would carry out such orders. Whether it was on the marches or in the case of a family that moved, a Black family that moved into a White neighborhood. We didn't have a wishy washy police superintendent. That was extremely important on this question.

But was he stretching the police, protecting the marchers stretching the police force to-

Sure, it was. Because it meant you had to take police away from other sections of the city to protect the marchers and to prevent major violence when they marched in the neighborhoods. And so there were hundreds of police being taken away from neighborhoods to concentrate on this particular issue.

What led Mayor Daley to come to the bargaining table?

Well, first of all, you have to remember that the mayor was a political master. His objective was to win friends and influence enemies. It was not to make enemies. [laughs] And so he was looking for the opportunity [laughs] to come to the bargaining table. He didn't have to be made to come to the bargaining table. That's what he wanted. [laughs] And if, if the, these, these marchers brought everybody to the, the mar-bargaining table. The business community, the religious leaders, the leaders of the labor movement, civic leaders. That's exactly what he wanted, and we got it.

How did you feel about what was finally agreed on?

The major accomplishment of Martin Luther King's presence in Chicago was the creation of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities. For this, for the mayor, it was a victory. The mayor had failed for six or seven years to make fair housing a metropolitan question. It was a metropolitan real estate market. He was afraid that the law would simply keep segregation growing in Chicago with a ring of White suburbs. That's why the mayor went originally to Springfield to get a fair housing law which would cover the city and the suburbs. When the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities was formed, we had, we had, we had accomplished a major objective. As a matter of fact, it was the mayor who called the President of Illinois Bell to become the head of the Leadership Council for, the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities. It was the mayor who called Ben Heineman when he was fishing in Wisconsin to chair the summit conference here in Chicago. So, the mayor, the mayor was actively interested in putting this together.

How do you respond to people that say it was a sell out, and we should have kept marching?

Depends upon what your objective is. Your-if your objective is civil disorder [laughs], I think that was a worthy objective. [laughs] If your objective is to find solutions to, to torturous human problems like racial discrimination and segregation, I think that, that attitude is hazardous, disastrous.

OK. I just need to ask you again and have you, get you to talk, to say, to continue marching.

Oh.

What would they have gotten by continuing marching?

The, if the marchers had continued, they would not have gotten the kind of summit conference which resulted in, in a victory for Martin Luther King and for the mayor. What they ultimately would have gotten was a major civil disorder in the city. Or if not a major political disruption or, or, who knows. We could have had riots.

The mayor got an injunction against the marchers two days after the bargaining had started. And that seems kind of like a dirty pool. Why did he need this injunction?

The injunction had been prepared before the meeting. [laughs] The mayor [sighs] was a man who said, It's the right thing to do. Let's do it. It was also a bargaining chip for him. [laughs] It meant that he had some more strength at the bargaining table. Remember that the people who really called the summit agreement were the religious leaders in the Chicago Conference on Religion and Race. And so there were three parties really at the table. The leadership of the city, the religious leaders, and the, the freedom movement or the leadership represented by the, by the freedom movement. And that-well, I, I lost the point beyond that.

Why was it OK to issue an injunction that limited the power-

Oh.

-that the marchers had?

Well, if you believe that ultimately the marches might lead to civil disorder, an injunction was one way to go.

OK. Cut please. Sorry.

Marker.

Mark.

What finally brought the mayor to the bargaining table?

Well, the mayor wanted to come to the bargaining table right along. He didn't have to be brought there. What he was looking for is a reason to come to the bargaining table to see if these could be neg-issues could be negotiated out rather than settled out in the streets of Chicago. And when the religious leaders started taking the initiative to set up the summit conference, the mayor jumped at it. As a matter of fact, he was the person that brought many of the key principles into that meeting personally. I don't know whether you want the Heineman incident. Did you miss that-

No, that's fine. That's good. Can you tell me about the-going back to the war on poverty and the charges that Mayor Daley took the war on poverty and made it part of his own machine. Can you just tell me about how Mayor Daley, what his response to the war on poverty programs was?

Well, the war on poverty in Chicago was a war that had the approval of the Office of Economic Opportunity. So, the strategy here in Chicago to carry on the war against poverty was probably no different than it was in forty or fifty other cities. It, it is true that the, since it was government money that was coming in, the mayor wanted to make sure that the money was used in accordance with city policy and was not used to fight city hall. And therefore he created a Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity. That, that was its name. And the guy that headed it was Deacon J. Brooks [Phonetic], a former editor of _The Daily Defender_, Chicago Daily Defender. And he headed up that, that program.

What about-how do you respond to accusations that Daley put all of his own people that would be his, his people in charge of the program?

Well, the program was by and large carried out through some of the existing or mostly through existing institutions. Political and non-political. So, it was carried out through, I mean-it wasn't a question of putting people in so much as it was who would be used to wage the war against poverty. So, it would be the school system. It would be the Department of Human Services. It would be the police department or whatever. Or the private agencies, churches, and other social welfare agencies that were involved in the program. What the, the opposition to this approach wanted was they wanted the money, and the mayor wanted the money. And the mayor won. [laughs]

OK. Can I ask you also again about the charges that, the implication that Black people who supported Mayor Daley was just completely under his thumb. How would you-your response when we talked was that some people work within a system. Some people choose not to do it in a Democratic way. Can you-

[sighs] The aldermen who supported the mayor and who represented predominantly Black wards were elected by large majorities. Therefore who is to say that they didn't represent their wards? I mean, they got tens and tens of thousands of votes to be elected aldermen, or ward committeemen, or state representatives. Therefore how can anybody say that they're not representative? Unless you don't believe-

-in the Democratic voting process, and you wanna get around it in some way to get your point of view across.

We ran out.

We ran out?

I know, right?

That's all right.

Marker.

Mark.

OK. Why would Black residents support Mayor Daley?

Well, they would first support Mayor Daley because-

I'm sorry. I need to, I need you to talk about Black citizens-

That's right.

-and Black voters. Actually why would Black voters support Mayor Daley?

Black voters like White voters usually rely on their neighbors, their precinct captain, their aldermen, their ward committeemen, their state representative. And so if the alliances, and the allegiances, and the loyalties are close then they will support the candidates citywide which their local political leadership supports. And therefore most voters opt to work inside the political system, not outside of or around the political system. So, if you opt to work within the political system as a public official or as an elected official, there is a way to go about it. If you opt outside the system, there's another way to go about it. And those may work together, or they may not work together. Or they may conflict. I think the, the error that occurred, occurred here was to assume that the political establishment was monolithic unwiel-unyielding. [laughs] But it was just the opposite. It wanted to yield. It wanted to bend. It wanted to accommodate on the one hand and accommodate on the other hand. That's working within the political system. And the people who are outside the political system just don't understand that kind of behavior.

Let me go back to the marchers through the White neighborhoods. Given the fear about losing property value, there was also an extraordinary amount of hate and just disgusting signs, horrible slogans, and rock throwing, bottle throwing. Was that hate typical of Chicago? Where did that come from, the White anger?

To look at the television portrayal of the marchers was to see only part of the reality. Where were all the other people in those neighborhoods? Ten, twenty times those who stood on the streets. They weren't part of it. And it was a mistake I think to smear everybody who lived in the neighborhood for the actions of those protestors, those villifiers, those people who manifested hatred on the sidewalks of these neighborhoods. The, the, the television stations really never could figure out whether that was a representative group of people who were on the sidewalks throwing stones and rocks at the marchers.

So, who were on the sidewalks? Who was?

The, the, they were the activists who reflected the, some of the worst things about Chicago. [laughs] They also saw the marchers as the activists [laughs] who were goin' to turn their neighborhoods from all White to all Black. And so they felt defensive about it. Now, whether they-

I-

-were representative, I don't know. Nobody knows whether they were representative. Therefore to smear all Whites on the Southwest side or the Northwest side I think is a fundamental error.

OK. Going to that fear about turning a neighborhood from all White to all Black, can you talk about the, the other interests that actually do contribute to turning a neighborhood beyond real estate, the business interest?

The, the major engineers of racial segregation in the sixties were the, the real estate industry and the mortgage finance industry. The mortgage fin-finance industry just simply boycotted those areas which were Black, [laughs] and they also refused to make loans to Blacks who moved into predominantly White blocks. And they even refused to rent, make mortgage, mortgages to Whites who bought in a Black, [laughs] in which a Black had already moved in. That was one aspect. But the major architects were, were the real estate brokers. Because we had two real estate markets. One for Blacks and one for Whites. What we were, were trying to achieve in city government was a single real estate market, one which catered to anybody who was shopping for housing and could afford to buy or rent. But with the dual housing market that we had, the question always was is this building in the Black market, or is it in the White market. And, and the brokers all behaved that way. So did the Black brokers. The Black brokers as well as the White brokers helped engineer the transfer of a house from the White ma-housing market to the Black housing market. And that is the way in which the blocks went one by one from Black to White.

So, was it naive of the Chicago Freedom Movement to target open housing as a, a simple issue that they could-you had the right to be served? Was that naive?

Well, it's, no, it's not naive to talk about open housing as a clear cut moral issue.

OK, I need to-I was talking. Can you start again?

Oh. It, the, it was, it is not naive, it was not naive for the freedom movement to talk about open housing, fair housing as a moral issue, as a civil rights issue. That's clear. The question is how do you change [laughs] generations of racial segregation and discrimination in housing? What are the best methods for doing it? And that's where the disagreement comes about. Are you right, or am I right in the approach that we're gonna take to do it? Am I going too slow? Do you want me to go faster than I am capable of doing? That's what the arguments were about. They were not about the principle.

And can you bring that one step farther within terms of Mayor Daley and the movement?

Well, the, the, the mayor, the city council had accepted in law the principle of fair housing. The, the only issue then was how do we achieve it, and how do we achieve it within that double policy that, that I have, I have referred to, which is the right of everybody to buy or rent. And secondly prevent the racial succession of neighborhoods from all White to all Black. And that was-how do you do that? And certainly the, the marches had the impact of scaring off people who were, who would not object to a Black as a neighbor because I don't want my kids walking to school in all this violence. I don't like to see this hate.

OK. Can we cut for a second?

Sure.

This is the time when I get to ask you what I have forgotten to ask you.