The Chicago mayoral election in 1959 and the failed bond election immediately prior

It was hugely significant, and marked a radical shift in how Richard J Daley (and correspondingly the city) dealt with race

(Thread if you want to know more) https://twitter.com/Remember_Sarah/status/1291855434341666816

So first of all, let's clarify a few things

1 Both American Pharaoh and Mike Royko are basically garbage and ignore almost all actual race relations

2 Richard J. Daley was from the beginning a disgusting racist personally

3 Chi politics is always about race and little else

Now then. Daley was very much a horrible racist, ran with white supremacist groups in his youth and all that

BUT. He was also the most progressive mayor on race the city had ever seen in his early years

To understand why, you need to go back two mayors

Ed Kelly, mayor 33-47, genuinely tried to integrate housing while in office. He was a pretty good guy for his time

So of course all of white Chicago was furious and he got dumped for a REALLY gross super racist, Martin Kennelly

But this happened with black machine support

The thing about black politics is it is ultra pragmatic, because it has to be. In the case of IL Congressman "Big Bill" Dawson, one of the first black members of Congress, also had the context of absolutely horrifying race riots that burned his neighborhood to the ground

So Dawson knew that progress comes with a really bloody price. Is integrated housing theoretically good? Sure. But absence of horrifying race riots is much better

And Kelly couldn't really deliver Dawson anything bc the white machine hated him. So it was time for a change

Kennelly was FUCKING EVIL. Under him all of the housing Kelly had planned was turned into intentionally miserable slums, the infamous project high rises

White alderman literally rode a drunken party wagon picking out shitty places for the towers to go

This of course did not sit well with Big Bill. Reportedly there was a slate meeting where he stood up and said "I made you, and I can unmake you" to Kennelly's face

Big Big was not wrong. Kennelly was dumped in favor of a mostly quiet workhorse in the ranks, Richard J Daley

So you see, Daley got elected with the black vote. It was explicitly understood at the time he would come to terms with Dawson and get along with the rising black machine

And he delivered! Not only did Daley return to Kelly's policies mostly, he tried to expand housing

And yet again, white Chicago freaked out. A bond referendum for construction became a referendum on Daley's housing policy. Tons and tons of white newspapers condemned it, often in explicitly racist terms

The referendum failed. But that wasn't the end of Daley's trouble

In 1959 Daley faced a Polish challenger who outright said he was running against all the black housing. If you think Vrdolyak was bad in 1983 ("before it's too late") you haven't seen a thing. Dude ran around shouting that Daley made everyone live near black peyote so fuck him

And here is the Very Important Thing most histories miss about Daley: he stuck to his guns

Daley completely, publicly refused to change a thing about his hosting policies. All he said was his position was clear, and had not changed

That almost cost him his job

1959 was the one and only time Daley lost the white vote. If not for Dawson's machine, he would have lost. It was noticed. People said he was the blacks mayor, etc

Whatever went through Daleys head that election night, he emerged a very different mayor

That was when you started to see the Daley who ordered CPD to "shoot to kill" during a race riot when black people actually rioted back. It was the start of the Silent Six, black aldermen who kept a really low profile and got their deals from Daley in private

Here's where another awful Chicago tradition emerged: the Oblivious White Liberal

White liberals went bananas at the Silent Six, accusing them of being rubber stamps, selling out their constituents, etc

The fact was that all of the Silent Six had been terrorized throughout their lives. Chicago was a *very bad place.* Dozens of race riots happened and just fell out of our mainstream history

If you were white and wanted to set a black house on fire, it was basically fine

So you had these fucking idiot whites from the north side telling black people how it is, when they all absolutely new people who had beaten, vandalized and destroyed black lives, which is the real reason why they kept a low profile

And we *still do it*. We still try to stamp our ideas about things on black lives, and it's really harmful

Why do you think white liberals yell about TIFs? Transparency? Bullshit. They do it bc it's a safe way to yell about property taxes without being called racist

Thats the reason the 1959 election deserves deep scrutiny: the city still has deep wounds from that year, all of them born by black Chicago

And what's more, you can see in our elections still. We're locked in a cycle of coalition briefly wins, then loses to white revanchism

Let's take 2015. Rahm (and my then employer, Chicago Forward) ran two very different campaigns in the primary and runoff

The first was overwhelmingly diverse. I dont remember a single white person in Rahms early ads

But something was also happening off the air

Towards the clutch, people started to see Rahm direct mail attacking Fioretti. No one understood it; Fioretti didn't have a chance in hell.

We were also confused at Chicago Forward. Then one day I was puzzling over tweets showing the mail, and my jaw dropped

Every single recipient of the Fioretti mail was white. No people of color.

In the aftermath of the primary, I looked at all the precincts and saw the reason:

"Blue collar" white Chicago voted for Fioretti, and that forced a runoff

It was plain as day: there was a backlash against Rahm for a term that, despite the many terrible things, worked to cultivate a relationship with nonwhite communities. He didn't do a great job and was a terrible mayor, but he did it. And white Chicago noticed

Within a week the new strategy unrolled. (We knew it was coming because Rahm redboxed it on his website, which is how Democratic campaigns communicate with IEs and vice versa)

"Uh oh."

Thus ensued a runoff of dog whistles and negative ads to get those whites back