Richard J. Daley - Legacy

Legacy

A poll of 160 historians, political scientists and urban experts ranked Daley as the sixth best mayor in American history. Daley's ways may not have been democratic, but his defenders have argued that he got positive things done for Chicago which a non-boss would have been unable to do. While detractors point out that he did nothing to integrate what had then become known as the most segregated city in the nation, others argue that he was acting on behalf of his constituency, who did not want an integrated Chicago.

On the 50th anniversary of Daley's first 1955 swearing-in, several dozen Daley biographers and associates met at the Chicago Historical Society. Historian Michael Beschloss called Daley "the pre-eminent mayor of the 20th century." Chicago journalist Elizabeth Taylor said, "Because of Mayor Daley, Chicago did not become a Detroit or a Cleveland." Many feel that by revitalizing the downtown area and firmly fixing the middle-class in place in the city limits, Daley probably did save Chicago from declining to the extent of the average Rust Belt city. Robert Remini pointed out that while other cities were in fiscal crisis in the 1960s and 1970s, "Chicago always had a double-A bond rating."

According to Chicago folksinger Steve Goodman, "no man could inspire more love, more hate."

Aside from the obvious legacy of having an effect on the city of Chicago for twenty-one years as its mayor, Daley is memorialized specifically in the following:

• A week after his death, the former William J. Bogan Junior College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago, was renamed as the Richard J. Daley College in his honor.
• The Richard J. Daley Center (originally, the Cook County Civic Center) is a 32-floor office building completed in 1965 and renamed for the mayor after his death.
• The Richard J. Daley Library, the primary academic library at the University of Illinois at Chicago
• Richard J. Daley Bicentenial Park immediately east of Millennium Park and north of Grant Park
• There is a critically acclaimed play about Daley, "Hizzoner:Daley the First" now playing at the Beverly Arts Center.
• The Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song "Chicago" (written by Graham Nash) was about the 1968 Democratic convention. In their Four Way Street live album, Nash ironically dedicates the song to "Mayor Daley."
• The first verse Steve Goodman's original 1972 version of "The Lincoln Park Pirates" contains the line, "the stores are all closing and Daley is dozing". Following Daley's death, Goodman replaced the reference with "... and Bilandic's been chosen".
• Songwriters Tom Walsh, Tom Black and Terry McEldowney pay homage to Daley in "South Side Irish", making him the subject of the entire third verse.
• In episode 13 of the third season of Saturday Night Live, a sketch entitled "Miracle in Chicago" portrays Mayor Daley (played by John Belushi) appearing as a ghost to a pub owner and a customer (played respectively by Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray). Daley has come back to give the new Mayor a few electoral tips and complain about his burial site. Before disappearing again, he helps the owner get the popular Irish song Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral on his juke box and leaves him a gift turkey.
• In a scene set at the Chez Paul restaurant in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, the Maître d' (Alan Rubin) is seen talking on the phone: "No, sir, Mayor Daley no longer dines here, sir. He's dead, sir." Later in the film, when the brothers are driving rapidly through Chicago, Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) comments "If my estimations are correct, we should be very close to the Honorable Richard J. Daley Plaza." "That's where they got that Picasso!" Jake enthuses. The classic "use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers has been approved" line delivered by a police dispatcher is an obvious homage to Daley's 1968 order during the riots following Martin Luther King's assassination.