Daley and Obama split also about Irish and Black relationships

Chicago Irish and African Americans have long and difficult history

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NIALL O'DOWD,

IrishCentral Founder

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William Daley and Barack Obama

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The Irish and African American issue in Chicago is among the most contentious political dynamics in American politics.

It was evident  in the relationship  between  Barack  Obama and William Daley who was his Chief of Staff until he was ousted yesterday. The two never really got along.

Perhaps there were too many ghosts to vanquish.

A controversial new book by NY Times journalist Jodi Kantor  titled “The Obamas” quotes First Lady Michelle Obama, a South Side of Chicago native as being very hostile to the Irish American power families who ran Chicago for generations.

The hostility ran both ways. Richard J Daley, his son Richard M and Bill Daley all had their roots in Bridgeport, the Irish working class South Side enclave where  Mayor Richard J. Daley lived all his political life.

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After World War II and large immigration, Chicago was self segregated into ethnic neighborhoods and tension between Irish and Poles, Irish and Italians, Irish and blacks and all ethnic groups occasionally flared, especially in contested territory

The history  of the Irish and blacks in and around Bridgeport is an especially  troubled one. I lived in Chicago for a time in the 1970s and was amazed how raw the sense of injustice and fear still was among Irish residents. It was especially evident in Bridgeport I found.

There was a long history  in Bridgeport. In 1961 a hotel in the neighboring Black district called “The Douglas” caught fire and eighty elderly residents were moved temporarily to Bridgeport to a Lutheran church there.

As Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor wrote in their book on Richard J. Daley called “American Pharoah” an angry Irish mob surrounded the church demanding that they be sent back to their own neighborhood.

But what was called racism was often also an economic issue. Irish neighborhood dwellers told me they believed if blacks moved in the neighborhood would decay and  property values would crash. Their homes, usually their only source of accumulated wealth would lose their value.

Mayor Richard J Dailey  did very little for black/white relationships during his time in office and will always be remembered for his outbursts at the 1968 Democratic convention when civil rights and Vietnam War protesters threatened to overwhelm his police force.

After Daley died ,Chicago elected its first black mayor Harold Washington who promised reform but he died of a heart attack soon after taking office.

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