Richard J. Daley

Uncommon card · No. 89727

Richard Joseph Daley (May 15, 1902 – December 20, 1976) was an American politician who served as the mayor of Chicago from 1955, and the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party from 1953, until his death. He has been called "the last of the big city bosses" who controlled and mobilized American cities. He was the patriarch of a powerful Chicago political family. His son Richard M. Daley went on to serve as mayor of Chicago, and another son, William M. Daley, served as United States Secretary of Commerce and White House Chief of Staff. As mayor, Daley is remembered for doing much to save Chicago from the declines that other Rust Belt cities, such as Cleveland and Detroit, experienced during the same period. He lived his entire life in the working-class, heavily Irish American neighborhood of Bridgeport on Chicago's South Side. Daley had a strong base of support in Chicago's Irish Catholic community and was treated by national politicians such as Lyndon B. Johnson as a pre-eminent Irish...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Abbie Rowe (White House photographer), Public domain