March 2, 1949 – Mayor Martin H. Kennelly reads
an eight-page statement to the city council in which he rips a proposed
ordinance that would ban racial and religious discrimination in the selection
of tenants for proposed public housing projects. The project were scheduled to
be developed by a land clearance commission that would “acquire and clear slum
areas and resell the land at a loss to private investors for housing
development.” [Chicago Tribune, March 3, 1949] “Let those people speak who live
in the slums,” Kennelly says. “Those are
the people I am trying to benefit and to help, and I feel that they will be
helped if we can provide decent, comfortable homes instead of the slums where
they are now forced to live.” The
ordinance, introduced by Third Ward Alderman Archibald Carey, proposed that all
housing built on land that the Chicago Housing Authority or the Chicago Land
Clearance Commission conveyed to private interests would be made available for
ownership or occupancy without discrimination or segregation of any kind. Detractors, including the mayor, decried the
ordinance principally because of their belief that the restriction would
discourage private interests from participating in the project. After Kennelly finishes his address, the
City Council goes on to defeat the Carey ordinance by a vote of 31 to 13. Alderman Carey is the subject of the above photo.
March 2, 1900 -- Just two months after the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the massive project that was to solve all of the city's sewage problems is opened, marine insurance men and the managers of the city's tug boat lines make a trip up the river, concluding that unless something radical is done the river will not be navigable if any current is running in it. One participant observed, "With a current I do not see how traffic of big boats can be carried on at all. The boats will be driven away from Chicago. It is not a discrimination against marine men, for they have plenty to do elsewhere, but it will injure shipping interests." As if to prove the point the schooner Armenia grounds itself on the Washington Street tunnel that afternoon.
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