HR0377 96TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0377 LRB096 12699 KXB 26682 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of Representatives are saddened to learn of the death of former Chicago Alderman Leon Despres, who passed away May 6, 2009; and

WHEREAS, He was born Leon Mathis Despres on February 2, 1908, the son of Samuel and Henrietta Rubovitz Despres; the family moved from the South Side to Hyde Park when Mr. Despres was three; he started at Hyde Park High School, but his mother decided he wasn't working hard enough, so she sent him to boarding school in Rome and then Paris; Mr. Despres returned to Hyde Park to attend the University of Chicago, where he was Phi Beta Kappa; he received his undergraduate degree in 1927 and his law degree in 1929; and

WHEREAS, On September 10, 1931, he married Marian Alschuler; from 1935 to 1937, he was a trial examiner for the National Labor Relations Board; he also became a socialist, and visited exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky in Mexico, a trip that saw him escorting legendary artist Frida Kahlo to the movies while her husband, Diego Rivera, painted a portrait of Despres' wife; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Despres acted as general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, Illinois division, from 1948 to 1955; he was elected to the City Council in 1955, replacing Robert E. Merriam; Mr. Despres would tour his ward on his bicycle meeting constituents; one of those constituents shot him, twice in the leg, the day after Christmas 1967, Mr. Despres stayed in the hospital 11 days, and later two teenagers confessed it had been a holdup attempt; he used the opportunity to speak out for stricter gun laws and against "poverty, bad housing, bad schools, bad jobs"; and

WHEREAS, He fought bitter election battles in 1955 and 1959; in 1966, he was the only aldermanic candidate endorsed by both Democrats and Republicans; though he easily could have been re-elected, Mr. Despres decided not to run in 1975; a citizens committee in his ward collected 5,000 signatures as a show of support; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Despres was the alderman representing the South Side neighborhood's 5th Ward from 1955 to 1975; in retirement, he remained active and was involved in fighting a high-rise condo in his neighborhood; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Despres, alone, voted against the council's ban on the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s open-occupancy marches in August 1966; when Mr. Despres opposed the construction of new Chicago Housing Authority high-rise buildings, just one alderman sided with him; the buildings would become a monumental failure, sinkholes of crime and despair that plagued the city for decades; Mr. Despres fought against discrimination in hospital staff appointments, cemeteries, and housing; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Despres was the first to raise an alarm about the dangers of lead paint; he drafted the city's first ordinance establishing a landmarks preservation commission, and led the fight to save Frank Lloyd Wright's extraordinary Robie House after the Chicago Theological Seminary announced plans to demolish the peerless architectural treasure to build a new dorm; along with Alderman Charles Chew (17th), Mr. Despres chartered two airplanes to take 184 people to Alabama to participate in King's famous voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965; he fought official artistic censorship, once a notorious Chicago hallmark; when the City Council voted its "unqualified condemnation" of Wright Junior College for putting James Baldwin's Another Country on the required reading list of a contemporary literature class, Mr. Despres called the resolution the "most degrading kind of censorship...this body will make Chicago the laughingstock of the country by lynching a book,"; only two other aldermen voted with him; and

WHEREAS, The same year, he tried to end funding to the city panel in charge of determining which movies could be shown in Chicago; he also fought to abolish the police department's secret spying unit; on a variety of issues, Mr. Despres expressed a vision approaching prescience; in 1965, he urged the Chicago Housing Authority to consider low-rise, scattered-site housing; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Despres served as council parliamentarian from 1979 to 1987, quitting after the all-night session naming Eugene Sawyer as mayor; he also served on the Chicago Plan Commission during the same period; and

WHEREAS, Over the last decade, he returned to private practice; his memoirs, Challenging the Daley Machine: A Chicago Alderman's Memoir, written with Kenan Heise, were published in 2005 by Northwestern University Press; and

WHEREAS, He is survived by his children, Linda and Robert; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn, along with his family and friends, the passing of former Chicago Alderman Leon Despres; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the family of Leon Despres as a symbol of our respect and sincere sympathy.