Full Text of HR0377 96th General Assembly
HR0377 96TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
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| HOUSE RESOLUTION
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| WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of | 3 |
| Representatives are saddened to learn of the death of former | 4 |
| Chicago Alderman Leon Despres, who passed away May 6, 2009; and
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| WHEREAS, He was born Leon Mathis Despres on February 2, | 6 |
| 1908, the son of Samuel and Henrietta Rubovitz Despres; the | 7 |
| family moved from the South Side to Hyde Park when Mr. Despres | 8 |
| was three; he started at Hyde Park High School, but his mother | 9 |
| decided he wasn't working hard enough, so she sent him to | 10 |
| boarding school in Rome and then Paris;
Mr. Despres returned to | 11 |
| Hyde Park to attend the University of Chicago, where he was Phi | 12 |
| Beta Kappa; he received his undergraduate degree in 1927 and | 13 |
| his law degree in 1929; and | 14 |
| WHEREAS, On September 10, 1931, he married Marian | 15 |
| Alschuler; from 1935 to 1937, he was a trial examiner for the | 16 |
| National Labor Relations Board; he also became a socialist, and | 17 |
| visited exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky in Mexico, a trip | 18 |
| that saw him escorting legendary artist Frida Kahlo to the | 19 |
| movies while her husband, Diego Rivera, painted a portrait of | 20 |
| Despres' wife; and
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| WHEREAS, Mr. Despres acted as general counsel for the | 22 |
| American Civil Liberties Union, Illinois division, from 1948 to |
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| 1955; he was elected to the City Council in 1955, replacing | 2 |
| Robert E. Merriam;
Mr. Despres would tour his ward on his | 3 |
| bicycle meeting constituents; one of those constituents shot | 4 |
| him, twice in the leg, the day after Christmas 1967, Mr. | 5 |
| Despres stayed in the hospital 11 days, and later two teenagers | 6 |
| confessed it had been a holdup attempt; he used the opportunity | 7 |
| to speak out for stricter gun laws and against "poverty, bad | 8 |
| housing, bad schools, bad jobs"; and | 9 |
| WHEREAS, He fought bitter election battles in 1955 and | 10 |
| 1959; in 1966, he was the only aldermanic candidate endorsed by | 11 |
| both Democrats and Republicans; though he easily could have | 12 |
| been re-elected, Mr. Despres decided not to run in 1975; a | 13 |
| citizens committee in his ward collected 5,000 signatures as a | 14 |
| show of support; and | 15 |
| WHEREAS, Mr. Despres was the alderman representing the | 16 |
| South Side neighborhood's 5th Ward from 1955 to 1975; in | 17 |
| retirement, he remained active and was involved in fighting a | 18 |
| high-rise condo in his neighborhood; and
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| WHEREAS, Mr. Despres, alone, voted against the council's | 20 |
| ban on the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s open-occupancy | 21 |
| marches in August 1966; when Mr. Despres opposed the | 22 |
| construction of new Chicago Housing Authority high-rise | 23 |
| buildings, just one alderman sided with him; the buildings |
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| would become a monumental failure, sinkholes of crime and | 2 |
| despair that plagued the city for decades;
Mr. Despres fought | 3 |
| against discrimination in hospital staff appointments, | 4 |
| cemeteries, and housing; and
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| WHEREAS, Mr. Despres was the first to raise an alarm about | 6 |
| the dangers of lead paint; he drafted the city's first | 7 |
| ordinance establishing a landmarks preservation commission, | 8 |
| and led the fight to save Frank Lloyd Wright's extraordinary | 9 |
| Robie House after the Chicago Theological Seminary announced | 10 |
| plans to demolish the peerless architectural treasure to build | 11 |
| a new dorm; along with Alderman Charles Chew (17th), Mr. | 12 |
| Despres chartered two airplanes to take 184 people to Alabama | 13 |
| to participate in King's famous voting rights march from Selma | 14 |
| to Montgomery in March 1965; he fought official artistic | 15 |
| censorship, once a notorious Chicago hallmark; when the City | 16 |
| Council voted its "unqualified condemnation" of Wright Junior | 17 |
| College for putting James Baldwin's Another Country on the | 18 |
| required reading list of a contemporary literature class, Mr. | 19 |
| Despres called the resolution the "most degrading kind of | 20 |
| censorship...this body will make Chicago the laughingstock of | 21 |
| the country by lynching a book,"; only two other aldermen voted | 22 |
| with him; and
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| WHEREAS, The same year, he tried to end funding to the city | 24 |
| panel in charge of determining which movies could be shown in |
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| Chicago; he also fought to abolish the police department's | 2 |
| secret spying unit; on a variety of issues, Mr. Despres | 3 |
| expressed a vision approaching prescience; in 1965, he urged | 4 |
| the Chicago Housing Authority to consider low-rise, | 5 |
| scattered-site housing; and
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| WHEREAS, Mr. Despres served as council parliamentarian | 7 |
| from 1979 to 1987, quitting after the all-night session naming | 8 |
| Eugene Sawyer as mayor; he also served on the Chicago Plan | 9 |
| Commission during the same period; and
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| WHEREAS, Over the last decade, he returned to private | 11 |
| practice; his memoirs, Challenging the Daley Machine: A Chicago | 12 |
| Alderman's Memoir , written with Kenan Heise, were published in | 13 |
| 2005 by Northwestern University Press; and | 14 |
| WHEREAS, He is survived by his children, Linda and Robert; | 15 |
| therefore, be it
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| RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE | 17 |
| NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we | 18 |
| mourn, along with his family and friends, the passing of former | 19 |
| Chicago Alderman Leon Despres; and be it further
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| RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be | 21 |
| presented to the family of Leon Despres as a symbol of our |
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| respect and sincere sympathy.
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