Leon Despres, 1908-2009: Chicago alderman challenged elder Mayor Daley
Liberal voice of city, 101, also championed civil rights and political reforms
Over his 101 years, Leon Despres took artist Frida Kahlo to the movies, drove the first Mayor Daley to distraction, and fought a long and often lonely crusade for civil rights and political reform that saw African-Americans gain entry to the mayor's office and the White House.
Despres, a former Chicago alderman, died of heart failure Wednesday in his Hyde Park apartment, said Kenan Heise, who collaborated with Despres on his 2005 memoir.
Despres and his South Side neighborhood, which he represented in the City Council from 1955 to 1975, were long the city's liberal conscience, and both were part of President Barack Obama's original political base.
"Michelle and I were saddened by the passing of our dear friend and a towering giant in Chicago history, Leon M. Despres," Obama said in a statement. "With an incisive mind, rapier wit and unstinting courage, he waged legendary battles against the corruption and discrimination that blighted our city."
During his 20 years on the City Council, he lost many more battles than he won against Richard J. Daley and the Democratic machine. When the mayor lost patience with the 5th Ward alderman, he simply turned off Despres' microphone, said William Singer, a North Side independent alderman in the 1970s.
Yet the city has moved closer to much of what Despres fought for -- fair elections and an end to patronage and segregation. Singer said younger Chicagoans may not realize how much the best of the city today reflects Despres' legacy.
"For those of us who followed him to the City Council, he taught us that it was important for us to raise the issues even if we were sure to lose," said Singer, who also ran for mayor against Richard J. Daley.
Mayor Richard M. Daley on Wednesday had only praise for his father's longtime antagonist.
"He was a major participant in the debate on every major issue Chicago has faced in the last half century, and his strong voice made a great contribution to the way our city has evolved in that time," Daley said in a statement.
Ald. Joe Moore (49th), one of the few aldermen to frequently oppose the present Mayor Daley, called Despres "a role model and mentor to me."
"There was a period of time when he was the only voice of independence in the Chicago City Council," Moore said. "He was courageous."
Despres was born on Chicago's South Side on Feb. 2, 1908, and moved as a toddler to Hyde Park. His predecessors as 5th Ward alderman included Paul Douglas, later a U.S. senator.
Despres' father, who was in the clothing business, died when he was a boy, and his mother took him to Italy and France for high school.
He was a product of the University of Chicago, with which he had a love-hate relationship. He credited it with his intellectual grounding but fought it on open housing issues.
In 1931, he married Marian Alschuler, daughter of a prominent architect. She was every bit her husband's intellectual equal, and they were fixtures of the city's cultural life for more than 70 years.
A socialist in his youth, Despres was dispatched by fellow leftists to bring a suitcase of clothing to Leon Trotsky, the deposed Bolshevik leader who had taken refuge in Mexico. While there, Despres' wife had her portrait painted by famed muralist Diego Rivera, Kahlo's husband. During sittings, Despres escorted Kahlo to the movies.
"That's my claim to fame," Despres once said. "I took Frida Kahlo to the movies."
Rivera's portrait hung among a vibrant collection of modernist works that made the Despres' Hyde Park apartment a virtual museum.
Despres and his wife were "committed to the arts, not only in the old fogey sense but to the avant garde," said his law partner since 1979, Thomas Geoghegan.
Despres went into law practice in 1929 and started representing labor unions during the Depression.
In 1937, after police killed 10 demonstrators at a Memorial Day march against Republic Steel, Despres organized a protest rally that helped turn the affair into a seminal event of American labor history.
He used his legal acumen for a wide range of causes.
In 1948, Despres represented the ACLU in arranging for a local showing of "The Respectful Prostitute," a play by Jean-Paul Sartre that had been banned by Chicago police as "immoral."
He learned early how tough it was to be a reformer in Chicago. In one of his earliest political forays, he backed a candidate against longtime 25th Ward Ald. Vito Marzullo. Despres' candidate carried just one precinct.
"Vito never forgave me for that," Despres later said.
But in 1955, he was elected alderman of the 5th Ward, and he won re-election despite the machine's best efforts until voluntarily stepping down 20 years later.
As an alderman, he fought restrictive covenants, a legal device to keep blacks out of traditionally white areas -- like Hyde Park.
Because black aldermen were often loyal to Daley and silent on civil rights, some publications dubbed Despres "the only Negro on the City Council," said Dick Simpson, a former independent alderman.
"He typically spoke out for those without a voice," Simpson said. "The fact that his microphone was turned off only amplified his voice."
Legislation by Despres was often defeated, only to be passed later with Daley's imprimatur, its origins ignored. For example, Despres' campaign against lead-based paint went nowhere until Daley loyalists put their names on it, Singer said.
He was liberal to the core. In 1967, he was attacked by two men and shot twice in the leg while walking home from his office, but he refused to condemn his assailants, saying that crime was a product of social conditions.
Endorsing Singer's mayoral run against Daley in 1975, he declared: "The machine does not love Chicago. It loves to feed on Chicago. It is Chicago's tapeworm."
Despres remained involved in civic affairs, serving on the city's Plan Commission and as City Council parliamentarian under Harold Washington, whose upstart candidacy in 1983 he supported vigorously.
For years, he swam for a half-mile before work in the winter and in summer was a fixture around town on his bicycle.
His long life touched many chapters of Chicago's history. Heise once walked with Despres through Oak Woods Cemetery and saw Enrico Fermi's tombstone. "I did his will for him," Despres said. Olympian Jesse Owens is also buried there. "He worked on my first campaign," Despres recalled.
"Despres was an icon in the best sense of the word," said Dr. Quentin Young, a Hyde Park activist and Despres' physician for years.
Marian Despres died in January 2007. Her loss was a deep blow, but Despres kept busy. He practiced law until a couple of years ago, and at 100 wrote an online diary for Slate.
"Chicago is a richer and stronger city for having known Leon Despres -- and a lesser place now that he is gone," Obama said.
Survivors include a son, Robert; a daughter, Linda Baskin; and a grandson.
Services will be held 1 p.m. May 31 at KAM Isaiah Israel, 1100 E. Hyde Park Blvd.
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Detective Shavedlongcock:
I want you to take a few seconds out and think about this... He opened his law firm in 1929. Not that he was born in 1929 but was a lawyer in 1929. WOW!
And he liked to go heads up against the old man Daley, that's another plus!
Liberal or not, Daley friend or foe...if you make it to 101 years old, you deserve a handshake and a pat on the back. God bless you Mr. Alderman.
City to impose more unpaid days off
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