American Pharaoh by Elizabeth Taylor, Adam Cohen Page B

black. 39
    The seventeen-year-old Daley was, at the very least, extremely close to the violence. Bridgeport was a major center of riot
     activity: by one estimate, 41 percent of all the encounters occurred in and around Daley’s neighborhood. South Side youth
     gangs, including the Hamburg Athletic Club, were later found to have been among the primary instigators of the racial violence.
     “For weeks, in the spring and summer of 1919, they had been anticipating, even eagerly awaiting, a race riot,” one study found.
     “On several occasions, they themselves had endeavored to precipitate one, and now that racial violence threatened to become
     generalized and unrestrained throughout Chicago, they were set to exploit the chaos.” The Chicago Commission on Human Relations
     eventually concluded that without these gangs “it is doubtful if the riot would have gone beyond the first clash.” It is also
     clear that Joseph McDonough, patron of the Hamburg Athletic Club and later Daley’s political mentor, actively incited the
     white community at the time of the riots. McDonough was quoted in the press saying that blacks had “enough ammunition . .
     . to last for years of guerrilla warfare,” and that he had seen police captains warning white South Side residents: “For God’s
     sake, arm. They are coming; we cannot hold them.” At the City Council, McDonough told police chief John J. Garrity that “unless
     something is done at once I am going to advise my people to arm themselves for protection.” 40
    Was Daley himself involved in the bloody work of the 1919 race riots? His defenders have always insisted he was not, arguing
     that it would have been more in character for him to be attending to “his studies” or “family affairs” while much of the Irish-Catholic
     youth of Bridgeport were out bashing heads. But Daley’s critics have long “pictur[ed] him in the pose of a brick-throwing
     thug.” It strains credulity, they say, for Daley to have played no part in the riots when the Hamburg Athletic Club was so
     heavily involved — particularly when he was only a few years away from being chosen as the group’s president. Daley’s close
     ties to McDonough, who played an inflammatory role, also argue for involvement. Adding to the suspicions, Daley always remained
     secretive about the riots, and declined to respond to direct questions on the subject. It was a convenient political response
     that allowed Daley to play both sides of the city’s racial divide: whites from the ethnic neighborhoods could believe that
     Daley was a youthful defender of the South Side color line, while blacks could choose to believe the opposite. Daley’s role,
     or lack of role, is likely lost to history, in part because the police and prosecutors never pursued the white gang members
     who instigated the violence. At the least, it can be said that Daley was an integral member of a youth gang that played an
     active role in one of the bloodiest antiblack riots in the nation’s history — and that within a few years’ time, this same
     gang would think enough of Daley to select him as its leader. 41

    After graduating from De La Salle in 1919, Daley took a job with Dolan, Ludeman, and Company, a stockyards commission house.
     Daley once said that as children he and his friends were always drawn to the slaughterhouses, “being city kids fascinated
     with farm animals.” Daley woke at 4:00 A.M. each day to walk from his parents’ house to the yards. In the mornings, he moved cattle off trucks and weighed them. In the
     afternoons, he put his De La Salle skills to work in the firm’s offices, writing letters, taking dictation, and handling the
     books. Later in his career, Daley would regale political audiences with tales of his days as a stockyards “cowboy.” He presented
     himself as something of a South Side John Wayne, probably overstating the amount of derring-do his job required, and certainly
     omitting the grim