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1
SENATE RESOLUTION

 
2     WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to
3 learn of the death of former Chicago Alderman Leon Despres, who
4 passed away May 6, 2009; and
 
5     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
 
21     WHEREAS, Mr. Despres acted as general counsel for the
22 American Civil Liberties Union, Illinois division, from 1948 to

 

 

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1 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
 
19     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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1 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
 
5     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
 
23     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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1 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
 
6     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
 
10     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
 
16     RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL
17 ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn, along with
18 his family and friends, the passing of former Chicago Alderman
19 Leon Despres; and be it further
 
20     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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1 respect and sincere sympathy.