Machine Politics and Queer Chicagoans

Machine Politics and Queer Chicagoans Since 1955: From Daley to Daley On Tuesday, April 21 at 7:00 PM, Timothy Stewart-Winter will speak at Gerber/Hart Library on "Machine Politics and Queer Chicagoans Since 1955: From Daley to Daley," as part of the Library's " The Cutting Edge: Young Scholars Share Their Work " series. When longtime Mayor Richard J. Daley died suddenly in office near the end of 1976, the Chicago Tribune declared, “He prided himself on being a ‘family man’ in a city of family men.” In fact, gays and lesbians in Daley’s Chicago, as in most American cities at the time, faced routine police harassment and aggressive, widely tolerated employment discrimination. Yet today the former mayor’s son, Richard M. Daley, is widely recognized as one of the more vocally pro-gay politicians in the United States. Timothy Stewart-Winter will explore what these father-and-son mayors of the Midwest's largest city can tell us about how Chicago---and queer life in America---have changed over the past half-century. Timothy Stewart-Winter is a doctoral candidate in the history at the University of Chicago and is completing his dissertation on gay and lesbian politics in Chicago from 1950 to 2000.