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Chicago’s public schools were nearly as segregated as the southern schools that
     were being ordered by federal courts to integrate. Daley fought back attempts to integrate Chicago’s public schools, and took
     on the federal government when it tried to force school desegregation on the city.
    Daley was also a leading opponent of President Johnson’s War on Poverty, and again his victory was felt far beyond Chicago.
     Daley did not share Johnson’s moral commitment to using government programs to lift the disadvantaged up from poverty, but
     his greatest objections were political. Johnson’s poverty programs incorporated the liberal notion of “maximum feasible participation,”
     which meant that poor people should have as much control as possible over how poverty programs were run. Daley saw these programs
     as a threat to the machine, because they put money and power in the hands of independent community activists. Daley’s response
     to the War on Poverty would be felt not only in Chicago, but in Washington and across the country.
    Daley emerged on the national scene in 1968 as an icon of working-class resentment toward the anti-war movement and the youth-oriented
     counterculture. Daley’s opposition was in large part political. The anti-authoritarian spirit behind the movement was a threat
     to machine politics, which was built on a foundation of blind obedience. Daley understood that when power shifted to the grass-roots
     level and to the streets, political bosses like him would suffer. In fact, his fears about the direction the anti-war activists
     were leading the Democratic Party would be borne out in the aftermath of the 1968 convention. Daley and his delegates were
     not seated in the 1972 convention: the party voted instead to recognize a ragtag group of liberals and blacks as the official
     Illinois delegation. The schism that emerged in Chicago in 1968 would haunt the Democratic Party, and national politics, for
     decades to come.
    In the end, however, Daley’s most lasting legacy was the cause he devoted most of his life to: building the modern city of
     Chicago. When he took office in 1955, Chicago was spiraling downward. The city’s middle-class was beginning to flee for the
     suburbs, their path paved by low-cost government mortgages and newly laid highways. Businesses were also headed for outlying
     areas, drawn by cheaper land and lower taxes. At the same time, poor blacks were flooding into the city from the rural South.
     Middle-class white areas were “flipping” rapidly and becoming black slums. Daley used his power to reverse Chicago’s decline.
     His City Hall worked hard to develop the city’s infrastructure and buttress its downtown business district. Daley built or
     helped build Chicago’s superlative institutions — O’Hare International Airport, the world’s busiest; Sears Tower, the world’s
     tallest; and the Dan Ryan Expressway, the world’s widest. Under Daley, an impressive new crop of skyscrapers went up downtown
     and filled out the city’s skyline. Daley convinced a reluctant University of Illinois to build a campus in Chicago, giving
     the sons and daughters of the city’s working class access to affordable college education close to home. And he built the
     Civic Center, a massive complex of government buildings, and McCormick Place, the world’s largest exhibition space. Daley
     also presided over the rise of North Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile, one of the nation’s grandest upscale retailing districts. 7
    Daley’s modern Chicago was built, however, on an unstated foundation: commitment to racial segregation. He preserved the city’s
     white neighborhoods and business district by building racial separation into the very concrete of the city. New developments
     — housing, highways, and schools — were built where they would serve as a barrier between white neighborhoods and the black
     ghetto. Daley worked with powerful business leaders to