Chapter I Summary and Analysis

Major Richard J. Daley is picked up in the early morning. A sleek black limousine stops in front of the modest pink ranch house. There are cops in the front and back of the house. They have provided overnight protection. Although a short trip to the office, the journey is historic. They pass houses where Black Panthers had lived and died. There were pre-dawn raids by cops. There were shootouts and orders of shoot to kill. Martin Luther King was hit by a brick in one area. A former Polish neighborhood has been roughed up by attrition, with Puerto Ricans taking the place of the departing children of the old Poles still standing strong. O'Hare, which Daley persists in calling "O'Hara," is not far away, right off another freeway one the Mayor personally named—the John F. Kennedy...