Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

the form of a bill--gave thought to trying to combine the functions of the
Human Relations Commission and the fair housing and put them into one
commission, I noted that that had been done rather successfully in the
state of Minnesota. Whether I ever did that by way of a bill, I don't
remember, but I do remember giving it some thought. We may have tried to
amend the Human Relations Act to give it the power to deal with the subject
of fair housing, and I think we did take that approach on some occasions.
Q: Yes. There were several bills which you introduced, rather specific
bills such as making a real estate office a place of public accommodation
subject to . . .
A: That's correct. There was one to make a real estate office a place of
public accommodation. There was another to make banks and savings and
loan associations a place of accomodation. I can remember that was in 1965,
if I recall, because I asked Adlai Stevenson, who was a freshman legislator,
to handle those bills. They were simply different approaches to the same
subject matter of open housing.
For instance, for the reason if you could make certain that a bank or a
savings and loan could not be involved in a discriminatory action as
respects housing, it would have the overall effect of opening up the
housing market to minorities. The same thing with savings and loans and
banks and real estate offices. It was an attempt to put the onus on the
industry that dealt with housing in contradistinction to individual cases.
So that was just simply another approach that we toak. Those bills passed
the House, as I remember, and they got killed in the Senate.
Q: One of the things that developed through the years--in 1966, it came to
a head here in Chicago--was the local municipal ordinance which apparently
did the same thing that you were attempting to do at the state legislature.
Of course, the Chicago ordinance was tested first in the circuit court and
then in the Illinois Supreme Court and was upheld. Do you recall the
circumstances around that ordinance?
A: No, not in detail. I do know that there was a great deal of hue and
cry concerning it because the same forces had opposed it. But Mayor
Richard Daley decided he wanted to do it and it got passed in the city
council on the open housing situation. And I think the implementation of
it was with the human relations commission of the city, I think. Yes.
Q: And this occurred in several other municipalities, apparently throughout
the state.
A: Yes.
Q: Then, in 1968, the legislature validated these types of municipal
ordinances.
A: That's correct. Now, you've got to remember that all of that came after