Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Q: Do you remember what type of emotionality was involved when he was
speaking?
A: Well . . . spirited and strident debate. Be may have said damn or hell.
He just got really carried away in terms of frustration with the resistance
that was coming to the bill under those circumstances and probably made a
very spirited speech on the subject.
Q: 1 understand that this Licensing and Miscellany Committee was headed by
Frank Ozinga and I understand that you were fairly strident in some comments
about Ozinga and his killing of open housing.
A: Yes, I might have been strident about the entire committee and Ozinga
as chairman, yes, because I never felt that they ever gave me a fair hearing
on it. I thought that when they came in there their minds were made up and
they weren't prepared to listen to what the true facts were.
In those days, it's to be remembered, I couldn't even get any newspapers,
any editorial comments in favor of fair housing. I went once to Peoria
and talked to the editor there who was a man that I considered a very fine
man and asked for an editorial in favor of the concept and he told me that
he didn't think that people who worked for him and his newspaper would do
it on the basis that they didn't believe in the concept. Be said they
didn't believe in the concept and hence they wouldn't write favorable
articles. I said, "Well, I'm not asking that they believe in the concept,
but what I'm asking is, 'Do your peaple have journalistic integrity?"' He
says, "You are doggone right they do. They certainly do have journalistic
integrity." I said, "Then, if they have journalistic integrity, let them
make a survey, since you say they don't need it in Peoria. Let them make a
survey of the city of Peoria and I'll abide those results,," He said, "You
got it."
So the newspaper people in the Peoria Journal-Star made a survey and they
didn't write one editorial in favor of open housing, they wrote twelve
editorials in favor of open housing and put them in a little booklet called
A House Divided. I was just more than gratified that they did it. Although
they may not have believed in it, they had the journalistic integrity to
write what the survey revealed and the survey revealed a real need for open
housing in Peoria which they had initially felt that they didn't need.
Q: What were some of the other things that you did in order to promote
this?
A: Well, I talked to various kinds of people, people from religious groups,
people from the real estate industry. We had some rather large people from
the real estate industry. I mean well-heeled, substantial and progressive
real estate people who would come in to testify against it. The real estate
industry itself, the broker's industry, they were very much opposed to it.
I can remember one day I was discussing it off the floor--at
dinner as a