November 26, 1947: Jim Curley is released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, his prison sentence commuted by President Harry S Truman. Upon his return to his hometown that day, the quintessential Boston politician is met with an adoring crowd.
James Michael Curley was born on November 20, 1874 in Roxbury, then a mostly-Irish neighborhood south of downtown Boston. His immigrant father died when James was 10 years old, and he went to work at menial jobs.
In the 1880s and 1890s, Boston politics were marked by growing Irish political power in opposition to traditional Yankee Protestantism. Curley involved himself in the local Roman Catholic Church and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a fraternal benefit society that assisted Irish immigrants.
He acquired a reputation as a hustler who was willing to help others get ahead. Curley gained experience in the traditional practices of ward politics such as knocking on doors, drumming up votes, and taking complaints. He ran for a seat on the Boston Common Council in 1897 and 1898, and finally won in 1899. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1901, and to the upper house of the city legislature, the Board of Aldermen, in 1904.
He won that last election while he was in prison. He and Thomas Curley, no relation, had each impersonated an applicant for postal service jobs by taking the civil service examinations for them. The Boston Irish saw him as a man who stepped up for his own people. In baseball terms, he took one for the team. Everybody else in Boston saw him as a crook.
In 1909, he wanted to run for Mayor. So did a former Mayor and former Congressman named John F. Fitzgerald. And "Honey Fitz" had more political I.O.U.s than Curley. Fitzgerald struck a deal with Curley: He promised not to run for re-election as Mayor, and would support Curley for the U.S. House of Representatives. Each man won his respective election.
But Fitzgerald did run for re-election in 1913, and in Irish-American politics, breaking your word was simply not accepted. Curley wasn't having it. Thanks to a campaign aide, he found out that Honey Fitz had fooled around with a cigarette girl known as "Toodles," and threatened to reveal it. Fitzgerald dropped out, and Curley won election as Mayor for the 1st time. It wasn't all a bad year for Fitzgerald: His daughter, Rose -- at 24, the same age as the cigarette girl -- married the ambitious son of a behind-the-scenes Boston political figure: Joseph P. Kennedy.
Curley ran things like many big-city political "bosses" did: Doing favors for those neighborhoods, or even streets, that voted for him, and not for those who didn't. If your block voted for him, you got your garbage picked up, your potholes filled, and your snowy street plowed, all on time. If not, not. He became known as "the Mayor of the Poor" for how he got jobs for them.
But an older Irish politico and the State's Republican Protestant establishment teamed up, and another Irish Catholic politician opposed him in the 1917 election, and they split the vote, and a Republican won. Then the State legislature passed a law saying no Mayor of Boston could succeed himself. So when Curley won a 2nd term in 1921, he couldn't seek a 3rd in 1925. He could in 1929, and took office just as the Great Depression took hold, and his underhanded dealings were a godsend for Boston's poor.
In 1934, he ran for Governor of Massachusetts. He won. The idea was that he would not only use the office to teach the State's Republican Yankee Protestants a lesson, but also that it would be a springboard for a Senate run in 1936, and that would be a springboard to make him, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt would no doubt be leaving office after 2 terms, to become the 1st Irish Catholic to be elected President in 1940.
Of course, Joe Kennedy had the same idea for himself. And as a local boy who made good with the establishment, a North Ender who became a Harvard graduate, and the 1st Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, he thought he could work his way into the 1940 nomination.
But while he was every bit the able administrator that Curley was, Kennedy -- unlike his father-in-law, and, as it turned out, like his sons -- was no politician. Curley was much better organized, and had the common touch that Kennedy simply didn't have. At the 1936 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, Curley led the Massachusetts delegation in a parade, with signs for his Senate campaign, and some signs saying, "WATCH 1940." (At this point, the idea of FDR running for a 3rd term had occurred to no one, not even to FDR.)
But while Curley's political skills made him ideal for the office of Mayor of Boston, or a Congressman for a Boston-based District, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a whole was a very different constituency, and his skills were not a match for the Governorship. His tenure was a disaster, and even Massachusetts Democrats knew it.
Despite FDR being re-elected with a record 61 percent of the vote, Curley got just 41 percent in the Senate vote against Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., grandson of a famed Republican Senator. Of the State's 14 Counties, he won only Suffolk, which includes Boston. He almost cost the Democratic nominee to succeed him as Governor, State Treasurer Charles F. Hurley, the election: He won by only 28,000 votes, compared to Curley's 109,000-vote win 2 years earlier.
Still, for the rest of his life, while everyone called him "Mayor Curley," he was entitled to be called "Governor." An aide named William Kelly became known as "Up-Up Kelly," because, at every rally, he would take the stage, and tell the audience, "Up, up, for the Governor!"
He ran for Mayor again in 1937, but lost to Maurice Tobin. He ran for Governor again in 1938, defeating Hurley in the Primary, but lost the general election to future Senator Leverett Saltonstall. In 1940, with Nazi Germany posing an existential threat to democracy all over the world, FDR ran for a 3rd term, and, due to various circumstances, it was clear that, if there was ever going to be a Catholic President, it wasn't going to be either Jim Curley or Joe Kennedy. With the City Charter having been changed again, allowing Mayors to succeed themselves, Tobin ran for re-election in 1941, and Curley ran him, but lost.
In 1942, Curley ran for Congress again, and won. He was re-elected in 1944. In 1945, he and Kennedy made peace: Kennedy agreed to support Curley in yet another bid for a 4th term as Mayor, and pay off some of his debt, if Curley would refuse to run for re-election to Congress in 1946, opening the House seat for Joe's son, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Curley's race came first, so Joe didn't have a chance to double-cross him the way his father-in-law, John F. Fitzgerald, did 32 years earlier.
Running on a campaign of "Curley Gets Things Done," 67-year-old Jim Curley won his race in November 1945. Running on a campaign of "The New Generation Offers a Leader," 29-year-old Jack Kennedy won his primary in June 1946, and his general election in November 1946 -- while Maurice Tobin was elected Governor.
In June 1947, Curley was accused of accepting $60,000 from the Engineers Group, a firm Curley headed which was under investigation for war profiteering. He was found guilty of mail fraud and sentenced to 6 to 18 months in federal prison. Under current conditions, the American media and the Republican Party would have demanded his resignation. Curley did not resign: He remained Mayor while in prison.
Under pressure from the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, and in consideration of Curley's poor health, Truman commuted his sentence after only 5 months, and he came home to a hero's welcome. He had beaten the system once again -- if not fully.
City Clerk John B. Hynes served as acting Mayor during Curley's time in prison. Hynes ran against Curley in 1949, saying, "We cannot afford the city bosses anymore," and won. A new city charter was passed, moving the mayoral elections to the year before a Presidential election, instead of the year after. Hynes was re-elected in 1951, beating Curley again. Curley had first run for public office at the age of 24; he last did so just short of turning 77. He died on November 12, 1958, 8 days short of his 84th birthday.
He outlived his 1st wife and 7 of his 9 children, 2 of them dying on the same day. And that wasn't due to childhood illnesses, either, because these 2 weren't children anymore: Leo became so distraught at the death of Mary from a stroke that he had one, too. Curley had groomed his son James Jr. as a successor, but, while a student at Harvard Law, in the days before antibiotics, he died from a postsurgical infection. Two sons, George and Francis, survived him, but neither had children of their own. Francis couldn't: He was a priest. When he died in 1992, the Curley bloodline ran out.
But the Curley legacy did not. Much of what he built, including the expanded City Hospital, remains. In 1956, Edwin O'Connor published a novel titled The Last Hurrah, about Frank Skeffington, an old big-city Mayor and Governor running for Mayor one last time, and dying shortly after his defeat.
The novel was widely presumed to be about Curley, who told O'Connor he enjoyed the book, especially "The part where I die." It featured a priest telling the Skeffington family that the old man had made his peace with God, and that, if he had it to do over again, he would do things differently. And the old man opens his eyes, and says his last words: "The hell I would!" A film version, starring Spencer Tracy, premiered on October 22, 1958, a few days before the real Curley died.
There are not one, but two statues of Curley outside Faneuil Hall, across Congress Street from the new City Hall that Curley did not live to see. One shows him standing up, the other has him sitting on a bench.
Mayor Fitzgerald got an expressway named after him; Mayor Hynes, the city's Convention Center; Mayor/Governor Tobin, a bridge. Kevin White, the 2nd man to be elected to 4 terms as Mayor of Boston, and the 1st one allowed to do so consecutively, has a much taller statue a few feet away from Curley's. Yet he seems to be looking over his shoulder at Curley and Curley.
Aside from Fiorello La Guardia in New York, few big-city Mayors from as far back as the 1940s are fondly remembered by their cities today. But then, that's Curley's 4th term. His 1st began in 1910. And yet those statues are there, to remind everyone that, while they aren't very tall, they represent a giant of the city.
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November 26, 1947 was a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Roger Wehrli, a Hall of Fame cornerback for the football version of the St. Louis Cardinals was born on this day.
Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. Two games were played in the Basketball Association of America, the league that became the NBA 2 years later. The New York Knicks beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 81-59 at the Philadelphia Arena. And the Baltimore Bullets beat the Providence Steam Rollers, 76-61 at the Rhode Island Arena in Providence.
And there was 1 game in the NHL: The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Boston Bruins, 5-3 at the Chicago Stadium.
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