James Michael Curley
James Michael Curley (November 20, 1874 – November 12, 1958) was an American Democratic politician from Boston, Massachusetts. He served four terms as mayor of Boston from 1914 to 1955. Curley ran for mayor in every election for which he was legally qualified. He was twice convicted of criminal behavior and notably served time in prison during his last term as mayor. He also served a single term as governor of Massachusetts. He is remembered as one of the most colorful figures in Massachusetts politics.
For other people with similar names, see James Curley.
James Curley
John E. Kerrigan (acting)
10th district (1911–1913)
12th district (1913–1914)
Louis M. Clark
Frederick J. Brand
November 20, 1874
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
November 12, 1958 (aged 83)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
9 children
2 stepsons
Curley also served two terms, separated by 30 years, in the United States House of Representatives and, in his early career, served in the Boston Common Council, Boston Board of Aldermen, and Massachusetts House of Representatives.
Curley was immensely popular with his fellow working class Roman Catholic Irish Americans. During the Great Depression in the United States, he enlarged Boston City Hospital, expanded the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, funded projects to improve roads and bridges, and improved the neighborhoods with beaches and bathhouses, playgrounds and parks, public schools, and libraries, all the while collecting graft and raising taxes.
He was a leading and at times divisive force in the Massachusetts Democratic Party, challenging Boston's ward bosses and the party's white Anglo-Saxon Protestant leadership at the local and state levels. His political tactics, which tended to drive businesses and economically successful people from the city, damaging the local economy, have become an object of study for economists and political scientists.[1] A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Curley as the fourth-worst American big-city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993.[2]
Early life[edit]
James Michael Curley was born in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood in 1874 to Michael and Sarah Curley (née Clancy).
Curley's father Michael immigrated from Oughterard, County Galway, Ireland and settled in Roxbury, where he met Curley's mother, also from County Galway.[3][4] Michael Curley worked as a day laborer and foot soldier for Democratic ward boss P. James "Pea-Jacket" Maguire.[5]
Michael Curley died in 1884, when his son James was ten.[6]
James and his brother John worked to supplement the meager family income, while James took classes at the local public school.[7] Curley left school at fifteen and took jobs in factory work and delivery which exposed him to much of the growing industrial city of Boston. He sought to become a fire fighter but was too young to take the job.[8]
His mother is likely responsible for instilling in him the strain of generosity that would make up a significant part of his public personality.[9] Curley's mother continually intervened to turn him away from his father's unsavory associates while working at a job scrubbing floors in offices and churches all over Boston.[10]
First mayoralty (1914–1918)[edit]
Despite his deal with Curley, Mayor Fitzgerald did run for re-election in the election held in January 1914. Curley secured Fitzgerald's exit from the race by threatening to expose a dalliance the older man had with a cigarette girl in a Boston gambling den. Curley was aided by Daniel H. Coakley, a lawyer whose specialties included extortion and bribing prosecutors to bury criminal charges against his clients.[30] Fitzgerald withdrew, and Curley won the election over City Council president Thomas Kenny.
Curley's victory marked his consolidation of control over Boston politics, which he would retain until 1950.[31][32] He served four separate terms as Mayor (1914–1918, 1922–1926, 1930–1934 and 1946–1950)[33][34][35][36][37][38] and always held influence even when he wasn't in that office.[39]
In his first term, Curley embarked on a series of public improvements, a practice he continued in his later terms as mayor. His projects included the development of recreational facilities in the poorer parts of the city, expansion of public transit, and an enlargement of Boston City Hospital. He accomplished this with little regard for city finances, raising property taxes and securing loans from city banks, sometimes by threatening city inspectional actions against bank facilities. He deliberately tweaked the sensibilities of the Protestant "good government" advocates, suggesting that the Boston Public Garden be sold off and that the historic Shirley-Eustis House be razed for failing to meet modern codes.[40]
During his first term, Curley moved his family into a luxurious mansion in Jamaica Plain, one plainly beyond the means of a typical civil servant's salary. Begun in 1915, the twenty-plus room house was apparently built for little or no charge by contractors seeking favors from Curley. Curley's finances were regularly investigated by the Boston Finance Commission, a body dominated by hostile Protestant Republicans, but he eluded legal charges—in part through Coakley's intervention.[41] Curley also effectively muzzled press investigations by threatening libel charges against offending media. In one notable incident, he also physically assaulted the publisher of the Boston Telegraph for publishing unflattering articles.[42]
Curley's attempt at reelection was foiled by Martin Lomasney, the boss of Boston's West End. Lomasney, a longtime opposition figure to Curley in the city, orchestrated the entry of an Irish-American candidate into the 1917 mayoral race, who successfully siphoned enough votes away from Curley to hand victory to Republican Andrew J. Peters.[43] In 1918, the state legislature dealt Curley a further blow by enacting legislation forbidding Boston mayors from holding consecutive terms.[44]
Third mayoralty (1930–1934)[edit]
In 1929, Curley won a third non-consecutive term as mayor.
In 1932, Curley was denied by a place in the Massachusetts delegation to the 1932 Democratic National Convention by Governor Joseph B. Ely. Instead, Curley engineered his selection as a delegate from Puerto Rico under the alias of Alcalde (Spanish for "Mayor") Jaime Curleo. Some say his support was instrumental in Franklin D. Roosevelt's nomination at the Convention, but he broke with Roosevelt after the president refused to appoint him Ambassador to Ireland.[46]
In 1933, he served as the president of the United States Conference of Mayors.[47]
Initial post-governorship[edit]
After leaving the office of Governor, Curley squandered a substantial sum of his money in unsuccessful investments in Nevada gold mines; then he lost a civil suit brought by the Suffolk County prosecutor that forced him to forfeit to the city of Boston the $40,000 he received from General Equipment Company for "fixing" a damage claim settlement.
Curley was twice defeated, in November 1937 and November 1941, for the Boston mayoralty by one of his former political confidants, Maurice J. Tobin.[54] Curley took his revenge against Tobin later, supporting Republican Robert F. Bradford for Governor against Tobin in 1946.[55]
In 1938, he made another run for the governorship, defeating incumbent Democrat Governor Charles F. Hurley in a close primary, but losing the general election to Republican Leverett Saltonstall, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.[56]
Return to the U.S. Congress (1943–1947)[edit]
In 1942, Curley managed to revive his faltering career by returning to Congress, challenging Democratic incumbent Thomas H. Eliot.
Eliot was a former New Deal attorney with an exemplary voting record on behalf of the Roosevelt administration, but was also the son of a Unitarian minister and grandson of Harvard president Charles William Eliot. Curley exploited Eliot's background to appeal to working class anger against the Yankee upper class and, in a campaign speech which has entered Boston political lore, suggested Eliot had Communist leanings: "There is more Americanism in one half of Jim Curley's ass than in that pink body of Tom Eliot." Thus, despite his long-proven corruption and antagonism against the Yankee population, Curley managed to win them over in substantial numbers. He won the primarily easily and was re-elected in 1944.
Retirement[edit]
In retirement, Curley was financially supported by a state-granted pension ushered through the legislature by Tip O'Neill.[65] Curley continued to support other candidates and remained active within the Democratic Party after his defeats. His death in Boston in 1958 was followed by one of the largest funerals in the city's history.[66]