{"id":1810,"date":"2012-07-09T14:47:44","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T14:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/?page_id=1810"},"modified":"2014-09-08T23:27:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T23:27:09","slug":"1953-1962","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/era\/1953-1962\/","title":{"rendered":"1953–1962: All-American City"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1950s Peoria finally succeeded in altering its self-image. It had begun the 1940s known as a gangster’s playland; it ended the 1950s known as a well-scrubbed, All-American City, and did so by coming down hard on those who represented its less salubrious past. In 1953, the group \u201cPeorians for Council-Manager\u201d<\/a> (PCM) mobilized to put an end to a 107-year-long streak of aldermanic government, transforming the calculus of municipal politics in far-reaching ways. Police raids on brothels became common practice; the city’s underworld remnant was on the defensive. Tellingly, the North Washington red-light district \u2014 the neighborhood that Richard called home \u2014 was demolished in this period as part of the construction of a new bridge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Crewcuts Take Charge<\/h3>\n

A new generation of city officials \u2014 young, clean-cut and committed to cleaning up Peoria \u2014 came into office with the PCM’s rise. Often veterans of World War II or the Korean War, the “crewcuts”<\/a>\u00a0were instrumental in modernizing the city and making its operations above board. A professional city manager was brought in to supervise the ambitious job, and\u00a0the tobacco juice was, symbolically, scoured off the marble walls of City Hall. The changes permeated city life in ways large and small.\u00a0Parking tickets were no longer fixed through behind-the-scenes arrangements; new stop signs, traffic signals and reconfigured intersections made Peoria’s streets seem efficient and modern. Meanwhile Peoria’s mayor and police chief no longer countenanced open gambling or prostitution in their city limits.\u00a0With its gleaming All-American image,\u00a0Peoria was chosen as one of eleven “All-America Cities”<\/a> featured in Look<\/em>\u00a0magazine.<\/p>\n

The Limits of Reform<\/h3>\n

The reform movement may have triumphed in the 1953 election, but the PCM\u2019s victory was by no means total.\u00a0Critics argued that the PCM was a \u201cclosed corporation\u201d<\/a> that served the narrow interests of “the bluff” exclusively, and that it was anti-labor since it terminated longstanding municipal agreements with trade unions. The arguments were persuasive t0 many. In the councilmanic election of 1955, none of three PCM-endorsed officials were re-elected.<\/p>\n

Within just two years of Peoria\u2019s change, a Saturday Evening Post<\/em>\u00a0reporter found widespread nostalgia<\/a> among some Peorians for the bad old days of corruption. “This used to be the best town in the country,” said one bartender. “Then we got a reform administration. Now it ain’t worth a damn.”<\/p>\n

A reporter from Whisper<\/em>, a\u00a0<\/em>scandal-oriented magazine, came to another conclusion:\u00a0Peoria had changed only in image<\/a>, not in substance. Dig beneath the surface a bit, and one would find the hustlers, prostitutes, and gamblers of old.<\/p>\n

Black Peoria in the Era of Reform<\/span><\/h3>\n

While the new generation of eager reformers proudly proclaimed Peoria “a town you could grow up in,\u201d<\/a> the story was a little different for someone like Richard Pryor, who had been pushed out of the interracial North Washington neighborhood by its demolition<\/a> and now attended whiter schools like\u00a0Trewyn Junior High<\/a>, where he was\u00a0the only black student\u00a0in his class. Was there a place for black Peorians among the white crewcuts?<\/p>\n

Sensing a sharp racial divide, the Peoria Journal Star<\/em> published a series of articles<\/a> taking the pulse of Black Peoria. The series, written by a black journalist, detailed the achievements<\/a> of black Peorians and also the structural barriers<\/a> they faced.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, like many young black Peorians, Richard sought refuge and cultivated his talents at the Carver Center<\/a>, a community hub that boomed in this era of reform. Much later, he quipped onstage, about this moment in Peoria’s history:\u00a0\u201cThey called Peoria the model city. That meant they had the niggers under control.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In the 1950s Peoria finally succeeded in altering its self-image. It had begun the 1940s known as a gangster’s playland; it ended the 1950s known as a well-scrubbed, All-American City, and did so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":57,"menu_order":40,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"categories-test.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1810","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1810"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6274,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1810\/revisions\/6274"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}