Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

the word I seek now is . . . quota kind of basis almost, Even that, as
soft as it was and as mild as it was and as weak as it was, was very fiercely
opposed.
Q: Do you recall any of that opposition? Apparently it would have been in
the committee action primarily.
A: Yes, I don't remember specifically year by year. But I could tell you
the full story of the bills. Later, I guess I put in my first one In 1959
or somewhere along there and . . .
Q: In 1961, 1 believe it was.
A: In 1961? Well, we couldn't get it passed in the House when we first
put it in. Eventually, we did get it passed in the House and then for a
long number of years, it passed the House but we couldn't pass it in the
Senate. I think I put it in in 1961, 1963, 1965, and eventually, I think
in 1965, I passed it in the House. And then it went over to the Senate in
1967. By that time I was in the Senate and it always gat killed in the
committee. They sent it to the License and Miscellany Committee for one
reason or the other and it got killed. The Republicans always killed it.
They had the larger number of people in the committees. It always got
killed. Eventually, we got very very close to passage, but we never
actually passed the fair housing law in the state of Illinois.
Same things intervened which made it perhaps unnecessary for passage. One
thing was the Supreme Court of the United States, in an opinion, established
the precedent for open housing. And then there was congressional legislation
which gave people an avenue for enforcing open housing. And more than
that, in the 1970 Constitution, the concept for fair housing was made a
part of the constitution.
Then we absolutely refused then to go ahead with a specific bill because
we thought that any kind of bill that you could pass, if indeed you could,
wauld lessen the impact of the overall statement for fair housing in the
constitution. So then we didn't seek to pass a law itself because a law
would have the effect of circumscribing those situations in which fair
housing was allowed and would not have the strength, vitality, or it would
not be as large in scope as the constitutional provision itself.
SESSION 5, TAPE 5, SIDE 2
Q: You called for the Human Relations Board to take over the management
of this rather than trping to set up a separate commission. Do you
remember the . .
A: Well, yes, there were several different kinds of approaches made. I
think at one time I even gave thought to--I don't know if I ever put it in