"The mob's recklessness became a very personal experience for me when a shabbily dressed Negro ran out of the crowd at Congress Street and without provocation, slugged me in the head." Chicago Daily News, Aug. 14, 1965.
My late father, Edmund J. Rooney Jr., wrote that paragraph in an article about rioting on the city's West Side.
"I was stunned momentarily; my glasses smashed. The boy ran off swiftly before I could shout a question that no one answered: 'Why?' "
My father further wrote, "It was an ugly, bitter, and for a few moments, a terrifying reporting assignment.
Part 1: My exposure to journalism, the law and its intersection began at a young age. My late father, Edmund J. Rooney Jr., worked for about 25 years at the Chicago Daily News as a general assignment reporter. He wrote extensively on police and court matters.
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"And I'll have to rate it as the most dangerous newspaper experience in 15 years of covering stories in this, my hometown."
This is one example of how close my father got to the action when covering civil rights stories in the 1960s as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. This is an ongoing series about his coverage of crime and the courts.
He also wrote numerous articles about Martin Luther King Jr. At one point, King apologized to my mother Mary on the phone because my father spent so much time covering him.
My father's civil rights coverage took him beyond Chicago.
In March 1965, he and his colleague, Mike Royko, covered the historic voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., led by King.
My uncle, Robert P. Rooney, remembered my father calling him before he headed to Alabama.
"He asked me to look after his family if anything happened to him," Robert Rooney said. "He wasn't sure he was coming back."
At that time, my father and mother were the parents of four young children. There were eventually six children in my family.
"Led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., about 4,500 civil rights demonstrators moved silently from this strife-torn town Sunday on the first leg of their historic freedom march to Montgomery, the Alabama capital," my father wrote in a March 22, 1965 article.
"Guarded by carbine-carrying soldiers, the long line of marchers was subjected to the jeers and taunts of bands of whites who stood along the four-lane highway leading out of Selma," he wrote.
The headline for another Chicago Daily News article by my father from Montgomery says "Victory Day for Dr. King."
"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led his right-to-vote army to the steps of the Alabama Capitol Thursday," he wrote. "About 25,000 marchers joined him in the greatest civil rights demonstration in the history of the South.
"The column of demonstrators pressed forward in a surging stream of humanity nearly two miles long."
He also wrote about how after the right-to-vote march in Alabama, King planned to follow up with a massive voter registration drive in the South.
"We may have some very dark days and dark nights before the dawn," my father quoted King as saying. "We are ready to suffer and die, if necessary, for this cause.
"Dr. King added simply: 'We expect to be very busy this summer and for the rest of the year."
In August 1966, my father covered King again when the civil rights leader marched in the Chicago Lawn area.
"The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. vowed to lead civil rights marchers 'again and again and again' on the Southwest Side streets, where on Friday night they were stoned and vilified, until there is an end to housing segregation," my father wrote in an Aug. 6, 1966, article.
During the march, King got hit in the head with a rock.
My Uncle Robert, a Chicago police officer at the time, worked in Marquette Park undercover with a lieutenant. The situation was chaotic, Robert said.
In the midst of the melee, my uncle said another police officer struck him in the neck area with a baton, stunning him. Shortly after that, my father came over and said he wanted to introduce my uncle to King, but my uncle said he couldn't.
Phillip J. O'Connor, who worked closely as a rewriteman with my father at the Daily News, said my father shadowed King during his time in Chicago that summer. A rewriteman works in a newspaper office taking information from a variety of reporters and then writing the story or stories, often without receiving a byline.
"He was out on the street every day with King," O'Connor said. Rooney "had a lot of respect for King."
In November 1967, my father got struck on the head from behind by a man in his 30s while he reported on a racial outbreak on the Near North Side, a news item says about the incident.
Robert said when his brother covered incidents on the street, he would head toward the situation, not away.
The following year, 1968, brought more violence on Chicago streets.
King's assassination came on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn. In the following days, riots, violence and looting occurred in Chicago and other cities.
At the time, our family lived in a mostly black neighborhood on Chicago's South Side.
While my father worked, my mother remained home alone with six young children. I remember that she was scared, but she also made sure we were safe.
My older brother, Edmund J. Rooney III recalled that on the night of King's assassination, the two of us looked out the dining room window onto a nearby street and saw police officers arresting young black men.
"Mom grabbed us, pulled us away from the window, turned the lights out and told us to stay away from the window," my brother said.
In August 1968, the Democratic National Convention came to Chicago. Protesters and Chicago police clashed on on the city's streets.
On Aug. 27, an article described how about 17 newsmen got assaulted by police officers.
"Wilbur Parker, assistant deputy police superintendent, promised a full investigation of the assaults on newsmen and said he would submit a full report to James M. Rochford, deputy police superintendent," the article says.
My father, who wore business attire, was not among the injured.
He "tried to avoid any broken bones and having the cops beat up on him," O'Connor said.
He stood with the police supervisors, O'Connor said.
"But he would interview the demonstrators," he said.
In 1968, now Cook County Circuit Judge Richard J. Elrod worked as a Chicago assistant corporation counsel.
Elrod said he remembered seeing my father on the streets during the convention.
Elrod called him a "Johnny on the spot."
He did a good job covering the convention disturbances and wrote fair articles, Elrod said.
"He always told it as it was without embellishment," Elrod said.
In 1968, Robert P. Cummins, now a partner with The Cummins Law Firm P.C., chaired The Chicago Bar Association's Civil Disorders Committee, which worked with then Chief Cook County Circuit Judge John S. Boyle and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. The committee and others set up a system to handle mass arrests resulting from demonstrations related to the Democratic Convention, he said.
Cummins encountered my father during that period.
"He knew exactly what kinds of questions to ask," Cummins said. "Sometimes, the questions that he asked would provide the kind of corrective action you would expect to take place in a situation like this."