John F. Shelley

John Francis Shelley was born in San Francisco on September 3, 1905, the oldest of nine children of Dennis Shelley and Mary Casey Shelley. {{cite web|url=http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/csf/sfpl/shelley.pdf|title=Finding Aid to the John F. 'Jack' Shelley Papers, 1953-1967|work=Online Archive of California|last=Suziki|first=Tami J.|date=October 31, 2001|access-date=June 4, 2016|archive-date=March 25, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170325143658/http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/csf/sfpl/shelley.pdf|url-status=dead}} His father was an immigrant from County Cork, Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom), who became a longshoreman in California.{{cite news|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A04E5DF163FE13BBC4A53DFBF66838F669EDE|title=John F. Shelley, Labor Leader, Legislator, Coast Mayor, Dies|work=New York Times|date=September 2, 1974|page=18|access-date=June 4, 2016|url-access=subscription }} He grew up in the Mission District of San Francisco, then "a tough working-class district," where he "acquired a deep-seated belief that 'working it out instead of fighting it out' was the best policy when disagreement was encountered." He attended Mission High School, where in 1923 he was elected student body president. He studied law and played varsity football at the University of San Francisco while working as a bakery driver, earning his law degree in 1932.

File:John F. Shelley 1940 Edit.jpg

After graduation (receiving his law degree in 1932), Shelley became a business agent for the Bakery Wagon Drivers Union. In 1936 he became an AFL official, defeating an incumbent to become vice-president of the San Francisco Labor Council.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6052299/shelley_elected_vp_of_san_francisco/|title=Vanderleur Re-elected as Labor Council Chief|work= Oakland {California] Tribune|date=February 1, 1936|page=3|access-date=July 30, 2016|via=newspapers.com}} He was the council's representative to the Pacific coast's first industrial development conference aimed at girls and hosted by several Northern California YWCAs.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6052347/oakland_tribune/|title=Y.W.C.A. Will Open Two-Day Parlay Here|work=Oakland [California] Tribune|date=November 6, 1936|page=5|access-date=July 30, 2016|via=newspapers.com}}

Shelley was elected president of the council in 1937.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5488088/shelley_elected_preident_of_sf_labor/|title=Heads S.F. Labor|work=The Times [of San Mateo, California]|date=January 30, 1937|page=3|access-date=July 30, 2016|via=newspaper.com}} Shortly into his term, the council began organizing state agricultural and cannery workers under the AFL.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5488121/shelley_welcomes_delegates_of_proposed/|title=State Agricultural Union is Started|work=Oakland [California] Tribune|date=February 26, 1937|access-date=July 30, 2016|via=newspapers.com}} Shelley was one of the leaders of the California People's Legislative Conference, a group supporting Washington state's minimum wage, while the Supreme Court was entertaining a constitutional challenge against it in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6052839/john_f_shelley_speaks_at_conference_on/|title=Seattle Mayor to Speak in S.F.|work=Oakland [California] Tribune|date=March 26, 1937|page=20|access-date=July 20, 2016|via=newspapers.com}}

Beginning in the spring of 1937, Shelley faced two crises: growing labor unrest, and attempts by the Committee for Industrial Organization to replace the AFL as bargaining agent for local unionized shops. Strikes and threats of strikes in Northern California followed first the sit-down strike against General Motors and then strikes at several Works Progress Administration projects in the San Francisco Bay Area.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6060496/strike_against_wpa_in_san_francisco/|title=WPA Strikers Said Defeated|work=San Bernardino County [California] Sun|date=April 7, 1937|page=1|access-date=July 30, 2016|via=newspapers.com}} Shelley was active in settling several labor disputes, but despite his efforts 3,500 members of six unions went on strike against 16 leading San Francisco Hotels on May 1, 1937.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/?spot=6060581|title=S.F. Hotels Strike Bound; Confusion Grips Patrons as Sympathy Walkouts Maroon Scores; New Guests Rejected|work=Oakland [California] Tribune|date=May 2, 1927|page=1|access-date=July 30, 2016|via=newspapers.com}} Continuation at [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6060660/1937_sf_hotel_strike_continuation_of/ page 10]. On the same day, the AFL purged the CIO from the Alameda Labor Council owing to a jurisdictional dispute between the AFL Longshoremen and the CIO Teamsters,{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6060754/afl_purges_cio_from_alameda_labor/|title=A.F.L. Forms 'Loyal' Labor Council Here|work=Oakland [California] Tribune|date=May 2, 1937|page=1|access-date=July 30, 2016|via=newspapers.com}} Continuation at [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6060795/continuation_of_oakland_tribune_may_2/} page 2]. a move that the San Francisco Labor Council strongly disapproved of.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6069997/sf_labor_council_disapproves_of_afl/|title=Court Refuses to Ban Meeting of Teamsters|work=Oakland [California] Tribune|date=May 1, 1937|page=2|access-date=July 31, 2016|via=newspapers.com}}

In the midst of the hotel strike, 2100 elevators and janitors in buildings citywide voted to strike, but the work-stoppage was postponed by the international to continue negotiating.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6064714/elevator_operators_and_janitors_vote_to/|title=Elevator Walkout is Postponed|work=Oakland [California] Tribune|date=May 7, 1937|page=30|access-date= July 30, 2016|via=newspapers.com}} Other unions voted to strike, including the milk wagon drivers.{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6077049/sf_milk_wagon_drivers_vote_to_strike/|work=Oakland [California] Tribune|date=May 3, 1937|page=5|access-date=August 1, 2016|via=newspapers.com|url-status=dead|title=S.F. Milk wagon drivers vote to strike in 1937. - on Newspapers.com|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160820112154/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6077049/sf_milk_wagon_drivers_vote_to_strike/|archive-date=August 20, 2016}} At the California AFL's "loyalty" convention in September, Shelley and George G. Kidwell (his former superior in the Bakery Wagon Drivers' Union) were beaten up for introducing a resolution calling for the merger of the AFL and CIO.{{cite book |last1=Bernstein |first1=Irving |authorlink=Irving Bernstein |title=Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker 1933-1941 |date=1970 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company |location=Boston |pages=686–687 |url=https://archive.org/details/turbulentyears0000unse/page/686/mode/1up |access-date=21 April 2025}} A decade later, Shelley was elected president of the organization, serving until 1950.

File:John F. Shelley circa 1955 Edit.jpg portrait, 1955]]

Shelley served in the United States Coast Guard during World War II and was a member of the California State Senate from 1939 to 1947. During his tenure, he fought unsuccessfully to confirm the nomination of labor leader Germain Bulcke as a member of the San Francisco Harbor Commission.{{cite journal |last1= |first1= |title=Labor Unity Expressed As Shelley Bats For Bulcke As Harbor Board Man |journal=The Voice of the Federation |date=26 January 1939 |volume=4 |issue=34 |page=1 |url=https://archive.ilwu.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/19390126.pdf |access-date=20 April 2025}} Shelley ran for Lieutenant Governor in 1946, but was defeated by Goodwin Knight. Shelley would then make his mark as a leader of the California delegation to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, when he helped marshal his state's votes to support a strong civil rights plank. Shelley entered the United States House of Representatives in 1949 and served until 1964, when he stepped down to be inaugurated Mayor of San Francisco after winning the November, 1963 election by nearly a 12-point margin against his nearest opponent, Harold Dobbs (50-38.5%).{{cite web|url=http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=142475|title=San Francisco Mayor, 1953|work=Our Campaigns|date=n.d.|access-date=June 7, 2016}}

Prior to his election as a U.S. congressman, Shelley was included in the FBI's Custodial Detention (DETCOM) files. The FBI's "DETCOM Program" "was concerned with the individuals 'to be given priority arrest in the event of ... an emergency.'" Priority under the Detcom program was given to "all top functionaries, all key figures, all individuals tabbed under the Comsab program", and "any other individual who, though he does not fall in the above groups, should be given priority arrest because of some peculiar circumstances".{{cite web|url=http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_III.pdf|author=United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the "Church Committee")|title=Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities|volume=Book III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports On Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans|date=April 23, 1976|publisher=Government Printing Office|page=441 (quoting an SAC [Special Agent in Charge] letter dated October 19, 1940|access-date=July 30, 2016}}

A memo by Warren Olney III alerted FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to the fact that Shelley was recently elected and remained targeted, along with fellow San Francisco congressman Franck R. Havenner, to be arrested by the FBI as a security risk in case of a Soviet attack.FBI File 100-356062-sub 34, section 11 (Custodial Detention, Field Files), page 21, reproduced in National Security and the FBI Surveillance of Enemy Aliens, a microfilm series by Gale Cengage Learning (Woodbridge, Connecticut: Primary Source Media, c2009), reel 18. A July 23, 1962 FBI search slip on Shelley is check-marked for "subversive references only" and remains heavily redacted with numerous unreleased documents.

Shelley's term as mayor was filled with challenges, including strikes over discriminatory hiring practices against African-Americans at the Palace Hotel, a public nurse strike in 1966, and a threatened San Francisco Symphony Orchestra strike in 1967. Shelley was mayor during the Summer of Love, a time of radicalism in the Haight-Ashbury and turmoil throughout the city, including Black rage toward the "auto row" on Van Ness Avenue. He was faced with riots in Bayview-Hunters Point on September 27, 1966, after a white police officer fatally shot a black youth accused of auto theft. Shelley declared a state of emergency in the city for six days. After the riots ended, Shelley took several public steps to improve relations between city government and the African-American community. He appointed the city and county's first African-American supervisor, Terry Francois.

Shelley took an aggressive stance against several prominent anti-development mobilizations during his tenure, including movements in opposition to development at the Yerba Buena Gardens and in the Western Addition. Shelley bowed out of running for a second term in office; his stated reasons were health-related, but it was thought that prominent political forces in the city's establishment wanted a more stringently pro-development mayor in office.

Shelley's son, Kevin Shelley, was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 1990 to 1996, a member of the California State Assembly from 1997 to 2003 and served as California Secretary of State from 2003 to 2005. Shelley's daughter, Joan-Marie Shelley, was a French teacher for 30 years at Lincoln High School and Lowell High School in San Francisco Unified School District and carried on the family tradition of labor union leadership, serving as vice-president (1978-1984) and president (1984-1989) of the San Francisco Federation of Teachers and as the founding president (1989-1997) of the United Educators of San Francisco, a merger of the local American Federation of Teachers and local National Education Association unions.{{cite web |last1=Shelley |first1=Joan-Marie |title=Joan-Marie Shelley oral history |url=https://californiarevealed.org/islandora/object/cavpp%3A15604 |website=California Revealed |publisher=U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services |access-date=27 September 2020}}

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{{Succession box | before=Richard J. Welch | title=United States Representative for the 5th Congressional District of California | years=1949–1964| after=Phillip Burton}}

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{{Succession box | title=Mayor of San Francisco | before=George Christopher | after=Joseph Alioto | years=1964–1968}}

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Category:1905 births

Category:1974 deaths

Category:American Roman Catholics

Category:Burials at Holy Cross Cemetery (Colma, California)

Category:Mayors of San Francisco

Category:Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from California

Category:Democratic Party California state senators

Category:University of San Francisco alumni

Category:United States Coast Guard personnel of World War II

Category:20th-century mayors of places in California

Category:20th-century members of the California State Legislature

Category:20th-century members of the United States House of Representatives