Richardson Dilworth

Richardson K. Dilworth (August 29, 1898 – January 23, 1974) was an American Democratic Party politician who served as the 91st mayor of Philadelphia from 1956 to 1962. He twice ran as the Democratic nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, in 1950 and in 1962. He is to date the last White Anglo-Saxon Protestant mayor of Philadelphia.

Education and early career He was born in Pittsburgh to Joseph Richardson Dilworth and Annie Hunter (Wood) Dilworth. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in World War I and was commissioned as an officer in World War II. In 1938, he joined the law firm of Dilworth Paxson. In 1921 he graduated from Yale University, where he was a member of Scroll and Key and Delta Kappa Epsilon, and lettered for the varsity football team. In 1926 he graduated from Yale Law School, afterwards becoming an attorney in Philadelphia. He was married to the former Elizabeth Brockie from 1922 to 1935, and they had four children. On August 6, 1935, a week after divorcing his first wife, he married Ann Elizabeth Kaufman. They had two children.

Political career Dilworth had grown up as a Republican, but became a Democrat out of frustration with the city's longstanding Republican machine. Along with Joseph S. Clark Jr. and others, he was at the forefront of a post-World War II reform movement in Philadelphia that led to the adoption of a modern city charter that consolidated city and county offices and introduced civil service examinations on a broad scale to replace much of the existing patronage system. however, the election marked the last time, to date, that a Republican was elected mayor of Philadelphia. In 1949, Dilworth was elected city treasurer, while Clark was elected city controller. Dilworth ran for governor in the 1950 election, losing a close race to John S. Fine. In 1951, he was elected Philadelphia District Attorney, while Clark was elected mayor. Clark and Dilworth's inaugurations ended a 67-year period of uninterrupted Republican control of the city (and instituted a period of uninterrupted Democratic control which has persisted past 2022). In 1955, Dilworth was elected mayor, defeating Thacher Longstreth.

Despite President John F. Kennedy's work on his behalf, Dilworth lost the fall general election by a half million votes to progressive Republican Congressman William Scranton, in what scholars considered "one of the bitterest [campaigns] in Pennsylvania history." Scranton had run for governor (with fellow progressive Raymond P. Shafer for lieutenant governor) after a deeply divisive Republican primary involving Philadelphia Republican boss Billy Meehan's candidate, Judge Robert E. Woodside; and five other candidates. Republicans also carried both houses of the state legislature in that landslide election.

In 1960 and 1961, Dilworth served as president of the United States Conference of Mayors. A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Dilworth as the eleventh-best American big-city mayor to have served between 1820 and 1993.

SS Andrea Doria With his wife, Ann Dilworth, he was a passenger on the , an ocean liner that collided with the MS Stockholm near Nantucket, Massachusetts, on July 25, 1956, and subsequently sank. They were saved, and Dilworth was on board the last lifeboat that was picked up by the . He had aided in the evacuation of other passengers from the ship.

After being mayor Following his tenure as mayor, Dilworth served as partner in the Philadelphia-based law firm of Dilworth Paxson LLP, which bears his name.

An abstract "rising phoenix" made by sculptor Emlen Etting in 1982 is a memorial to the Mayor; it was moved from its original location at North end of Dilworth Plaza to 38th Parallel Place in 2013.