Constance Dallas

Dallas was elected as part of a coalition between the Democratic Party organization and reforming independents who wished to challenge the Republican city government.

[7] After Henry Snow was indicted for grand larceny concerning his former employers in 1908, he fled the city, leaving his family destitute.

[1] When the family returned to the United States, they settled in Philadelphia and Snow attended Germantown Friends School.

[11] He worked as an executive of the American Briquet Company, and Dallas devoted the early years of her marriage to child-rearing and keeping house, as well as volunteering at Pennsylvania Hospital.

[2] In another interview that year, she said that she was not very interested in politics at the time; though she ran for city council in 1947 she only did so when mayoral candidate Richardson Dilworth assured her she would lose.

[13] Democratic ward leaders asked her to run for City Council that year because, according to Dallas, "they needed a woman and a Protestant, and they got two for one in me.

[18] It also included provisions for civil service reform, requiring that city jobs be filled by merit selection rather than patronage.

After narrowly winning a primary race against labor lawyer Harry Galfand, Dallas was elected as a part of that wave, winning 54% of the vote in the new 8th district (covering Chestnut Hill, Germantown, and Roxborough) over incumbent Republican councilman Robert S. Hamilton (the new charter did away with multi-member council districts).

By 1954, however, Democrat James Tate and others in Council attempted to weaken the civil service reforms of the new charter by allowing city employees to be active in party politics.

Green Jr., siding instead with the reform-minded mayor, Joseph S. Clark Jr.[21] Dallas crossed party leadership in other ways, as well.

She sided with the city fire department in voting for an ordinance to allow truck traffic on Henry Avenue.

[2] When her husband died, Dallas moved out of their Chestnut Hill home to a retirement community in Delaware County, but continued working until the age of 76.