Adlai Stevenson II

Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (February 5, 1900 – July 14, 1965) was an American politician, noted for his intellectual demeanor, eloquent oratory, and promotion of liberal causes in the Democratic Party. He served as the 31st Governor of Illinois, and received the Democratic Party's nomination for president in 1952 and 1956; both times he was defeated by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination for a third time in the election of 1960, but was defeated by Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. After his election, President Kennedy appointed Stevenson as the Ambassador to the United Nations; he served from 1961 to 1965. He died on July 14, 1965 in London after suffering a heart attack.

Early life and education
Stevenson was born in Los Angeles, California, in a neighborhood now designated as the North University Park Historic District. His home and birthplace at 2639 Monmouth Avenue has been designated as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. He was a member of a famous Illinois political family. His grandfather Adlai E. Stevenson I was Vice President of the United States under President Grover Cleveland from 1893–1897. His father, Lewis G. Stevenson, never held an elected office, but was appointed Secretary of State of Illinois (1914–1917) and was considered a strong contender for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination in 1928. A maternal great-grandfather, Jesse W. Fell, had been a close friend and campaign manager for Abraham Lincoln; Stevenson often referred to Fell as his favorite ancestor. His mother was Helen Davis Stevenson. Stevenson's eldest son, Adlai E. Stevenson III, became a U.S. Senator from Illinois (1970–1981). Actor McLean Stevenson was a second cousin once removed.

Stevenson was raised in the city of Bloomington, Illinois; his family was a member of Bloomington's upper class and lived in one of the city's well-to-do neighborhoods. At the age of twelve Stevenson accidentally killed Ruth Merwin, a 16-year-old friend, while demonstrating drill technique with a rifle, inadvertently left loaded, during a party at the Stevenson home. Stevenson was devastated by the accident and rarely referred to it as an adult. However, in 1955 Stevenson heard about a woman whose son had experienced a similar tragedy. He wrote her that she should tell her son that "he must live for two", which Stevenson's friends took to be a reference to the shooting incident.

Stevenson left Bloomington High School after his junior year and attended University High School (Normal)|University High School in Normal, Illinois, Bloomington's "twin city", just to the north. He then went to boarding school in Connecticut at The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall), where he participated in sports, acted in plays, and was elected editor-in-chief of The News, the school newspaper. Upon his graduation from Choate in 1918, he enlisted in the Navy and served at the rank of Seaman Apprentice, but his training was completed too late for him to participate in World War I.

He attended Princeton University, becoming managing editor of The Daily Princetonian, a member of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society, a member of the Quadrangle Club, and received a B.A. degree in 1922 in literature or history. He was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity there. Under prodding from his father he then went to Harvard Law School, but found the law to be "uninteresting", and withdrew after failing several classes. He returned to Bloomington where he wrote for the family newspaper, The Daily Pantagraph, which was founded by his maternal great grandfather Jesse W. Fell, who had also served as Abraham Lincoln's campaign manager in his 1858 race for the US Senate.

Stevenson became interested in the law again a year or so after leaving Harvard after talking to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.. When he returned home to Bloomington, he decided to finish his law degree at Northwestern University School of Law, attending classes during the week and returning to Bloomington on the weekends to write for the Pantagraph. Stevenson received his Bachelor of Laws degree from Northwestern in 1926 and passed the Illinois State Bar examination that year. He obtained a position at Cutting, Moore & Sidley, an old and conservative Chicago law firm.



In 1928 Stevenson married Ellen Borden, a well-to-do socialite. The young couple soon became popular and familiar figures on the Chicago social scene. They had three sons: Adlai Stevenson III, who would become a U.S. Senator; Borden Stevenson, and John Fell Stevenson. In 1935 Adlai and Ellen purchased a 70 acre tract of land along the Des Plaines River near Libertyville, Illinois, a wealthy suburb of Chicago. They built a home on the property and it served as Stevenson's official residence for the rest of his life. Although he spent relatively little time there due to his career, Stevenson did consider the farm to be his home, and in the 1950s he was often called "The Man from Libertyville" by the national news media. In 1949 Adlai and Ellen were divorced; their son Adlai Stevenson III later recalled that "There hadn't been a good relationship for a long time. I remember her [Ellen] as the unreasonable one, not only with Dad, but with us and the servants. I was embarrassed by her peremptory way with servants." Stevenson did not remarry, but instead dated a number of prominent women throughout the rest of his life, including Alicia Patterson and Marietta Tree.

He classified himself as a Unitarian. Adlai Stevenson: "I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian [Universalist], but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination."

1933 to 1948
In July 1933, Stevenson took a job opportunity as special attorney and assistant to Jerome Frank, the general counsel of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) a part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Following the repeal of Prohibition in 1934, Stevenson changed jobs, becoming chief attorney for the Federal Alcohol Control Administration (FACA), a subsidiary of the AAA which regulated the activities of the alcohol industry.

In 1935, Stevenson returned to Chicago to practice law. He became involved in civic activities, particularly as chairman of the Chicago branch of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (known often as the White Committee, after its founder, William Allen White).

In 1940, Colonel Frank Knox, newly appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as Secretary of the Navy, offered Stevenson a position as Principal Attorney and special assistant. In this capacity, Stevenson wrote speeches, represented Secretary Knox and the Navy on committees, toured the various theaters of war, and handled many administrative duties. Since Knox was largely a figurehead, there were few major roles for Stevenson, However, in early 1944 he joined a mission to Sicily and Italy for the Foreign Economic Administration to report on the country's economy. After Knox died in April 1944, Stevenson returned to Chicago where he attempted to purchase Knox's controlling interest in the Chicago Daily News, but his syndicate was outbid by another party.

In 1945, Stevenson took a temporary position in the State Department, as special assistant to the Secretary of State to work with Assistant Secretary of State Archibald MacLeish on a proposed world organization. Later that year, he went to London as Deputy United States Delegate to the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Organization, a position he held until February 1946. When the head of the delegation fell ill, Stevenson assumed his role. His work at the Commission, and in particular his dealings with the representatives of the Soviet Union, resulted in appointments to the US delegations to the UN in 1946 and 1947.

Stevenson purchased a farm in northwestern Illinois, just outside of Galena, where he frequently rode horses and kept some cattle.

1948: elected Illinois governor
In 1948 Stevenson was chosen by Jacob Arvey, the leader of the powerful Chicago Democratic political organization, to be the Democratic candidate in the Illinois gubernatorial race against the incumbent Republican, Dwight H. Green. In a surprise upset, Stevenson defeated Green by 572,067 votes, a record margin in Illinois gubernatorial elections. President Truman carried Illinois by only 33,612 votes against his Republican opponent, Thomas E. Dewey, leading some commentators to write that "Clearly, Adlai had carried the President in with him." Paul Douglas, a University of Chicago professor of economics, was elected Senator on the same ticket.

Principal among Stevenson's achievements as Illinois governor were reorganizing the state police by removing political considerations from hiring practices and instituting a merit system for employment and promotion, cracking down on illegal gambling, and improving the state highways. He also vetoed a bill that would have "made it a felony to belong to any subversive group" and would have required "a loyalty oath of public employees and candidates for office." In his public message regarding the veto Stevenson wrote "I know full well this veto will be distorted and misunderstood...I know that to veto this bill in this period of grave anxiety will be unpopular with many. But I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our ancient rights as free men...we will win the contest of ideas that afflicts the world not by suppressing those rights, but by their triumph."

The governor proved to be a popular public speaker, gaining a national reputation as an intellectual, with a self-deprecating sense of humor to match. One famous example came when the Illinois state legislature passed a bill (supported by bird lovers) declaring that cats roaming unescorted was a public nuisance. Adlai vetoed the bill, and sent this public message regarding the veto: "It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming...the problem of cat versus bird is as old as time. If we attempt to solve it by legislation who knows but what we may be called upon to take sides as well in the age old problem of dog versus cat, bird versus bird, or even bird versus worm. In my opinion, the State of Illinois and its local governing bodies already have enough to do without trying to control feline delinquency. For these reasons, and not because I love birds the less or cats the more, I veto and withhold my approval from Senate Bill No. 93."

On June 2, 1949, Governor Stevenson privately gave a sworn deposition as a character witness for Alger Hiss, a former State Department official who was accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union. In the deposition Stevenson testified that the reputation of Hiss for integrity, loyalty, and veracity was "good." The deposition, according to Stevenson biographer Porter McKeever, would later be used in the 1952 presidential campaign by Senators Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon to "inflame public opinion and attack Adlai."

1952 presidential bid
Early in 1952, while Stevenson was still governor of Illinois, President Harry S. Truman decided that he would not seek another term as president. Instead, Truman met with Stevenson in Washington and proposed that Stevenson seek the Democratic nomination for president; Truman promised him his support if he did so. Stevenson at first hesitated, arguing that he was committed to running for a second gubernatorial term in Illinois. However, a number of his friends and associates (such as George Wildman Ball) quietly began organizing a "draft Stevenson" movement for President; they persisted in their activity even when Stevenson (both publicly and privately) told them to stop. When Stevenson continued to state that he was not a candidate, President Truman and the Democratic Party leadership looked for other prospective candidates. However, each of the other main contenders had a major weakness. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee won most of the primaries, but he was unpopular with President Truman and other prominent Democrats, who saw him as a party maverick who could not be trusted. Senator Richard Russell, Jr. of Georgia was popular in the South, but his support of segregation and opposition to civil rights for blacks made him unacceptable to Northern and Western Democrats. Truman favored U.S. diplomat W. Averell Harriman, but he had never held elective office and was inexperienced in national politics. Truman next turned to his Vice-President, Alben Barkley, but at 74 years of age he was dismissed as being too old by labor union leaders. In the end Stevenson, despite his reluctance to run, remained the most attractive candidate heading into the 1952 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.



At the Convention, Stevenson, as governor of the host state, was assigned to give the welcoming address to the delegates. His speech was so stirring and witty that it helped stampede his nomination. Despite his protestations, the delegates drafted him, and he accepted the Democratic nomination with a speech that according to contemporaries, "electrified the delegates:"

"When the tumult and the shouting die, when the bands are gone and the lights are dimmed, there is the stark reality of responsibility in an hour of history haunted with those gaunt, grim specters of strife, dissension, and materialism at home, and ruthless, inscrutable, and hostile power abroad. The ordeal of the twentieth century – the bloodiest, most turbulent age of the Christian era – is far from over. Sacrifice, patience, understanding, and implacable purpose may be our lot for years to come. ... Let's talk sense to the American people! Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions."

Although Stevenson's eloquent oratory and thoughtful, stylish demeanor impressed many intellectuals and members of the nation's academic community, the Republicans and some working-class Democrats ridiculed what they perceived as his indecisive, aristocratic air. During the 1952 campaign Stewart Alsop, a powerful Connecticut Republican, labeled Stevenson an "egghead", based on his baldness and intellectual air. His brother, the influential newspaper columnist Joe Alsop, used the word to underscore Stevenson's difficulty  in attracting  working-class voters, and the nickname stuck. Stevenson himself made fun of his "egghead" nickname; in one speech he joked "eggheads of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your yolks!" His running mate was Senator John Sparkman of Alabama.

During the campaign, a photograph revealed a hole in the sole of Adlai's right shoe. This became a well-known symbol of Adlai's frugality and earthiness. Photographer William M. Gallagher of the Flint Journal won the 1953 Pulitzer prize on the strength of the image.

Stevenson did not use television as effectively as his Republican opponent, popular war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower, and was unable to mobilize the New Deal coalition for one last hurrah. In the election, Eisenhower won the popular vote by 55% to 45%. Stevenson lost heavily outside the Solid South; he won only nine states and lost the Electoral College vote 442 to 89. In his concession speech on election night, Stevenson quoted a story told by Abraham Lincoln to describe how he felt: "it hurts too much to laugh, but I'm too old to cry."

Following his defeat, Stevenson traveled through Asia, the Middle East and Europe, writing about his travels for Look magazine. His political stature as head of the Democratic Party gave him access to many foreign officials. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1953.

1956 presidential bid
With Eisenhower headed for another landslide, few Democrats wanted the 1956 nomination. Although challenged by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver and New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, Stevenson campaigned more aggressively to secure the nomination than he had in 1952, and Kefauver conceded after losing several key primaries. To Stevenson's dismay, former president Truman endorsed Harriman, but the blow was softened by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt's continued support. Stevenson again won the nomination at the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, becoming the last Unitarian to be nominated for the presidency by a major party. He was aided by strong support from younger delegates, who were said to form the core of the "New Politics" movement. He permitted the convention delegates to choose Senator Kefauver as his running mate, despite stiff competition from Senator John F. Kennedy. Following his nomination, Stevenson waged a vigorous presidential campaign, delivering 300 speeches and traveling 55000 mi. He called on the electorate to join him in a march to a "new America", based on a liberal agenda that anticipated the programs of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His call for a Partial Test Ban Treaty to aboveground nuclear weapons tests proved premature and lost him support.

While President Eisenhower suffered heart problems, the economy enjoyed robust health. Stevenson's hopes for victory were dashed when, in October, President Eisenhower's doctors gave him a clean bill of health and the Suez and Hungary crises erupted simultaneously. The public was not convinced that a change in leadership was needed. Stevenson lost his second bid for the Presidency by a landslide, winning only 42% of the popular vote and 73 electoral votes from just seven states.

Despite his two defeats, Stevenson considered a third nomination. Early in 1957, he resumed law practice, allying himself with Judge Simon H. Rifkind in a firm based in Washington, D.C. (Stevenson, Paul, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison) and another in Chicago (Stevenson, Rifkind & Wirtz), both related to New York City's Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Associates included W. Willard Wirtz, William McC. Blair Jr. and Newton N. Minow. He also accepted an appointment on the new Democratic Advisory Council, with other prominent Democrats. He was employed part-time by the Encyclopædia Britannica.

1960–1965
Prior to the 1960 Democratic National Convention, Stevenson announced that he was not seeking the Democratic nomination for president, but would accept a draft. Because he still hoped to win the nomination, Stevenson refused to give the nominating address for relative newcomer John F. Kennedy, which strained relations between the two men. Once Kennedy won the nomination, Stevenson, always an enormously popular public speaker, campaigned actively for him. Due to his two presidential nominations and previous United Nations experience, Stevenson perceived himself an elder statesman and the natural choice for United States Secretary of State, an opinion shared by few in the Kennedy camp. Instead, the prestigious post went to the (then) little-known Dean Rusk, and Stevenson was appointed to the lesser post of United States Ambassador to the United Nations. There, he worked hard to support U.S. foreign policy, even when he personally disagreed with some of Kennedy's actions.

In April 1961, Stevenson suffered the greatest humiliation of his career. After an attack against Fidel Castro's Communist forces at the Bay of Pigs, Stevenson unwittingly disputed allegations that the attack was financed and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, claiming instead that the anti-Communist forces were supported by dissident Cuban émigrés.

UN role
His most famous moment came during the Cuban missile crisis when he gave a presentation at an emergency session of the Security Council on October 25, 1962. He forcefully asked Soviet representative Valerian Zorin if his country was installing missiles in Cuba, punctuated with the famous demand "Don't wait for the translation, answer 'yes' or 'no'!" Following Zorin's refusal to answer the abrupt question, Stevenson retorted, "I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over." In one of the most memorable moments in U.N. history, Stevenson then showed photographs that proved the existence of missiles in Cuba, just after the Soviet ambassador had implied they did not exist.

Stevenson occasionally faced angry Americans when he promoted the UN, as happened in Dallas in 1963.

After President Kennedy was assassinated Stevenson continued to serve in his position as Ambassador to the UN under the Johnson administration. As the country progressed toward the presidential election, Vietnam became an important campaign issue. The Republican contender, Senator Barry Goldwater, advocated victory in Vietnam—a rollback strategy that Johnson denounced as tantamount to nuclear war. Stevenson was not a major player on Vietnam issues. He did support Johnson publicly and in private because he believed in containment, but he also wanted to start negotiations with North Vietnam through the UN, which Johnson rejected.

Death and legacy
While walking in London with Marietta Tree through Grosvenor Square, Stevenson suffered a heart attack on the afternoon of July 14, 1965, and died later that day of heart failure at St George's Hospital. Marietta Tree recalled:"[After leaving the Embassy] [w]e walked around the neighborhood a little bit and where his house had been where he had lived with his family at the end of the War, there was now an apartment house and he said that makes me feel so old. Indeed, the whole walk made him feel very not so much nostalgic but so much older. As we were walking along the street he said do not walk quite so fast and do hold your head up Marietta. I was burrowing ahead trying to get to the park as quickly as possible and then the next thing I knew, I turned around and I saw he'd gone white, gray really, and he fell and his hand brushed me as he fell and he hit the pavement with the most terrible crack and I thought he'd fractured his skull."

That night in her diary, she wrote, "Adlai is dead. We were together." Following memorial services at the United Nations General Assembly Hall (on July 19, 1965), and in Washington, D.C.; Springfield, Illinois; and Bloomington, Illinois, Stevenson was interred in the family plot in Evergreen Cemetery, Bloomington, Illinois. The funeral in Bloomington's Unitarian Church was attended by many national figures, including President Lyndon B. Johnson, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren and actor Walter "Dub" Taylor.



The Central Illinois Regional Airport near Bloomington has a whimsical statue of Stevenson, sitting on a bench with his feet propped on his briefcase and his head in one hand, as if waiting for his flight. He is depicted wearing shoes that had a hole in the sole, from having walked many miles during his election campaign. The shoe had become a famous campaign symbol.

The Adlai E. Stevenson II Farm in Mettawa, Illinois, which was Stevenson's home from 1936 to 1965, is on the National Register of Historic Places and was nominated National Historic Landmark.

Stevenson in popular culture
Stevenson has been referenced in television episodes of The Simpsons (in the episodes "Lisa the Iconoclast" and "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson"), The Golden Girls, Happy Days (in the January 28, 1975, episode "The Not Making of the President") and Mystery Science Theater 3000's presentation of Manos: The Hands of Fate (a Stevenson lookalike buys a car and one of the MST3K characters comments on it). Murphy Brown briefly names her newborn son 'Adlai Stevenson'.

Stevenson has also been referenced in films. Most notably, Peter Sellers claimed that his portrayal of President Merkin Muffley in Dr. Strangelove was modeled on Stevenson. Stevenson's legendary "Don't wait for the translation" speech to Russian ambassador Valerian Zorin during the Cuban Missile Crisis inspired dialogue in a courtroom scene in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The historical speech itself is depicted in the 2000 film Thirteen Days with Michael Fairman playing Stevenson, as well as partially depicted in the 1974 television play The Missiles of October by Ralph Bellamy. Stevenson is also referenced in Wayne's World 2 ("Waynestock" is held in an Aurora, Illinois park named for Stevenson), Plain Clothes (the high school is named for Stevenson), Annie Hall (Woody Allen's character tells a standup joke about the Stevenson-Eisenhower campaign) and Breakfast at Tiffany's.

In John Frankenheimer's 1962 cold war thriller  The Manchurian Candidate, the conniving Mrs. John Iselin (played by Angela Lansbury) makes a reference to Stevenson in a conversation with her son (played by Laurence Harvey): "Mr. Stevenson makes jokes. I do not."

Stevenson comes close to being assassinated by a 12-year-old in James Patrick Kelly's Hugo Award-winning novelette, "1016 to 1" (1999).

In Robin Gerber's novel Eleanor vs. Ike, Stevenson suffers a fatal heart attack as he approaches the podium to accept the Democratic nomination in 1952.

In the alternate history short story "The Impeachment of Adlai Stevenson" by David Gerrold included in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Stevenson was elected in 1952 after Dwight D. Eisenhower makes the mistake of accepting Joseph McCarthy as his running mate instead of Richard Nixon. He successfully ran for re-election in 1956, once again defeating General Eisenhower. However, he proved to be an extremely unpopular president.

In Michael P. Kube-McDowell's alternate history novel Alternities, Stevenson is mentioned as having been elected president in 1956 and serving for two terms, though he is quoted as describing his second term as a curse.

In the alternate history novel Dominion by C. J. Sansom, World War II ended in June 1940 when the British government, under the leadership of the Prime Minister Lord Halifax, signed a peace treaty with Nazi Germany in Berlin. Franklin D. Roosevelt was steadfast in his opposition to the Nazis and the Treaty, which resulted in him losing the 1940 to his Republican opponent Robert Taft, who became the 33rd President. He was re-elected in 1944 and 1948 but Stevenson defeated him in 1952, becoming the 34th President. Shortly after his election in November 1952, The Times, which was owned by the pro-Nazi British Prime Minister Lord Beaverbrook, speculated that Stevenson would follow in Roosevelt's footsteps and pursue an interventionist foreign policy when it came to European affairs. Several weeks later, President-elect Stevenson gave a speech indicating that he intended to begin trading with the Soviet Union upon taking office on January 20, 1953.

The Avalanche, an album by acclaimed folk artist Sufjan Stevens, contains a song called "Adlai Stevenson".

Adlai Stevenson was quoted in the legal drama, Boston Legal. While Alan Shore defends a client who had withheld her taxes to protest the current state of America, he quotes Stevenson's Nature of Patriotism speech. "The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to the freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism." What has changed now, he argues, is the cloak has morphed into anti-terrorism.

In Pioneer One, a crowd-financed TV series published under a Creative Commons license, one of the Characters introduces himself as "Adlai Steve DiLeo", named after Adlai Stevenson, "someone who ran three times for president unsuccessfully".

Schools and other entities named after Stevenson

 * Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary School in Fairfield, New Jersey
 * Adlai E. Stevenson II Elementary School in Bloomington, Illinois
 * Adlai E. Stevenson High School (Lincolnshire, Illinois)|Adlai E. Stevenson High School located in Lincolnshire, Illinois
 * Adlai Stevenson High School in Sterling Heights, Michigan
 * Adlai Stevenson Elementary School (formerly Junior High) in Cleveland, Ohio
 * Adlai E. Stevenson High School (Livonia, Michigan)|Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Livonia, Michigan
 * Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Bronx, New York
 * Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary School in Elk Grove Village, Illinois
 * Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary School in Des Plaines, Illinois
 * Adlai Stevenson Elementary School in the Plum Borough School District in Plum, Pennsylvania
 * Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois
 * Stevenson Elementary School in Mountain View, California
 * Adlai E. Stevenson College, a division of the University of California, Santa Cruz colleges system
 * Stevenson Hall, a lecture building on the Illinois State University campus in Normal, Illinois
 * Adlai E. Stevenson Hall, Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California
 * Stevenson Expressway – Interstate 55 is known as the Adlai E. Stevenson Expressway between Lake Shore Drive and I-355 in Illinois
 * Stevenson Drive, a major thoroughfare in Springfield, Illinois
 * Stevenson Hall, a residence hall for students on the Northern Illinois University campus in De Kalb, IL
 * Stevenson Hall, Eastern Illinois University Residence Hall in Charleston, Il.
 * Adlai E. Stevenson Chair, a professorship of International Affairs at Columbia University, currently held by Robert Jervis
 * Adlai Stevenson Middle School in Westland, Michigan
 * Adlai E. Stevenson School, an Elementary School in Decatur, Illinois
 * Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary School in Southfield, Michigan