Harold Titus's Blog - Posts Tagged "al-raby"
Civil Rights Events -- Chicago Freedom Movement -- Inroads
For all of the hoopla surrounding King’s arrival, the campaign started slowly. King spent his first weeks touring the city and meeting with local activists, city officials, and ghetto residents (Bernstein 1).
Working with Rev. Clay Evans of the Chicago Baptist Ministers Conference and Al Pitcher a professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, SCLC staff member and divinity student Jesse Jackson begins organizing a chapter of SCLC's Operation Breadbasket. This is a program that uses church-led consumer boycotts to combat job discrimination and open up employment opportunities for nonwhites — an effort that finds favor among Afro-American clergymen who are reluctant to participate in militant protests or directly confront the Daley machine around a hot-button issue like segregated housing.
King addresses a meeting of more than 200 Black ministers who form committees to investigate, and if necessary target, racist hiring practices in the food industry, particularly soda-pop, milk, bread, and soup companies all of which sell well in the ghetto. By late spring they are having some success — 75 Afro-Americans hired by two milk companies and 44 at a third, for one example. But the Daley machine strikes back. Evans is erecting a new church. Suddenly, without explanation, his city building permits are withdrawn — halting construction for seven years (Steps 1).
SCLC leaders and organizers like Bevel, Andy Young, Big James Orange, and Jimmy Collier begin working with the Vice Lords, Blackstone Rangers, Cobras, and Roman Saints, urging them to stop fighting each other, support the CFM, and participate in nonviolent direct action.
At first they make scant progress. But they persist. Orange is beaten by gang members, not once but several times. He maintains nonviolence and he doesn't quit. Gradually he begins winning respect. Eventually, Bevel reports great success, and Dr. King addresses a "gang convention" at the Palmer House hotel. "From that period on," Orange later recalled, "we worked with these guys." Later on, some of the gang members guard Dr. King from racist attack, while others act as marshals on the mass marches into white neighborhoods that begin at the end of July.
…
But while some gang members do commit to tactical nonviolence as a requirement for participating in SCLC-led protests, the large number that Bevel hopes to recruit for his "freedom army" does not materialize. Most remain unwilling to forego their enmity with rival gangs, participate with whites in interracial actions, or accept nonviolent discipline — even temporarily (Ghetto 2).
Late in February, five desperate residents of a Coretta King, Al Raby, tenement on South Homan in the West Side ghetto ask Dr. King for help. They have no heat or electricity. Trash and garbage are not being collected. The landlord is doing nothing, and neither are city officials. There are 20 children living in the four occupied flats (the other two are empty). On a frigid winter day, Dr. King leads some 200 marchers to their dilapidated apartment house. King declares they are "seizing" the building and placing it in "supralegal trusteeship" so they can repair it. The Movement will collect the roughly $400/month rent on behalf of the tenants and use the money to make the place habitable. "The moral question is far more important than the legal one," he tells reporters who challenge him on the legality of bypassing the building owner.
Three of the unemployed tenants are to be hired for janitorial and general labor. They will be paid $2/hour (equal to $14.50 in 2014), which Dr. King considers a "fair minimum wage" (the actual federal minimum wage in 1966 is $1.25/hour, equal to $9.13 in 2014). Dressed in work clothes, King, his wife Coretta, Al Raby, and other activists begin cleaning out the furnace and shoveling up mounds of uncollected, frozen trash and garbage while efforts are made to get the electricity and heating back in service.
Media, politicians, and pillars of the community roundly condemn the seizure as "anarchy," "theft," and "revolutionary." Andy Young counters that after seeing a shivering infant wrapped only in newspapers they could not wait months for lawsuits to meander through the courts. "We wanted to do it illegally. We want to be put in jail for furnishing heat and health requirements to people with children in the winter."
But the SCLC staff has failed to do its homework and the seizure blows up into an embarrassment. … the owner is not a greedy real estate corporation, but rather an ailing 81 year old invalid almost as poor as his tenants. "I think King is right," he tells reporters, and he offers to give the building to anyone willing to assume the mortgage and make the necessary repairs.
In Birmingham, defenders of the racist status quo struck back at challenges to their authority with police dogs and fire hoses, in Selma they used billy clubs and tear gas. In Chicago, Mayor Daley and his machine are more sophisticated, they use promises and bureaucracy rather than police violence. Instead of arresting King for seizing the tenement, Daley loudly announces a "crash program" to inspect 15,000 West Side buildings for health and safety problems. The ailing Homan St. owner is charged with 23 code violations.
Behind the scenes, the county welfare department withholds the tenants' rent subsidies so there's no money going into Movement hands. After three months, a court orders that control of the property be returned to the owner. SCLC ends up spending $2000 (equal to $14,500 in 2014) to repair the building, but only collects $200 in rent (Steps 1-3).
The Chicago campaign is draining SCLC's financial resources. …Harry Belafonte recruits Mahalia Jackson, Dick Gregory, Sidney Poitier, and George Kirby to star in a "Freedom Festival" on Saturday evening, March 12, at Chicago's International Amphitheater on the South Side …. A sellout crowd of more than 12,000 attend the festival and thousands more are turned away for lack of space. After expenses, more than $80,000 is raised for the CFM (equal to $580,000 in 2014).
The festival is also an organizing tool. SCLC staff and CCCO activists work the ghetto, selling tickets and using the opportunity to meet, educate and learn from people in the community. Gathering 12,000 enthusiastic supporters in one place imparts a sense of strength and hope inspired by Dr. King's address, in which he says:
The purpose of the slum is to confine those who have no power and perpetuate their powerlessness. In the slum, the Negro is forced to pay more for less, and the general economy of the slum is constantly drained without being replenished. In short, the slum is an invisible wall which restricts the mobility of persons because of the color of their skin. The slum is little more than a domestic colony which leaves its inhabitants dominated politically, exploited economically, segregated and humiliated at every turn. ...
It is clear to me that we must organize this total community into unities of political and social power. ... As long as injustice is around, demonstrations will be necessary. So when it is appropriate, we will encourage sit-ins, stand-ins, rent-strikes, boycotts, picket lines, marches, civil disobedience, and any form of protest that are nonviolently conceived and executed.
The day after the Freedom Festival, Mayor Daley again undercuts the CFM. Without mentioning King or the movement, he boasts that his inspection teams have visited more than 96,000 poor families, and he claims that his administration has exterminated more than 1,600,000 rats and rodents in the ghetto. He goes on to promise eradication of all slum conditions in Chicago by the end of the following year, 1967.
Meanwhile, his allies in the Afro-American community continue working against the Freedom Movement. Rev. J.H. Jackson asserts that civil disobedience as practiced by King and SCLC is, "not far removed from open crime," and that Daley and school chief Willis are true-hearted friends of Chicago Blacks. Dr. King responds by observing that, "I don't think Dr. Jackson speaks for [even] 1% of the Negroes in this country" (Freedom 1-2).
Led by local attorney Gil Cornfield, ghetto tenants, fed up with high rents and atrocious living conditions, had begun the employment of a legal strategy, subsequently supported by the CFM, designed to pressure landlords to act responsibly.
In early 1966 tenants on the West Side had begun a rent strike. “The strike,” Gil Cornfield remembers, “was over the poor conditions and services among apartment dwellers in the community and centered on a handful of absentee owners and their real estate companies which controlled many, if not most, of the large apartment buildings.” Residents held mass meetings where they aired their grievances and developed their strategy. “The rent strike,” Cornfield recalls, “was resulting in wholesale eviction proceedings being brought by the affected real estate companies in the Circuit Court of Cook County.”
With Cornfield’s assistance, a strategy was developed to challenge each eviction in court, contending that if a tenant’s nonpayment of rent was in response to the landlord’s failure and refusal to maintain the rental premises in accordance with the requirements of the municipal code, this could be used as a defense in an eviction case. In housing court, defense attorneys presented photographs of the deplorable conditions, along with supporting testimony about unheeded complaints to the landlord. This strategy resulted in the finding that evictions were no longer pro forma, and the attendant legal costs would be borne by the landlords. At each eviction proceeding, the court was filled to overflowing with tenants and members of the community. This legal strategy, coupled with the ongoing rent strikes, prevented landlords from breaking the strikes through evictions.
Beyond court petitions, the coalition of labor and the Chicago Freedom Movement became the platform for conceptualizing the development of a tenant union federation that would use collective bargaining to change real estate management practices. Collective bargaining would empower residents to demand decent, safe housing and result in a fundamental change in the landlord-tenant relationship.
When massive rent strikes in properties held by the Condor and Costalis real estate firm became too onerous, the firm agreed to negotiate. Because of Cornfield’s labor background, the idea of a collective bargaining agreement covering all tenants in Condor and Costalis properties in East Garfield Park and parts of Lawndale was conceived. The collective bargaining approach was intended to improve housing conditions to conform to municipal codes and to strengthen community organization and leadership within a democratic framework (Cornfield 5-6).
Bernard Lafayette and Bill Moyer of the AFSC urge the coalition to focus less on forcing slum-lords to improve and maintain their properties and more on housing segregation as the key demand …. With a local anti-discrimination law already on the books and restrictive covenants unenforceble, achieving an open housing market in the city is a matter of public opinion and political will rather than forcing through new legislation or litigating in court. Perhaps through nonviolent direct action they can generate enough social pressure to make the city actually enforce its own law.
…
… in Bevel's view, addressing the psychology of ghetto oppression is as important as the economic and political aspects. Challenging and defying hate- filled white racists over residential segregation provides a way for those at the bottom of society to, "stand up and be a man, to declare that he was a human being and would henceforth expect to be treated as one."
By May of 1966, SCLC and the Friends are talking about vigils, picket lines and sit-ins at real estate offices — and marches through adamantly resistant all-white neighborhoods. Some in the CCCO coalition fear that such tactics will provoke a ferocious "white-backlash" — and mob violence. Others are impatient to confront residential racism head on (Focus 2).
In late May, King kicks off the action phase of the War on Slums by calling for a mass rally at Soldier Field followed by a march to City Hall. …
…
Shortly before the Soldier Field rally, CFM finally agrees on a Program of the Chicago Freedom Movement which they issue to the press. It's a 12-page document that broadly analyzes the problems faced by Blacks in the urban ghetto, calls for a wide range of systematic reforms and development programs, and lists an extensive (and diffuse) set of "Immediate Action Demands" that cover a variety of issues …
Included is this statement.
For our primary target we have chosen housing. As of July 10 we shall cease to be accomplices to a housing system of discrimination, segregation, and degradation. We shall begin to act as if Chicago were an open city. We shall act on the basis that every [family] is entitled to full access of buying or renting housing that is sound, attractive, and reasonably priced.
On the day before the Soldier Field rally, Daley boasts to the press that his administration has "moved to repair" 102,847 apartments in 9,226 dilapidated tenements and that housing fines have doubled over those levied the previous year.
Movement activists try to point out that "moved to repair" is not the same as actually made habitable, and that the level of housing code enforcement was so abysmally low that doubling the fines was little more than changing one drop in an empty bucket to two drops in the same empty bucket. But local media is well trained to accept at face value whatever pronouncements emanate from City Hall, so the Mayor's claims convince many people that the slum problem is being effectively addressed — and that therefore there is no need for disruptive protests.
Sunday, July 10, dawns oppressively hot and muggy, with temperatures in the high 90s. Soldier Field is the only available large venue, but it has no shade and the crowd swelters through songs and speeches. Organizers had hoped for 100,000 participants but the turnout falls clearly short of that goal. As is typical of large protests in the 1960s, number estimates by the police, media, and activists vary widely — the cops say 23,000, media estimates 30-35,000, and SCLC claims 60,000.
After the rally, King leads marchers out of Soldier Field for an almost three-mile trek to City Hall. Long hikes are not a normal part of urban life, and for many the distance and oppressive heat is too much and they fall out of line well short of the goal. But 5,000 or so manage to make the distance and reach Daley's seat of power. It's Sunday, and the building is closed. In a gesture of contempt that speaks louder than words, neither the Mayor nor any of his functionaries or bureaucrats deign to meet the thousands of constituents who have come to petition for redress of grievances. In an act reminiscent of his namesake Martin Luther, Dr. King tapes Demands of the Chicago Freedom Movement to the locked doors.
By previous arrangement, on the following day CFM leaders meet with Mayor Daley and his top aides. The meeting does not go well. King calls for real action and change, not just empty promises. Daley argues that all cities have slums and he lauds his own "massive" anti-slum efforts which he asks King to join. King restates the necessity of ending housing segregation by making Chicago an "open city," a point the Mayor does not respond to. Al Raby of CCCO goes through the demands, detailing them point by point until he gets to, "Creation of a citizens review board for grievances against police brutality and false arrests or stops and seizures," which evokes angry resistance from officials and umbrage on the part of Daley at the lack of trust in local government shown by Afro-American leaders.
The Mayor refuses to specifically address any of the Movement's itemized demands. King asks him to endorse the Civil Rights Act of 1966 then being debated in Congress — a bill supported by Democratic Party leader President Lyndon Johnson which includes open-housing provisions — Daley evades the question and refuses to do so.
The meeting ends in acrimony and Raby tells Daley, "I want you to know we're going to begin direct action immediately!" Each side speaks separately to the press. The New York Times reports: "Mr. Daley was scarlet faced, as his words tumbled over each other in indignation as he declared that Chicago already had 'massive' anti-slum and civil rights programs." And in the same article: "Dr. King said, 'We're demanding these things, not requesting them,' in the face of 'seething desperation' among Chicago Negroes that was inviting social disaster."
"We cannot wait," Dr. King tells the press. "Young people are not going to wait" (Marching 1-3).
Works cited:
Bernstein, David. “The Longest March.” Politics & City Life. July 25, 2016. Web. https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...
Cornfield, Gil, Heaps, Melody, and Hill, Norman. “The Chicago Freedom Movement’s Quest for Economic Justice.” The Chicago Reporter. January 15, 2018. Web. https://www.chicagoreporter.com/the-c...
“A Focus on Housing.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Freedom Festival.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Ghetto Youth Gangs.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Marching to City Hall.” .” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Steps & Missteps.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
Working with Rev. Clay Evans of the Chicago Baptist Ministers Conference and Al Pitcher a professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, SCLC staff member and divinity student Jesse Jackson begins organizing a chapter of SCLC's Operation Breadbasket. This is a program that uses church-led consumer boycotts to combat job discrimination and open up employment opportunities for nonwhites — an effort that finds favor among Afro-American clergymen who are reluctant to participate in militant protests or directly confront the Daley machine around a hot-button issue like segregated housing.
King addresses a meeting of more than 200 Black ministers who form committees to investigate, and if necessary target, racist hiring practices in the food industry, particularly soda-pop, milk, bread, and soup companies all of which sell well in the ghetto. By late spring they are having some success — 75 Afro-Americans hired by two milk companies and 44 at a third, for one example. But the Daley machine strikes back. Evans is erecting a new church. Suddenly, without explanation, his city building permits are withdrawn — halting construction for seven years (Steps 1).
SCLC leaders and organizers like Bevel, Andy Young, Big James Orange, and Jimmy Collier begin working with the Vice Lords, Blackstone Rangers, Cobras, and Roman Saints, urging them to stop fighting each other, support the CFM, and participate in nonviolent direct action.
At first they make scant progress. But they persist. Orange is beaten by gang members, not once but several times. He maintains nonviolence and he doesn't quit. Gradually he begins winning respect. Eventually, Bevel reports great success, and Dr. King addresses a "gang convention" at the Palmer House hotel. "From that period on," Orange later recalled, "we worked with these guys." Later on, some of the gang members guard Dr. King from racist attack, while others act as marshals on the mass marches into white neighborhoods that begin at the end of July.
…
But while some gang members do commit to tactical nonviolence as a requirement for participating in SCLC-led protests, the large number that Bevel hopes to recruit for his "freedom army" does not materialize. Most remain unwilling to forego their enmity with rival gangs, participate with whites in interracial actions, or accept nonviolent discipline — even temporarily (Ghetto 2).
Late in February, five desperate residents of a Coretta King, Al Raby, tenement on South Homan in the West Side ghetto ask Dr. King for help. They have no heat or electricity. Trash and garbage are not being collected. The landlord is doing nothing, and neither are city officials. There are 20 children living in the four occupied flats (the other two are empty). On a frigid winter day, Dr. King leads some 200 marchers to their dilapidated apartment house. King declares they are "seizing" the building and placing it in "supralegal trusteeship" so they can repair it. The Movement will collect the roughly $400/month rent on behalf of the tenants and use the money to make the place habitable. "The moral question is far more important than the legal one," he tells reporters who challenge him on the legality of bypassing the building owner.
Three of the unemployed tenants are to be hired for janitorial and general labor. They will be paid $2/hour (equal to $14.50 in 2014), which Dr. King considers a "fair minimum wage" (the actual federal minimum wage in 1966 is $1.25/hour, equal to $9.13 in 2014). Dressed in work clothes, King, his wife Coretta, Al Raby, and other activists begin cleaning out the furnace and shoveling up mounds of uncollected, frozen trash and garbage while efforts are made to get the electricity and heating back in service.
Media, politicians, and pillars of the community roundly condemn the seizure as "anarchy," "theft," and "revolutionary." Andy Young counters that after seeing a shivering infant wrapped only in newspapers they could not wait months for lawsuits to meander through the courts. "We wanted to do it illegally. We want to be put in jail for furnishing heat and health requirements to people with children in the winter."
But the SCLC staff has failed to do its homework and the seizure blows up into an embarrassment. … the owner is not a greedy real estate corporation, but rather an ailing 81 year old invalid almost as poor as his tenants. "I think King is right," he tells reporters, and he offers to give the building to anyone willing to assume the mortgage and make the necessary repairs.
In Birmingham, defenders of the racist status quo struck back at challenges to their authority with police dogs and fire hoses, in Selma they used billy clubs and tear gas. In Chicago, Mayor Daley and his machine are more sophisticated, they use promises and bureaucracy rather than police violence. Instead of arresting King for seizing the tenement, Daley loudly announces a "crash program" to inspect 15,000 West Side buildings for health and safety problems. The ailing Homan St. owner is charged with 23 code violations.
Behind the scenes, the county welfare department withholds the tenants' rent subsidies so there's no money going into Movement hands. After three months, a court orders that control of the property be returned to the owner. SCLC ends up spending $2000 (equal to $14,500 in 2014) to repair the building, but only collects $200 in rent (Steps 1-3).
The Chicago campaign is draining SCLC's financial resources. …Harry Belafonte recruits Mahalia Jackson, Dick Gregory, Sidney Poitier, and George Kirby to star in a "Freedom Festival" on Saturday evening, March 12, at Chicago's International Amphitheater on the South Side …. A sellout crowd of more than 12,000 attend the festival and thousands more are turned away for lack of space. After expenses, more than $80,000 is raised for the CFM (equal to $580,000 in 2014).
The festival is also an organizing tool. SCLC staff and CCCO activists work the ghetto, selling tickets and using the opportunity to meet, educate and learn from people in the community. Gathering 12,000 enthusiastic supporters in one place imparts a sense of strength and hope inspired by Dr. King's address, in which he says:
The purpose of the slum is to confine those who have no power and perpetuate their powerlessness. In the slum, the Negro is forced to pay more for less, and the general economy of the slum is constantly drained without being replenished. In short, the slum is an invisible wall which restricts the mobility of persons because of the color of their skin. The slum is little more than a domestic colony which leaves its inhabitants dominated politically, exploited economically, segregated and humiliated at every turn. ...
It is clear to me that we must organize this total community into unities of political and social power. ... As long as injustice is around, demonstrations will be necessary. So when it is appropriate, we will encourage sit-ins, stand-ins, rent-strikes, boycotts, picket lines, marches, civil disobedience, and any form of protest that are nonviolently conceived and executed.
The day after the Freedom Festival, Mayor Daley again undercuts the CFM. Without mentioning King or the movement, he boasts that his inspection teams have visited more than 96,000 poor families, and he claims that his administration has exterminated more than 1,600,000 rats and rodents in the ghetto. He goes on to promise eradication of all slum conditions in Chicago by the end of the following year, 1967.
Meanwhile, his allies in the Afro-American community continue working against the Freedom Movement. Rev. J.H. Jackson asserts that civil disobedience as practiced by King and SCLC is, "not far removed from open crime," and that Daley and school chief Willis are true-hearted friends of Chicago Blacks. Dr. King responds by observing that, "I don't think Dr. Jackson speaks for [even] 1% of the Negroes in this country" (Freedom 1-2).
Led by local attorney Gil Cornfield, ghetto tenants, fed up with high rents and atrocious living conditions, had begun the employment of a legal strategy, subsequently supported by the CFM, designed to pressure landlords to act responsibly.
In early 1966 tenants on the West Side had begun a rent strike. “The strike,” Gil Cornfield remembers, “was over the poor conditions and services among apartment dwellers in the community and centered on a handful of absentee owners and their real estate companies which controlled many, if not most, of the large apartment buildings.” Residents held mass meetings where they aired their grievances and developed their strategy. “The rent strike,” Cornfield recalls, “was resulting in wholesale eviction proceedings being brought by the affected real estate companies in the Circuit Court of Cook County.”
With Cornfield’s assistance, a strategy was developed to challenge each eviction in court, contending that if a tenant’s nonpayment of rent was in response to the landlord’s failure and refusal to maintain the rental premises in accordance with the requirements of the municipal code, this could be used as a defense in an eviction case. In housing court, defense attorneys presented photographs of the deplorable conditions, along with supporting testimony about unheeded complaints to the landlord. This strategy resulted in the finding that evictions were no longer pro forma, and the attendant legal costs would be borne by the landlords. At each eviction proceeding, the court was filled to overflowing with tenants and members of the community. This legal strategy, coupled with the ongoing rent strikes, prevented landlords from breaking the strikes through evictions.
Beyond court petitions, the coalition of labor and the Chicago Freedom Movement became the platform for conceptualizing the development of a tenant union federation that would use collective bargaining to change real estate management practices. Collective bargaining would empower residents to demand decent, safe housing and result in a fundamental change in the landlord-tenant relationship.
When massive rent strikes in properties held by the Condor and Costalis real estate firm became too onerous, the firm agreed to negotiate. Because of Cornfield’s labor background, the idea of a collective bargaining agreement covering all tenants in Condor and Costalis properties in East Garfield Park and parts of Lawndale was conceived. The collective bargaining approach was intended to improve housing conditions to conform to municipal codes and to strengthen community organization and leadership within a democratic framework (Cornfield 5-6).
Bernard Lafayette and Bill Moyer of the AFSC urge the coalition to focus less on forcing slum-lords to improve and maintain their properties and more on housing segregation as the key demand …. With a local anti-discrimination law already on the books and restrictive covenants unenforceble, achieving an open housing market in the city is a matter of public opinion and political will rather than forcing through new legislation or litigating in court. Perhaps through nonviolent direct action they can generate enough social pressure to make the city actually enforce its own law.
…
… in Bevel's view, addressing the psychology of ghetto oppression is as important as the economic and political aspects. Challenging and defying hate- filled white racists over residential segregation provides a way for those at the bottom of society to, "stand up and be a man, to declare that he was a human being and would henceforth expect to be treated as one."
By May of 1966, SCLC and the Friends are talking about vigils, picket lines and sit-ins at real estate offices — and marches through adamantly resistant all-white neighborhoods. Some in the CCCO coalition fear that such tactics will provoke a ferocious "white-backlash" — and mob violence. Others are impatient to confront residential racism head on (Focus 2).
In late May, King kicks off the action phase of the War on Slums by calling for a mass rally at Soldier Field followed by a march to City Hall. …
…
Shortly before the Soldier Field rally, CFM finally agrees on a Program of the Chicago Freedom Movement which they issue to the press. It's a 12-page document that broadly analyzes the problems faced by Blacks in the urban ghetto, calls for a wide range of systematic reforms and development programs, and lists an extensive (and diffuse) set of "Immediate Action Demands" that cover a variety of issues …
Included is this statement.
For our primary target we have chosen housing. As of July 10 we shall cease to be accomplices to a housing system of discrimination, segregation, and degradation. We shall begin to act as if Chicago were an open city. We shall act on the basis that every [family] is entitled to full access of buying or renting housing that is sound, attractive, and reasonably priced.
On the day before the Soldier Field rally, Daley boasts to the press that his administration has "moved to repair" 102,847 apartments in 9,226 dilapidated tenements and that housing fines have doubled over those levied the previous year.
Movement activists try to point out that "moved to repair" is not the same as actually made habitable, and that the level of housing code enforcement was so abysmally low that doubling the fines was little more than changing one drop in an empty bucket to two drops in the same empty bucket. But local media is well trained to accept at face value whatever pronouncements emanate from City Hall, so the Mayor's claims convince many people that the slum problem is being effectively addressed — and that therefore there is no need for disruptive protests.
Sunday, July 10, dawns oppressively hot and muggy, with temperatures in the high 90s. Soldier Field is the only available large venue, but it has no shade and the crowd swelters through songs and speeches. Organizers had hoped for 100,000 participants but the turnout falls clearly short of that goal. As is typical of large protests in the 1960s, number estimates by the police, media, and activists vary widely — the cops say 23,000, media estimates 30-35,000, and SCLC claims 60,000.
After the rally, King leads marchers out of Soldier Field for an almost three-mile trek to City Hall. Long hikes are not a normal part of urban life, and for many the distance and oppressive heat is too much and they fall out of line well short of the goal. But 5,000 or so manage to make the distance and reach Daley's seat of power. It's Sunday, and the building is closed. In a gesture of contempt that speaks louder than words, neither the Mayor nor any of his functionaries or bureaucrats deign to meet the thousands of constituents who have come to petition for redress of grievances. In an act reminiscent of his namesake Martin Luther, Dr. King tapes Demands of the Chicago Freedom Movement to the locked doors.
By previous arrangement, on the following day CFM leaders meet with Mayor Daley and his top aides. The meeting does not go well. King calls for real action and change, not just empty promises. Daley argues that all cities have slums and he lauds his own "massive" anti-slum efforts which he asks King to join. King restates the necessity of ending housing segregation by making Chicago an "open city," a point the Mayor does not respond to. Al Raby of CCCO goes through the demands, detailing them point by point until he gets to, "Creation of a citizens review board for grievances against police brutality and false arrests or stops and seizures," which evokes angry resistance from officials and umbrage on the part of Daley at the lack of trust in local government shown by Afro-American leaders.
The Mayor refuses to specifically address any of the Movement's itemized demands. King asks him to endorse the Civil Rights Act of 1966 then being debated in Congress — a bill supported by Democratic Party leader President Lyndon Johnson which includes open-housing provisions — Daley evades the question and refuses to do so.
The meeting ends in acrimony and Raby tells Daley, "I want you to know we're going to begin direct action immediately!" Each side speaks separately to the press. The New York Times reports: "Mr. Daley was scarlet faced, as his words tumbled over each other in indignation as he declared that Chicago already had 'massive' anti-slum and civil rights programs." And in the same article: "Dr. King said, 'We're demanding these things, not requesting them,' in the face of 'seething desperation' among Chicago Negroes that was inviting social disaster."
"We cannot wait," Dr. King tells the press. "Young people are not going to wait" (Marching 1-3).
Works cited:
Bernstein, David. “The Longest March.” Politics & City Life. July 25, 2016. Web. https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...
Cornfield, Gil, Heaps, Melody, and Hill, Norman. “The Chicago Freedom Movement’s Quest for Economic Justice.” The Chicago Reporter. January 15, 2018. Web. https://www.chicagoreporter.com/the-c...
“A Focus on Housing.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Freedom Festival.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Ghetto Youth Gangs.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Marching to City Hall.” .” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Steps & Missteps.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
Civil Rights Events -- Chicago Freedom Movement -- Violent Backlash
The sweltering heat wave continues into Tuesday, July 12, with the afternoon high hitting close to 100° in the inner-city canyons where heat radiates up from the pavement and out from stone-faced tenements. Nearby Lake Michigan provides an inexhaustible supply of water, so by long summer tradition residents in poor neighborhoods open fire hydrants, deflecting the flow with boards and trash-can lids so that children can cool off in the spray.
For some reason, on this day the cops shut off two hydrants near Roosevelt Ave. & Throop St. in the Near West Side ghetto area. It's not clear why. …
A crowd gathers, protesting that Afro-Americans are barred from three of the four closest swimming pools and that white children in an Italian neighborhood a few blocks north are still being allowed to play in water from hydrants. Someone uses a wrench to reopen the hydrants. The cops shut them off again. There is shouting and arguing. Tempers flare. A bottle is thrown, then more rocks and bottles. Police commanders back at HQ put the "emergency plan" into effect. Additional cops are rushed to the scene, soon more than 100 are trying to quell a small-scale revolt. Fighting breaks out. Clubs are used. Shots are fired. Arrests are made. Store windows are broken. A patrol car is set on fire.
As evening falls, the disturbance spreads out into the darkness. Dr. King, his wife Coretta, and singer Mahalia Jackson witness some of the turmoil on their way to a mass meeting at Shiloh Baptist Church. Tempers at the church are running high. Young men, some in gangs, others not, threaten to "tear up the city."
King, Raby, Andy Young, and Bernard Lee go to the police station and manage to win the release of six teenagers who they bring back to the church. The mass meeting is tumultuous. Outside are sounds of shouting, sirens, and distant gun shots. The six battered teenagers tell of being beaten by the cops in the station. Other youth decry the lack of playgrounds and swimming pools. Older residents berate the young for vandalism and violence. Dr. King tries to unite the crowd around his program of nonviolent struggle but he is heckled down. Hundreds of young militants stream out of the church to join the swelling rebellion.
King, Raby, SCLC and AFSC staff, CCCO volunteers, and Bill Clark and Chester Robinson of the West Side Organization, go out into the dark and dangerous streets, trying to reduce the violence and channel people's anger into constructive political action. By Wednesday morning, calm is restored.
Then on Wednesday afternoon, city workers begin refitting ghetto fire hydrants with tamper-proof locks to prevent anyone from opening a hydrant so kids can cool off in the spray. Fury explodes across the West Side. At one corner, 1,000 people battle 150 cops with rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails. The police respond with clubs, tear gas, and pistol shots. Stores are looted and some are burned. At a couple of locations snipers shoot at firemen. Cops fire a fusillade of bullets at the windows of a housing project.
While Daley is busy locking up ghetto fire hydrants, Illinois Governor Kerner issues an executive order denying state licenses to real estate brokers found guilty of discrimination. The Illinois Association of Real Estate Boards rushes to a friendly judge who immediately imposes an injunction blocking the Governor's order. … an association spokesman explains, "All we are asking is that the brokers and salesmen have the same right to discriminate as the owners who engage their service."
In Chicago, the local real estate board continues its opposition to the 1963 open housing ordinance, and on the national level the real estate and banking industries are furiously lobbying against the Fair Housing provisions of the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1966.
By Thursday the 14th, more than 600 city blocks are affected by smashed windows, looting, arson, and sporadic gunfire between police and concealed assailants. Some of the cops are now armed with machine guns, and 10,000 rounds of ammunition are stockpiled at police stations for use on the West Side.
On Friday, Governor Kerner orders 4,000 National Guard soldiers called up for duty in Chicago. Daley publicly blames SCLC, "People that came in here have been talking for the last year of violence, and showing pictures and instructing people in how to conduct violence." His ally Rev. J.H. Jackson piles on with, "Some other forces are using these young people."
King, Raby, and other CFM leaders go to City Hall on Friday afternoon and demand to speak with Mayor Daley. They are joined by the politically influential Catholic Archbishop John Cody. Confronted head-on, Daley is conciliatory. "We know you did nothing to cause the disorders and that you are a man of peace," he tells King. He agrees to remove the hydrant locks, replace them with spray nozzles, and deliver 10 portable swimming pools to ghetto neighborhoods. But in regard to the main CFM demands, he concedes nothing.
Later that night, as heavily-armed National Guardsmen begin patrolling West Side streets, gang leaders meet with King in his sweltering tenement apartment. While John Doar and Roger Wilkins of the Justice Department observe in silence, King and his SCLC aides talk through the night with Cobras, Vice Lords, and Roman Saints who are sprawled on chairs and the floor. Hour after hour the young firebrands talk about jobs, race, education, and the cops. King, Abernathy and Young engage them one by one, arguing the merits of nonviolence and constructive political program rather than destructive rage.
Deep in the night, there is a breakthrough. "Peanut" Tidwell of the Roman Saints rejects philosophical, "love your enemy" nonviolence, but he's willing to give tactical nonviolence a try. By 4:00am the other gang leaders have agreed to instruct their members to stand down and avoid further violence — for now.
With the gangs holding to their self-imposed truce and 800 cops plus 1500 soldiers patrolling the littered West Side streets, there is only limited, small-scale violence on Saturday morning. By afternoon all is quiet. The revolt's four-day toll is two dead — a pregnant Afro-American girl shot while walking with friends, and a Black man shot in the back, both presumably killed by police — some 80 or so seriously injured including 6 cops wounded by bullets, $2,000,000 damage (equal to $14,600,000 in 2014), and some 500 arrested (Sprinkler 1-5).
"Somewhere there has to be a synthesis. I have to be militant enough to satisfy the militants yet I have to keep enough discipline in the movement to satisfy white supporters and moderate Negroes." — Martin Luther King.
Testing and evidence-gathering about the practices of white real estate brokers and rental agents is stepped up, as is training for nonviolent protesters (Freedom 1).
For weeks, campaign organizers had been sending blacks posing as home buyers and renters into real estate offices in white working-class neighborhoods. Almost invariably, they’d be told nothing was available—even though the whites sent in soon afterward would be shown a long list of properties. Campaign leaders then staged protests and prayer vigils near these real estate offices. Standing before hundreds of supporters gathered at New Friendship [Baptist Church] on that sweltering July day, King declared that more “creative tension” was needed and that they were going to march into the all-white neighborhoods surrounding the black ghetto, starting with the [Polish,] Irish and Lithuanian stronghold of Gage Park (Bernstein 24).
Gage Park is fiercely "whites-only." According to the 1960 census, only 7 of its 100,000 residents are nonwhite …. the Gage Park district contains a mixture of apartment buildings and single and duplex family homes. King cites his own experience, comparing the slum dwelling he and his family rent in the ghetto with Gage Park:
We were paying $94/month for four run-down, shabby rooms, ... and we discovered that whites [in Gage Park] with five sanitary, nice, new rooms, apartments with five rooms, were paying only $78/month. We were paying 20% tax.
Rent of $94/month in 1966 is equal to about $686 in 2014, while $78/month is equal to around $570. It's not poverty that's keeping Blacks locked in the ghetto, it's deliberate racial segregation, for which, in essence, they pay a "Color Tax." … (Freedom 1-2).
Two days later [Friday evening, July 29], Young, Raby, and other top lieutenants led roughly 450 marchers from New Friendship to H.F. Halverson Realty, at 63rd Street and Kedzie Avenue, in the heart of Gage Park. (King had a speaking engagement and was not present.) (Bernstein 24).
Soon they are surrounded by 200 or so hostile whites who are working themselves up to violence. Police are present, but as the white mob grows larger and begins hurling objects at the demonstrators, the police commander tells protest leader James Bevel that he has too few cops to prevent bloody mayhem. Around 9:00pm, Bevel accepts the commander's offer to evacuate them back to New Friendship.
CFM leaders and activists passionately argue over whether or not they should have retreated in the face of violence. The principled position is to nonviolently stand your ground — and if necessary suffer the consequences. The practical problem is whether or not the War on Slums would be able to continue if Black pickets or white supporters were maimed or killed by racists. And there's another danger. Few ghetto residents are willing to participate in nonviolent protest, but that doesn't mean they're indifferent to white-racist violence. Many are from the South, with raw memories of lynchings and savage brutality. If a demonstrator is murdered or seriously wounded, Black leaders fear the West and South Side ghettos might erupt in massive violence on a scale dwarfing the sprinkler revolt of two weeks earlier.
There is no consensus about Bevel's decision to retreat, but there is general agreement that violence cannot be allowed to deter them. They must return on the morrow.
The next morning, Bevel, Raby, and Jackson lead several hundred marchers out of New Friendship on their way back to the Halvorsen office in Gage Park. Their route takes them west on 71st Street across the ghetto border at Ashland Avenue, through the all-white Chicago Lawn district, then on to Kedzie Avenue where they turn right through Marquette Park.
The vigil the night before had been at the end of a work day and racist whites had had little time to mobilize against the protesters by word-of-mouth. Now it is Saturday, and as the marchers emerge from Marquette Park at 67th & Kedzie they are met by a mob chanting, "Niggers go home!"
Police line the street, but the racists are well-supplied with eggs, rocks and bottles that they hurl at the protesters who march up Kedzi to 63rd Street where they hold a brief rally under constant aerial attack. Then they return to Friendship Baptist. Law enforcement does little to protect the Black and white demonstrators. They do arrest half a dozen of the attackers — for directing their rage or missiles at cops rather than the nonviolent freedom marchers.
The Halvorsen office is closed on Sundays, so the plan is to hold a prayer vigil at a Methodist church in the Gage Park district. Rather than marching all the way from Friendship Baptist, the demonstrators — 500 strong, half white, half Black — travel by car caravan through Chicago Lawn to Marquette Park where they form up their march column. The police have 200 officers at the scene and they assure Movement drivers that their cars will be safe if left in the park, so the drivers join the march rather than return their vehicles to the safety of the ghetto. (At this point, Movement leaders are still more concerned with the danger of ghetto youth exploding into riot than large-scale white violence directed at nonviolent protesters — but that's about to change.)
As the column of protesters march up Kedzie Street they are attacked by a huge throng numbering in the thousands, now including many white-supremacists coming in from all over the greater Chicago area. Chanting, "White power!" and screaming, "Burn them like the Jews!" they hurl rocks, bottles, bricks, and cherry bombs at the marchers. Black gang members acting as march marshals hold steadfast to their nonviolent commitment, doing what they can to protect the other protesters by trying to knock away the thrown missiles.
Gage Park is a "white ethnic" neighborhood and heavily Catholic. Chicago clergy, particularly Roman Catholics, are strong and visible civil rights supporters. To the mob, white priests, nuns, rabbis, and ministers — all identified by their religious garb — are "race traitors." With unflinching courage, it is marchers from the community of faith who bear the brunt of racist fury.
Sister Mary Angelica is a teacher at Sacred Heart grade school. She's struck down, bleeding and unconscious. The white mob cheers. Growing larger and more vicious, they now outnumber the marchers five or six to one. Jesse Jackson and many others are hit, blood flowing down their faces. Some are taken to hospital by cops. Others grimly march on, tenaciously holding their place in column because anyone who falls out of line will be surrounded and savagely beaten.
The march turns off Kedzie into a tree-lined residential street and the attackers dart through alleys and gaps between the houses to assault them from the flank. To block the column, they push empty cars onto the sidewalk and across the street. Barred from going forward, the marchers fall back under constant assault to Marquette Park where the cops have failed to protect their vehicles. Tires have been slashed and windows smashed. Some cars are overturned, two are pushed into a pond, and more than a dozen are on fire. Without vehicles, the protesters must retreat on foot back to Friendship Baptist in the ghetto. More than 40 marchers (and two cops) are treated for injuries at Holy Cross hospital, others are cared for at a makeshift aid station at the church.
Movement marcher Bernard Kleina recalled:
As we started marching, angry whites started spitting on me and the other marchers. Not being mentally prepared to accept this kind of degrading abuse, I told someone in the mob, "I wouldn't do that if I were you," as if I were ready to take on the whole mob. (I think I may have been a little naive at the time.) Then an older African-American man in front of me turned around and said, "Remember why you're here, brother," and from that point on, I remained silent and walked in solemn procession while rocks, bottles and cherry bombs were being thrown at us over the heads of the police who were "escorting" the marchers through the park.
With the escort of reluctant police officers, it turned out to be the most brutal march I had ever been involved in. In fact, when we returned to our cars, we saw several pushed into the lagoon and others that were set on fire, turned over or damaged in some way. ... So, the marchers headed east on 71st Street where at least for awhile, police protection broke down completely. ... without the police presence, the mob threw the rocks much harder and windows broke above and around us
.
Even though the rocks hit my legs and the marchers around me, we had to just keep walking. Even if the police escort had been there, little would have been done to protect the marchers. However, the police did take swift action when one of the mob hit a police officer. Then the police clubbed him down to the ground. It wasn't until we approached Ashland Avenue that the mob retreated because Ashland, at that time, was the "dividing line" between Black and White.
SCLC leaders and organizers, veterans of Birmingham, St. Augustine, and Selma, are shocked — stunned — by the ferocity of racist hate and rage — and the huge size of the mob — worse and larger than anything they'd seen in the South.
Bottles and bricks were thrown at us; we were often beaten. Some of the people who had been brutalized in Selma and who were present at the Capitol ceremonies in Montgomery led marchers in the suburbs of Chicago amid a rain of rocks and bottles, among burning automobiles, to the thunder of jeering thousands, many of them waving Nazi flags. Swastikas bloomed in Chicago parks like misbegotten weeds. Our marchers were met by a hailstorm of bricks, bottles, and firecrackers. "White power" became the racist catcall, punctuated by the vilest of obscenities — most frequently directly at Catholic priests and nuns among the marchers.
I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I had never seen, even in Mississippi, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as in Chicago. — Martin Luther King (Freedom 2-6).
Works cited:
Bernstein, David. “The Longest March.” Politics & City Life. July 25, 2016. Web. https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...
“Freedom Now! White Power!” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Sprinkler Revolt.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
For some reason, on this day the cops shut off two hydrants near Roosevelt Ave. & Throop St. in the Near West Side ghetto area. It's not clear why. …
A crowd gathers, protesting that Afro-Americans are barred from three of the four closest swimming pools and that white children in an Italian neighborhood a few blocks north are still being allowed to play in water from hydrants. Someone uses a wrench to reopen the hydrants. The cops shut them off again. There is shouting and arguing. Tempers flare. A bottle is thrown, then more rocks and bottles. Police commanders back at HQ put the "emergency plan" into effect. Additional cops are rushed to the scene, soon more than 100 are trying to quell a small-scale revolt. Fighting breaks out. Clubs are used. Shots are fired. Arrests are made. Store windows are broken. A patrol car is set on fire.
As evening falls, the disturbance spreads out into the darkness. Dr. King, his wife Coretta, and singer Mahalia Jackson witness some of the turmoil on their way to a mass meeting at Shiloh Baptist Church. Tempers at the church are running high. Young men, some in gangs, others not, threaten to "tear up the city."
King, Raby, Andy Young, and Bernard Lee go to the police station and manage to win the release of six teenagers who they bring back to the church. The mass meeting is tumultuous. Outside are sounds of shouting, sirens, and distant gun shots. The six battered teenagers tell of being beaten by the cops in the station. Other youth decry the lack of playgrounds and swimming pools. Older residents berate the young for vandalism and violence. Dr. King tries to unite the crowd around his program of nonviolent struggle but he is heckled down. Hundreds of young militants stream out of the church to join the swelling rebellion.
King, Raby, SCLC and AFSC staff, CCCO volunteers, and Bill Clark and Chester Robinson of the West Side Organization, go out into the dark and dangerous streets, trying to reduce the violence and channel people's anger into constructive political action. By Wednesday morning, calm is restored.
Then on Wednesday afternoon, city workers begin refitting ghetto fire hydrants with tamper-proof locks to prevent anyone from opening a hydrant so kids can cool off in the spray. Fury explodes across the West Side. At one corner, 1,000 people battle 150 cops with rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails. The police respond with clubs, tear gas, and pistol shots. Stores are looted and some are burned. At a couple of locations snipers shoot at firemen. Cops fire a fusillade of bullets at the windows of a housing project.
While Daley is busy locking up ghetto fire hydrants, Illinois Governor Kerner issues an executive order denying state licenses to real estate brokers found guilty of discrimination. The Illinois Association of Real Estate Boards rushes to a friendly judge who immediately imposes an injunction blocking the Governor's order. … an association spokesman explains, "All we are asking is that the brokers and salesmen have the same right to discriminate as the owners who engage their service."
In Chicago, the local real estate board continues its opposition to the 1963 open housing ordinance, and on the national level the real estate and banking industries are furiously lobbying against the Fair Housing provisions of the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1966.
By Thursday the 14th, more than 600 city blocks are affected by smashed windows, looting, arson, and sporadic gunfire between police and concealed assailants. Some of the cops are now armed with machine guns, and 10,000 rounds of ammunition are stockpiled at police stations for use on the West Side.
On Friday, Governor Kerner orders 4,000 National Guard soldiers called up for duty in Chicago. Daley publicly blames SCLC, "People that came in here have been talking for the last year of violence, and showing pictures and instructing people in how to conduct violence." His ally Rev. J.H. Jackson piles on with, "Some other forces are using these young people."
King, Raby, and other CFM leaders go to City Hall on Friday afternoon and demand to speak with Mayor Daley. They are joined by the politically influential Catholic Archbishop John Cody. Confronted head-on, Daley is conciliatory. "We know you did nothing to cause the disorders and that you are a man of peace," he tells King. He agrees to remove the hydrant locks, replace them with spray nozzles, and deliver 10 portable swimming pools to ghetto neighborhoods. But in regard to the main CFM demands, he concedes nothing.
Later that night, as heavily-armed National Guardsmen begin patrolling West Side streets, gang leaders meet with King in his sweltering tenement apartment. While John Doar and Roger Wilkins of the Justice Department observe in silence, King and his SCLC aides talk through the night with Cobras, Vice Lords, and Roman Saints who are sprawled on chairs and the floor. Hour after hour the young firebrands talk about jobs, race, education, and the cops. King, Abernathy and Young engage them one by one, arguing the merits of nonviolence and constructive political program rather than destructive rage.
Deep in the night, there is a breakthrough. "Peanut" Tidwell of the Roman Saints rejects philosophical, "love your enemy" nonviolence, but he's willing to give tactical nonviolence a try. By 4:00am the other gang leaders have agreed to instruct their members to stand down and avoid further violence — for now.
With the gangs holding to their self-imposed truce and 800 cops plus 1500 soldiers patrolling the littered West Side streets, there is only limited, small-scale violence on Saturday morning. By afternoon all is quiet. The revolt's four-day toll is two dead — a pregnant Afro-American girl shot while walking with friends, and a Black man shot in the back, both presumably killed by police — some 80 or so seriously injured including 6 cops wounded by bullets, $2,000,000 damage (equal to $14,600,000 in 2014), and some 500 arrested (Sprinkler 1-5).
"Somewhere there has to be a synthesis. I have to be militant enough to satisfy the militants yet I have to keep enough discipline in the movement to satisfy white supporters and moderate Negroes." — Martin Luther King.
Testing and evidence-gathering about the practices of white real estate brokers and rental agents is stepped up, as is training for nonviolent protesters (Freedom 1).
For weeks, campaign organizers had been sending blacks posing as home buyers and renters into real estate offices in white working-class neighborhoods. Almost invariably, they’d be told nothing was available—even though the whites sent in soon afterward would be shown a long list of properties. Campaign leaders then staged protests and prayer vigils near these real estate offices. Standing before hundreds of supporters gathered at New Friendship [Baptist Church] on that sweltering July day, King declared that more “creative tension” was needed and that they were going to march into the all-white neighborhoods surrounding the black ghetto, starting with the [Polish,] Irish and Lithuanian stronghold of Gage Park (Bernstein 24).
Gage Park is fiercely "whites-only." According to the 1960 census, only 7 of its 100,000 residents are nonwhite …. the Gage Park district contains a mixture of apartment buildings and single and duplex family homes. King cites his own experience, comparing the slum dwelling he and his family rent in the ghetto with Gage Park:
We were paying $94/month for four run-down, shabby rooms, ... and we discovered that whites [in Gage Park] with five sanitary, nice, new rooms, apartments with five rooms, were paying only $78/month. We were paying 20% tax.
Rent of $94/month in 1966 is equal to about $686 in 2014, while $78/month is equal to around $570. It's not poverty that's keeping Blacks locked in the ghetto, it's deliberate racial segregation, for which, in essence, they pay a "Color Tax." … (Freedom 1-2).
Two days later [Friday evening, July 29], Young, Raby, and other top lieutenants led roughly 450 marchers from New Friendship to H.F. Halverson Realty, at 63rd Street and Kedzie Avenue, in the heart of Gage Park. (King had a speaking engagement and was not present.) (Bernstein 24).
Soon they are surrounded by 200 or so hostile whites who are working themselves up to violence. Police are present, but as the white mob grows larger and begins hurling objects at the demonstrators, the police commander tells protest leader James Bevel that he has too few cops to prevent bloody mayhem. Around 9:00pm, Bevel accepts the commander's offer to evacuate them back to New Friendship.
CFM leaders and activists passionately argue over whether or not they should have retreated in the face of violence. The principled position is to nonviolently stand your ground — and if necessary suffer the consequences. The practical problem is whether or not the War on Slums would be able to continue if Black pickets or white supporters were maimed or killed by racists. And there's another danger. Few ghetto residents are willing to participate in nonviolent protest, but that doesn't mean they're indifferent to white-racist violence. Many are from the South, with raw memories of lynchings and savage brutality. If a demonstrator is murdered or seriously wounded, Black leaders fear the West and South Side ghettos might erupt in massive violence on a scale dwarfing the sprinkler revolt of two weeks earlier.
There is no consensus about Bevel's decision to retreat, but there is general agreement that violence cannot be allowed to deter them. They must return on the morrow.
The next morning, Bevel, Raby, and Jackson lead several hundred marchers out of New Friendship on their way back to the Halvorsen office in Gage Park. Their route takes them west on 71st Street across the ghetto border at Ashland Avenue, through the all-white Chicago Lawn district, then on to Kedzie Avenue where they turn right through Marquette Park.
The vigil the night before had been at the end of a work day and racist whites had had little time to mobilize against the protesters by word-of-mouth. Now it is Saturday, and as the marchers emerge from Marquette Park at 67th & Kedzie they are met by a mob chanting, "Niggers go home!"
Police line the street, but the racists are well-supplied with eggs, rocks and bottles that they hurl at the protesters who march up Kedzi to 63rd Street where they hold a brief rally under constant aerial attack. Then they return to Friendship Baptist. Law enforcement does little to protect the Black and white demonstrators. They do arrest half a dozen of the attackers — for directing their rage or missiles at cops rather than the nonviolent freedom marchers.
The Halvorsen office is closed on Sundays, so the plan is to hold a prayer vigil at a Methodist church in the Gage Park district. Rather than marching all the way from Friendship Baptist, the demonstrators — 500 strong, half white, half Black — travel by car caravan through Chicago Lawn to Marquette Park where they form up their march column. The police have 200 officers at the scene and they assure Movement drivers that their cars will be safe if left in the park, so the drivers join the march rather than return their vehicles to the safety of the ghetto. (At this point, Movement leaders are still more concerned with the danger of ghetto youth exploding into riot than large-scale white violence directed at nonviolent protesters — but that's about to change.)
As the column of protesters march up Kedzie Street they are attacked by a huge throng numbering in the thousands, now including many white-supremacists coming in from all over the greater Chicago area. Chanting, "White power!" and screaming, "Burn them like the Jews!" they hurl rocks, bottles, bricks, and cherry bombs at the marchers. Black gang members acting as march marshals hold steadfast to their nonviolent commitment, doing what they can to protect the other protesters by trying to knock away the thrown missiles.
Gage Park is a "white ethnic" neighborhood and heavily Catholic. Chicago clergy, particularly Roman Catholics, are strong and visible civil rights supporters. To the mob, white priests, nuns, rabbis, and ministers — all identified by their religious garb — are "race traitors." With unflinching courage, it is marchers from the community of faith who bear the brunt of racist fury.
Sister Mary Angelica is a teacher at Sacred Heart grade school. She's struck down, bleeding and unconscious. The white mob cheers. Growing larger and more vicious, they now outnumber the marchers five or six to one. Jesse Jackson and many others are hit, blood flowing down their faces. Some are taken to hospital by cops. Others grimly march on, tenaciously holding their place in column because anyone who falls out of line will be surrounded and savagely beaten.
The march turns off Kedzie into a tree-lined residential street and the attackers dart through alleys and gaps between the houses to assault them from the flank. To block the column, they push empty cars onto the sidewalk and across the street. Barred from going forward, the marchers fall back under constant assault to Marquette Park where the cops have failed to protect their vehicles. Tires have been slashed and windows smashed. Some cars are overturned, two are pushed into a pond, and more than a dozen are on fire. Without vehicles, the protesters must retreat on foot back to Friendship Baptist in the ghetto. More than 40 marchers (and two cops) are treated for injuries at Holy Cross hospital, others are cared for at a makeshift aid station at the church.
Movement marcher Bernard Kleina recalled:
As we started marching, angry whites started spitting on me and the other marchers. Not being mentally prepared to accept this kind of degrading abuse, I told someone in the mob, "I wouldn't do that if I were you," as if I were ready to take on the whole mob. (I think I may have been a little naive at the time.) Then an older African-American man in front of me turned around and said, "Remember why you're here, brother," and from that point on, I remained silent and walked in solemn procession while rocks, bottles and cherry bombs were being thrown at us over the heads of the police who were "escorting" the marchers through the park.
With the escort of reluctant police officers, it turned out to be the most brutal march I had ever been involved in. In fact, when we returned to our cars, we saw several pushed into the lagoon and others that were set on fire, turned over or damaged in some way. ... So, the marchers headed east on 71st Street where at least for awhile, police protection broke down completely. ... without the police presence, the mob threw the rocks much harder and windows broke above and around us
.
Even though the rocks hit my legs and the marchers around me, we had to just keep walking. Even if the police escort had been there, little would have been done to protect the marchers. However, the police did take swift action when one of the mob hit a police officer. Then the police clubbed him down to the ground. It wasn't until we approached Ashland Avenue that the mob retreated because Ashland, at that time, was the "dividing line" between Black and White.
SCLC leaders and organizers, veterans of Birmingham, St. Augustine, and Selma, are shocked — stunned — by the ferocity of racist hate and rage — and the huge size of the mob — worse and larger than anything they'd seen in the South.
Bottles and bricks were thrown at us; we were often beaten. Some of the people who had been brutalized in Selma and who were present at the Capitol ceremonies in Montgomery led marchers in the suburbs of Chicago amid a rain of rocks and bottles, among burning automobiles, to the thunder of jeering thousands, many of them waving Nazi flags. Swastikas bloomed in Chicago parks like misbegotten weeds. Our marchers were met by a hailstorm of bricks, bottles, and firecrackers. "White power" became the racist catcall, punctuated by the vilest of obscenities — most frequently directly at Catholic priests and nuns among the marchers.
I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I had never seen, even in Mississippi, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as in Chicago. — Martin Luther King (Freedom 2-6).
Works cited:
Bernstein, David. “The Longest March.” Politics & City Life. July 25, 2016. Web. https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...
“Freedom Now! White Power!” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Sprinkler Revolt.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
Civil Rights Events -- Chicago Freedom Movement -- Climax, Conclusion
"In glaring contrast to the arrests and beatings inflicted on Afro-Americans for the crime of opening fire hydrants for children to play in, few of the violent whites guilty of assault, battery, and arson are arrested at all, and fewer still are charged with serious offenses. An AFSC leader notes the friendly relations between whites in the mob and white cops. A federal official with the Community Relations Service concludes that the marchers were given, "very little protection." Al Raby states,
"It is clear that the police were either unwilling or unable to disperse the riotous mob that so brutally attacked Negroes and whites who had come to the community to seek open housing in compliance with the law. The failure ... is especially appalling [since] huge masses of police and National Guardsmen were mobilized to put down the violence of a few hundred Negroes on the West Side." — New York Times, August 2, 1966.
But the nationwide publicity generated by the violent attacks, and the civic disruption caused by the marches, vigils, and picketing, pose serious political problems for Mayor Daley. Working class whites opposed to open housing are a vital part of his machine — but so are Afro-American voters. If the police crack down on violent whites to protect Black demonstrators he risks losing white votes; if his cops fail to protect nonviolent protesters from racists he'll lose Afro-Americans. And on the national stage, his prestige, power and influence in Democratic Party politics may be threatened by continued, unchecked racist violence. Daley meets with leaders of the angry white communities, "Ignore the marchers and they'll go away," he tells them. "[But] law and order is necessary," he also warns.
On Monday, the neighborhood vigils and picketing continue while CFM leaders plan new marches. Though shocked at the scale and fury of white rage and violence, they are heartened to see that the number of protesters — both Black and white — is growing rather than dwindling out of fear. During the week, demonstrators are mostly youth and the unemployed, but on weekends they are being joined by an increasing number of people with jobs.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, August 2nd and 3rd, several hundred march against the Parker-Finney real estate agency in the Belmont-Cragin district of the Northwest Side. Some 150 cops manage to hold back a thousand hostile, jeering, whites who sing an impromptu ditty that becomes popular among White Power advocates:
"Oh I wish I were an Alabama trooper.
Oh, how happy I would be.
If I were an Alabama trooper,
I could kill niggers legally."
When racists in the crowd hurl objects at the marchers, the cops take a more active stance than they had in Gage Park, though, again, only a few of the violent whites are actually arrested. The stark contrast in police reaction to white violence as opposed to Black civil unrest is glaringly self-evident to anyone willing to look. But by and large, the mass media chooses not to notice it.
On Thursday evening, the 4th of August, there is another big mass meeting at New Friendship church on the South Side. Late on Friday afternoon, a large car caravan ferries 700 or so demonstrators to Marquette Park where close to 1,000 cops wait to guard them on another march to Kedzie and 63rd where courageous bands of protesters are already picketing several real estate firms.
A huge mob of 4,000-5,000 whites wait to confront the marchers with eggs, stones, cherry bombs, and bricks. At first, it's mostly teenagers and dedicated white-supremacists, but as the evening advances, adults coming off work join them. The furious throng gathers at the edge of the park, waving Confederate battle flags and holding hand-lettered signs with slogans like, "The Only Way to End Niggers is Exterminate." They chant, "We want Martin Luther Coon" and, as usual, "Kill the niggers!"
Dr. King steps out of his car and a thrown rock hits him in the head, dropping him to his knees. Aides help him to his feet and ask if he's okay. "I think so," he replies (Freedom 7-9). … he remained dazed for several moments as the crowd chanted, “Kill him, kill him.” Then he rose and marched on. Timuel Black was just steps behind King when the rock struck him. As Black recounts, “I said to myself, ‘If one of them bricks hit me, the nonviolence movement is over.’ ”
King told reporters: “Oh, I’ve been hit so many times I’m immune to it.” Later, he added, “I have to do this—to expose myself—to bring this hate into the open” (Bernstein 27).
The tight-packed marchers press up Kedzie behind a wedge of club-swinging police clearing a path through the mob. Stalwarts from the Black gangs try to nonviolently protect the protesters from rocks and bricks. Cherry-bomb explosions sound like gunfire. People flinch, but they keep marching (Freedom 9)!
The veteran political consultant Don Rose, who was King’s press secretary during his time in Chicago, remembers the terror he felt crossing Ashland Avenue, which marked Englewood’s color line at the time. It went from complete peace and quiet on one side, he says, to thousands of screaming, jeering, and taunting whites on the other. A mob had gathered on a grassy knoll nearby, he says, waving Confederate flags and yelling “Niggers go home!” and “We want Martin Luther Coon.” An extra large police force—under Daley’s orders—escorted King and the marchers through the park as rocks, bottles, eggs, and firecrackers rained down on them.
Andrew Young describes a moment from that day that stands out in his memory: “I remember this young woman running up in front of the march and getting in Dr. King’s face and calling him all sorts of vile names, just spewing out venom. He said, ‘You know, you’re much too beautiful to be so mean.’ And it stunned her. She turned around and walked away. And when we came back through that neighborhood on the way to the cars, she came back out of the crowd again and said, ‘Dr. King, I’m sorry, I don’t want to be mean. Please forgive me’” (Bernstein 24-25).
Again, white demonstrators and clergy in vestments are particular targets of hate. Rabbi Marx is struck by a thrown brick but marches on. One furious white woman shrieks at Afro-American cleric George Clements, "You dirty nigger priest!" Blood flows down the faces of those trying to protect King as the column finally reaches 63rd where the picket groups have been surrounded by racists chanting, "White Power!"
The march column absorbs the pickets, and after a brief rally returns to Marquette Park with the cops holding off the pursuing mob. This time, no one left cars behind. Instead, a fleet of transit buses and city vehicles wait to evacuate them back to Friendship church. Whites attack the buses, smashing windows, pouring sugar into gas tanks, and setting vehicles on fire. Father Clements is dragged from a city car and beaten. Once the protesters are gone, the mob turns its fury on the cops. Screams one middle-aged white man in a business suit, "You nigger-loving sons of bitches. I'll never vote for Mayor Daley again!" The police defend themselves with clubs and shots fired in the air.
Dr. King tells the press, "I had expected some hostility, but not of this enormity. I have never in my life seen such hate. Not in Mississippi or Alabama. This is a terrible thing."
But more disheartening than the racist violence is the reaction by news media, political leaders, and the general public. "Bloody Sunday" in Selma a year earlier had sparked a national outcry against both violent police repression of peaceful protest and the South's systematic denial of Black voting rights. Similarly, back in '63, dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham had helped form a national consensus that Jim Crow segregation had to go. But while there is wide-spread revulsion at the crude, hysteric, vicious, racism exposed by the open housing marches, there is little evidence of any surge in support for addressing northern economic injustices, or enacting open-housing legislation. Most press pundits and editorials condemn both the violent white- supremacists and the protests. A few, like the right-wing Chicago Tribune, clearly side with the white-supremacists. It accuses the protesters of wanting whites to, "give up your homes and get out so that we can take over" (Freedom 10-11).
Pressure on Daley continues to mount. Afro-Americans — elected officials, precinct captains, clergy, and ghetto voters — are demanding that the Mayor do something about white-racist violence, slums, and segregated housing. White working class voters and their ward bosses are furious at the police for using clubs and arrests to protect the civil rights marchers. Though Daley is not up for reelection in 1966, Democratic Senator Paul Douglas is. Douglas supports the open-housing provisions in the draft Civil Rights Act of 1966, and polls show him steadily losing white support — an ill omen for the future. (In November, Douglas is defeated by Republican Charles Percy.)
But while Daley is feeling the heat, so too is the CFM. The massive white violence has thrown CCCO into disarray. Shocked, dismayed, and fearing worse to come, some coalition leaders urge caution and a shift to less provocative tactics. Others are enraged, demanding even more forceful challenges to white racism. Tensions and arguments flare. …
With King, Raby, and others out of town at the SCLC convention, disagreements and tensions over goals, strategies and tactics roil the CFM. Then on Monday evening, August 8, Jesse Jackson declares to a mass meeting at Warren Avenue Congregational Church that he's going to lead marches into Bogun Park (Ashburn) and Cicero …
...
Jackson's call creates consternation. For years, parents in the Bogun Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side have been waging a furious battle to keep their schools "white-only," and it's expected that a civil rights march there will trigger violence as great — or greater — than Gage Park.
Cicero is worse. An all-white suburban city, it's infamous for its racist violence. During the day, some 15,000 blue-collar and service industry Blacks work in Cicero — but none are allowed to live there. Cicero is an explicit "sundown town," a city that requires nonwhites to be gone by sunset. Blacks spotted on the streets after dark face arrest, or violence from white vigilantes.
...
Many in CFM are furious at Jackson's impromptu call for a Cicero march which had been discussed but never approved by either the Action or Agenda Committees.
On Thursday the 11th, support for mass marches into white areas continues to erode within the CFM as some of the coalition's main labor supporters join the archbishop's plea for the marches to end. SCLC and the more militant CFM leaders reject these calls for protest moratoriums and announce the Bogun march is on for the next day. …
...
On Friday the 12th, 700 protesters surrounded by 800 police march into Bogun. Rocks and bottles rain down on protesters, but the massive police presence succeeds in holding back the huge crowd of hostile whites and preventing mayhem.
The Chicago Conference on Religion and Race, which has close ties to the business community, announces that a summit meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 17th. King and Raby know that now is not the time to back off of direct action. On Sunday, August 14, the Movement mounts its most ambitious action so far — three simultaneous mass marches that stretch police resources to the breaking point. Raby leads some 500 marchers back to Gage Park, Jesse Jackson takes 300 into Bogun, and Bevel leads 400 through the Northwest neighborhood of Jefferson Park. As has now become the norm, the marchers — half Black, half white — endure rocks, bottles, cherry bombs, racist chants, and shrieking epithets of, "Nigger, nigger, nigger!"
...
At mid-morning on Wednesday, August 17, the summit meeting convenes around a long horseshoe table in St. James Episcopal Church. The CFM delegation of 14 is headed by Dr. King and Al Raby. Mayor Daley, city officials, prominent clergy, and representatives of industry, real estate, and banking are present. Railroad president and Daley supporter Ben Heineman presides. All of the 56 participants are men, a pattern so commonplace that no one questions it — or even takes notice.
…
Al Raby presents nine demands distilled from those fixed to the doors of City Hall on July 10th.
...
The main opposition comes from the CREB [Chicago Real Estate Board]. They argue that they are legally required to represent their clients' wishes. If a home-owner or landlord doesn't want to sell or rent to nonwhites there is nothing the broker can do about it. They're not responsible for racial discrimination, and it's not their role to fight it.
...
The discussion bogs down into statements, counter-positions, arguments, and minutia adding up to no progress at all. By evening everyone is exhausted.
...
Andy Young proposes that a smaller working-committee be empowered to develop concrete proposals "designed to provide an open city." A group of 12 is appointed and instructed to report back in nine days on August 26th.
Daley tells reporters, "There does not seem to be a cessation of the marches," and the media reports that the summit is a failure — confirming King's analysis that the power-structure sees the protests as the problem, not violent racism, discrimination, or the inherent injustice of the ghetto economics (Summit Meeting 1-10).
On Friday, CFM testing teams show up at more than 100 real estate offices in white areas. Daley has one of his subservient municipal judges issue injunctions barring more than one demonstration in Chicago per day …
…
Meanwhile, the summit subcommittee struggles towards a settlement acceptable to both the CREB and the CFM. They finally produce a draft 10-point agreement on Thursday, August 25th. …
…
Movement activists criticize the proposal as falling far short of what they originally demanded on July 10 and much less than what they asked for ten days earlier on August 17.
…
On Friday morning, CFM leaders caucus at the AFSC offices to go over the proposal. They are deeply divided. Those who fear that continued marches will lead to mob killings and greater racial polarization favor accepting the deal as the best that can be achieved in the face of massive white resistance. As they see it, the threat of the Cicero march now appears to be their strongest leverage, but the Cicero action is scheduled for the following day and once it's over, more neighborhood protests are not likely to win further concessions.
…
The summit negotiators then reconvene at the Palmer House hotel. City, business, labor, and religious representatives express their commitment to the proposed 10 points. The CREB waffles and equivocates. They claim that real estate brokers would be forced out of business if required to sell or rent to Blacks. Dr. King directly confronts them, but they refuse to budge.
…
… In essence then, neither the city nor the CREB are willing to go any further than what is already in the 10-point draft. Their position boils down to, "take it or leave it."
The meeting is suspended while the Movement delegates caucus. Again they debate whether or not to accept the proposal and again they are in disagreement. But with the CFM splitting over continued direct action, there's little chance they will be able to mount larger, more powerful marches. Instead they risk numbers and political support dwindling away to impotence in the face of increased opposition and continued racist violence.
Reluctantly, Dr. King decides that it's better to take what they've won so far rather than gamble it all on the uncertain premise that more marches will result in a stronger agreement. Rejecting it now, with the CFM weakened and divided, might well result in a worse offer down the line — or no settlement at all.
The document is signed and it's announced that Cicero and all other open-housing marches are suspended, though the CFM does express its intent to mount future protests around issues such as employment discrimination and school segregation.
The summit agreement is not popular. Whites picket the City Hall with signs declaring, "Daley Sold Out Chicago" and "Summit Another Munich." When Dr. King tries to present the settlement to a mass meeting at Liberty Baptist Church he is drowned out by hostile chants of "Black Power."
With his usual grace, he invites one of the critics to address the crowd from the podium. SNCC activist Monroe Sharp argues that Black folk should solve their own problems without begging white mayors or pleading with white neighbors. And he sharply criticizes King and Raby for canceling the Cicero march, as does Chicago CORE leader Robert Lucas. West Side Organization (WSO) leader Chester Robinson states, "We feel the poor Negro has been sold out by this agreement." And a federal Community Relations Service official reports, "A general feeling [that the movement had] sold out."
CORE, SNCC, and other militants from the Action Committee declare their determination to defy white racism at its most virulent by refusing to accept cancellation of the Cicero march. …
On Sunday, September 4, some 250 marchers — 80% Black, 20% white — cross under the Beltway Railroad on West 16th Street to enter Cicero from Chicago. Closely guarded by 500 Cook County sheriffs and local police and 2,000 Illinois National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets, they are confronted by more than 3,000 jeering whites throwing rocks, bottles, eggs, and cherry bombs which some protesters equipped with baseball mitts try to intercept.
The white supremacists chant "White Power!" The marchers chant "Black Power!" Insults and epithets are hurled by both sides. The march halts at Laramie Avenue and 25th Street, the site where 17-year old Jerome Huey had been beaten to death four months earlier by whites. A prayer vigil is held and then the marchers retrace their route back to Chicago. As they are about to exit Cicero, a large gang of whites suddenly charges them. They are driven back by club-swinging cops and soldiers thrusting with bayonets.
After the summit agreement is signed in August, many SCLC staff members are reassigned to SCLC projects in the South or move on with their lives by returning to school or their pulpits. But some stay behind to continue working with tenant organizing, testing compliance with the agreement, other end-slums programs, and voter registration. Dr. King continues to live in his Chicago tenement until January of 1967 when he relocates to write his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Jesse Jackson continues organizing the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket and makes Chicago his permanent home.
…
By late fall, it's clear that the city of Chicago and the real estate industry are not living up to their promises. Testing of real estate offices reports continued discrimination against Blacks, yet not a single broker faces any threat of license revocation. At only one of CHA's 23 ghetto housing projects is there even a gesture at token integration, and two new segregated projects are being built. In March of 1967, Dr. King tells reporters, "It appears that for all intents and purposes, the public agencies have [reneged] on the agreement and have, in fact given credence to [those] who proclaim the housing agreement a sham and a batch of false promises."
Absent legislation or legal contracts, the only real methods for enforcing the settlement are the threat of resumed marches and the sanction of electoral retaliation against Daley. But by the spring of '67, CCCO is rivened by disputes and recriminations. It's incapable of mounting effective new open housing protests. Faced with insufficient support for renewed marches, SCLC responds with a voter-registration campaign built around the idea that, "slum dwellers can begin to break the grip of machine politics." The drive fails. In April of 1967, Daley's machine triumphs at the polls. He is reelected Mayor with 75% of the total vote — and 80% of the Black vote. As a practical matter, the summit agreement is dead (Summit Agreement 1-9).
Dr. King accepts as valid many of the complaints and criticisms. He later tells supporters, "We should have done just what a labor union does, we should have gone back to the members and voted on whether to accept the [summit agreement]." And he expresses regret for not having gone into Cicero. He too questions whether or not they should have started with a smaller, less centrally controlled city than Chicago, and whether in retrospect it would have been wiser to focus on narrower, more practical immediate goals than ending slums. "Promising to solve all their problems in one summer," was a tactical mistake he later concludes. But he also understands that the decisions of the day were forced by the imperatives of the times — pressures that hindsight often fails to take into account (Assessment 3).
Works cited:
“Assessment.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
Bernstein, David. “The Longest March.” Politics & City Life. July 25, 2016. Web. https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...
“Freedom Now! White Power!” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Summit Agreement.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Summit Meeting.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
"It is clear that the police were either unwilling or unable to disperse the riotous mob that so brutally attacked Negroes and whites who had come to the community to seek open housing in compliance with the law. The failure ... is especially appalling [since] huge masses of police and National Guardsmen were mobilized to put down the violence of a few hundred Negroes on the West Side." — New York Times, August 2, 1966.
But the nationwide publicity generated by the violent attacks, and the civic disruption caused by the marches, vigils, and picketing, pose serious political problems for Mayor Daley. Working class whites opposed to open housing are a vital part of his machine — but so are Afro-American voters. If the police crack down on violent whites to protect Black demonstrators he risks losing white votes; if his cops fail to protect nonviolent protesters from racists he'll lose Afro-Americans. And on the national stage, his prestige, power and influence in Democratic Party politics may be threatened by continued, unchecked racist violence. Daley meets with leaders of the angry white communities, "Ignore the marchers and they'll go away," he tells them. "[But] law and order is necessary," he also warns.
On Monday, the neighborhood vigils and picketing continue while CFM leaders plan new marches. Though shocked at the scale and fury of white rage and violence, they are heartened to see that the number of protesters — both Black and white — is growing rather than dwindling out of fear. During the week, demonstrators are mostly youth and the unemployed, but on weekends they are being joined by an increasing number of people with jobs.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, August 2nd and 3rd, several hundred march against the Parker-Finney real estate agency in the Belmont-Cragin district of the Northwest Side. Some 150 cops manage to hold back a thousand hostile, jeering, whites who sing an impromptu ditty that becomes popular among White Power advocates:
"Oh I wish I were an Alabama trooper.
Oh, how happy I would be.
If I were an Alabama trooper,
I could kill niggers legally."
When racists in the crowd hurl objects at the marchers, the cops take a more active stance than they had in Gage Park, though, again, only a few of the violent whites are actually arrested. The stark contrast in police reaction to white violence as opposed to Black civil unrest is glaringly self-evident to anyone willing to look. But by and large, the mass media chooses not to notice it.
On Thursday evening, the 4th of August, there is another big mass meeting at New Friendship church on the South Side. Late on Friday afternoon, a large car caravan ferries 700 or so demonstrators to Marquette Park where close to 1,000 cops wait to guard them on another march to Kedzie and 63rd where courageous bands of protesters are already picketing several real estate firms.
A huge mob of 4,000-5,000 whites wait to confront the marchers with eggs, stones, cherry bombs, and bricks. At first, it's mostly teenagers and dedicated white-supremacists, but as the evening advances, adults coming off work join them. The furious throng gathers at the edge of the park, waving Confederate battle flags and holding hand-lettered signs with slogans like, "The Only Way to End Niggers is Exterminate." They chant, "We want Martin Luther Coon" and, as usual, "Kill the niggers!"
Dr. King steps out of his car and a thrown rock hits him in the head, dropping him to his knees. Aides help him to his feet and ask if he's okay. "I think so," he replies (Freedom 7-9). … he remained dazed for several moments as the crowd chanted, “Kill him, kill him.” Then he rose and marched on. Timuel Black was just steps behind King when the rock struck him. As Black recounts, “I said to myself, ‘If one of them bricks hit me, the nonviolence movement is over.’ ”
King told reporters: “Oh, I’ve been hit so many times I’m immune to it.” Later, he added, “I have to do this—to expose myself—to bring this hate into the open” (Bernstein 27).
The tight-packed marchers press up Kedzie behind a wedge of club-swinging police clearing a path through the mob. Stalwarts from the Black gangs try to nonviolently protect the protesters from rocks and bricks. Cherry-bomb explosions sound like gunfire. People flinch, but they keep marching (Freedom 9)!
The veteran political consultant Don Rose, who was King’s press secretary during his time in Chicago, remembers the terror he felt crossing Ashland Avenue, which marked Englewood’s color line at the time. It went from complete peace and quiet on one side, he says, to thousands of screaming, jeering, and taunting whites on the other. A mob had gathered on a grassy knoll nearby, he says, waving Confederate flags and yelling “Niggers go home!” and “We want Martin Luther Coon.” An extra large police force—under Daley’s orders—escorted King and the marchers through the park as rocks, bottles, eggs, and firecrackers rained down on them.
Andrew Young describes a moment from that day that stands out in his memory: “I remember this young woman running up in front of the march and getting in Dr. King’s face and calling him all sorts of vile names, just spewing out venom. He said, ‘You know, you’re much too beautiful to be so mean.’ And it stunned her. She turned around and walked away. And when we came back through that neighborhood on the way to the cars, she came back out of the crowd again and said, ‘Dr. King, I’m sorry, I don’t want to be mean. Please forgive me’” (Bernstein 24-25).
Again, white demonstrators and clergy in vestments are particular targets of hate. Rabbi Marx is struck by a thrown brick but marches on. One furious white woman shrieks at Afro-American cleric George Clements, "You dirty nigger priest!" Blood flows down the faces of those trying to protect King as the column finally reaches 63rd where the picket groups have been surrounded by racists chanting, "White Power!"
The march column absorbs the pickets, and after a brief rally returns to Marquette Park with the cops holding off the pursuing mob. This time, no one left cars behind. Instead, a fleet of transit buses and city vehicles wait to evacuate them back to Friendship church. Whites attack the buses, smashing windows, pouring sugar into gas tanks, and setting vehicles on fire. Father Clements is dragged from a city car and beaten. Once the protesters are gone, the mob turns its fury on the cops. Screams one middle-aged white man in a business suit, "You nigger-loving sons of bitches. I'll never vote for Mayor Daley again!" The police defend themselves with clubs and shots fired in the air.
Dr. King tells the press, "I had expected some hostility, but not of this enormity. I have never in my life seen such hate. Not in Mississippi or Alabama. This is a terrible thing."
But more disheartening than the racist violence is the reaction by news media, political leaders, and the general public. "Bloody Sunday" in Selma a year earlier had sparked a national outcry against both violent police repression of peaceful protest and the South's systematic denial of Black voting rights. Similarly, back in '63, dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham had helped form a national consensus that Jim Crow segregation had to go. But while there is wide-spread revulsion at the crude, hysteric, vicious, racism exposed by the open housing marches, there is little evidence of any surge in support for addressing northern economic injustices, or enacting open-housing legislation. Most press pundits and editorials condemn both the violent white- supremacists and the protests. A few, like the right-wing Chicago Tribune, clearly side with the white-supremacists. It accuses the protesters of wanting whites to, "give up your homes and get out so that we can take over" (Freedom 10-11).
Pressure on Daley continues to mount. Afro-Americans — elected officials, precinct captains, clergy, and ghetto voters — are demanding that the Mayor do something about white-racist violence, slums, and segregated housing. White working class voters and their ward bosses are furious at the police for using clubs and arrests to protect the civil rights marchers. Though Daley is not up for reelection in 1966, Democratic Senator Paul Douglas is. Douglas supports the open-housing provisions in the draft Civil Rights Act of 1966, and polls show him steadily losing white support — an ill omen for the future. (In November, Douglas is defeated by Republican Charles Percy.)
But while Daley is feeling the heat, so too is the CFM. The massive white violence has thrown CCCO into disarray. Shocked, dismayed, and fearing worse to come, some coalition leaders urge caution and a shift to less provocative tactics. Others are enraged, demanding even more forceful challenges to white racism. Tensions and arguments flare. …
With King, Raby, and others out of town at the SCLC convention, disagreements and tensions over goals, strategies and tactics roil the CFM. Then on Monday evening, August 8, Jesse Jackson declares to a mass meeting at Warren Avenue Congregational Church that he's going to lead marches into Bogun Park (Ashburn) and Cicero …
...
Jackson's call creates consternation. For years, parents in the Bogun Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side have been waging a furious battle to keep their schools "white-only," and it's expected that a civil rights march there will trigger violence as great — or greater — than Gage Park.
Cicero is worse. An all-white suburban city, it's infamous for its racist violence. During the day, some 15,000 blue-collar and service industry Blacks work in Cicero — but none are allowed to live there. Cicero is an explicit "sundown town," a city that requires nonwhites to be gone by sunset. Blacks spotted on the streets after dark face arrest, or violence from white vigilantes.
...
Many in CFM are furious at Jackson's impromptu call for a Cicero march which had been discussed but never approved by either the Action or Agenda Committees.
On Thursday the 11th, support for mass marches into white areas continues to erode within the CFM as some of the coalition's main labor supporters join the archbishop's plea for the marches to end. SCLC and the more militant CFM leaders reject these calls for protest moratoriums and announce the Bogun march is on for the next day. …
...
On Friday the 12th, 700 protesters surrounded by 800 police march into Bogun. Rocks and bottles rain down on protesters, but the massive police presence succeeds in holding back the huge crowd of hostile whites and preventing mayhem.
The Chicago Conference on Religion and Race, which has close ties to the business community, announces that a summit meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 17th. King and Raby know that now is not the time to back off of direct action. On Sunday, August 14, the Movement mounts its most ambitious action so far — three simultaneous mass marches that stretch police resources to the breaking point. Raby leads some 500 marchers back to Gage Park, Jesse Jackson takes 300 into Bogun, and Bevel leads 400 through the Northwest neighborhood of Jefferson Park. As has now become the norm, the marchers — half Black, half white — endure rocks, bottles, cherry bombs, racist chants, and shrieking epithets of, "Nigger, nigger, nigger!"
...
At mid-morning on Wednesday, August 17, the summit meeting convenes around a long horseshoe table in St. James Episcopal Church. The CFM delegation of 14 is headed by Dr. King and Al Raby. Mayor Daley, city officials, prominent clergy, and representatives of industry, real estate, and banking are present. Railroad president and Daley supporter Ben Heineman presides. All of the 56 participants are men, a pattern so commonplace that no one questions it — or even takes notice.
…
Al Raby presents nine demands distilled from those fixed to the doors of City Hall on July 10th.
...
The main opposition comes from the CREB [Chicago Real Estate Board]. They argue that they are legally required to represent their clients' wishes. If a home-owner or landlord doesn't want to sell or rent to nonwhites there is nothing the broker can do about it. They're not responsible for racial discrimination, and it's not their role to fight it.
...
The discussion bogs down into statements, counter-positions, arguments, and minutia adding up to no progress at all. By evening everyone is exhausted.
...
Andy Young proposes that a smaller working-committee be empowered to develop concrete proposals "designed to provide an open city." A group of 12 is appointed and instructed to report back in nine days on August 26th.
Daley tells reporters, "There does not seem to be a cessation of the marches," and the media reports that the summit is a failure — confirming King's analysis that the power-structure sees the protests as the problem, not violent racism, discrimination, or the inherent injustice of the ghetto economics (Summit Meeting 1-10).
On Friday, CFM testing teams show up at more than 100 real estate offices in white areas. Daley has one of his subservient municipal judges issue injunctions barring more than one demonstration in Chicago per day …
…
Meanwhile, the summit subcommittee struggles towards a settlement acceptable to both the CREB and the CFM. They finally produce a draft 10-point agreement on Thursday, August 25th. …
…
Movement activists criticize the proposal as falling far short of what they originally demanded on July 10 and much less than what they asked for ten days earlier on August 17.
…
On Friday morning, CFM leaders caucus at the AFSC offices to go over the proposal. They are deeply divided. Those who fear that continued marches will lead to mob killings and greater racial polarization favor accepting the deal as the best that can be achieved in the face of massive white resistance. As they see it, the threat of the Cicero march now appears to be their strongest leverage, but the Cicero action is scheduled for the following day and once it's over, more neighborhood protests are not likely to win further concessions.
…
The summit negotiators then reconvene at the Palmer House hotel. City, business, labor, and religious representatives express their commitment to the proposed 10 points. The CREB waffles and equivocates. They claim that real estate brokers would be forced out of business if required to sell or rent to Blacks. Dr. King directly confronts them, but they refuse to budge.
…
… In essence then, neither the city nor the CREB are willing to go any further than what is already in the 10-point draft. Their position boils down to, "take it or leave it."
The meeting is suspended while the Movement delegates caucus. Again they debate whether or not to accept the proposal and again they are in disagreement. But with the CFM splitting over continued direct action, there's little chance they will be able to mount larger, more powerful marches. Instead they risk numbers and political support dwindling away to impotence in the face of increased opposition and continued racist violence.
Reluctantly, Dr. King decides that it's better to take what they've won so far rather than gamble it all on the uncertain premise that more marches will result in a stronger agreement. Rejecting it now, with the CFM weakened and divided, might well result in a worse offer down the line — or no settlement at all.
The document is signed and it's announced that Cicero and all other open-housing marches are suspended, though the CFM does express its intent to mount future protests around issues such as employment discrimination and school segregation.
The summit agreement is not popular. Whites picket the City Hall with signs declaring, "Daley Sold Out Chicago" and "Summit Another Munich." When Dr. King tries to present the settlement to a mass meeting at Liberty Baptist Church he is drowned out by hostile chants of "Black Power."
With his usual grace, he invites one of the critics to address the crowd from the podium. SNCC activist Monroe Sharp argues that Black folk should solve their own problems without begging white mayors or pleading with white neighbors. And he sharply criticizes King and Raby for canceling the Cicero march, as does Chicago CORE leader Robert Lucas. West Side Organization (WSO) leader Chester Robinson states, "We feel the poor Negro has been sold out by this agreement." And a federal Community Relations Service official reports, "A general feeling [that the movement had] sold out."
CORE, SNCC, and other militants from the Action Committee declare their determination to defy white racism at its most virulent by refusing to accept cancellation of the Cicero march. …
On Sunday, September 4, some 250 marchers — 80% Black, 20% white — cross under the Beltway Railroad on West 16th Street to enter Cicero from Chicago. Closely guarded by 500 Cook County sheriffs and local police and 2,000 Illinois National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets, they are confronted by more than 3,000 jeering whites throwing rocks, bottles, eggs, and cherry bombs which some protesters equipped with baseball mitts try to intercept.
The white supremacists chant "White Power!" The marchers chant "Black Power!" Insults and epithets are hurled by both sides. The march halts at Laramie Avenue and 25th Street, the site where 17-year old Jerome Huey had been beaten to death four months earlier by whites. A prayer vigil is held and then the marchers retrace their route back to Chicago. As they are about to exit Cicero, a large gang of whites suddenly charges them. They are driven back by club-swinging cops and soldiers thrusting with bayonets.
After the summit agreement is signed in August, many SCLC staff members are reassigned to SCLC projects in the South or move on with their lives by returning to school or their pulpits. But some stay behind to continue working with tenant organizing, testing compliance with the agreement, other end-slums programs, and voter registration. Dr. King continues to live in his Chicago tenement until January of 1967 when he relocates to write his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Jesse Jackson continues organizing the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket and makes Chicago his permanent home.
…
By late fall, it's clear that the city of Chicago and the real estate industry are not living up to their promises. Testing of real estate offices reports continued discrimination against Blacks, yet not a single broker faces any threat of license revocation. At only one of CHA's 23 ghetto housing projects is there even a gesture at token integration, and two new segregated projects are being built. In March of 1967, Dr. King tells reporters, "It appears that for all intents and purposes, the public agencies have [reneged] on the agreement and have, in fact given credence to [those] who proclaim the housing agreement a sham and a batch of false promises."
Absent legislation or legal contracts, the only real methods for enforcing the settlement are the threat of resumed marches and the sanction of electoral retaliation against Daley. But by the spring of '67, CCCO is rivened by disputes and recriminations. It's incapable of mounting effective new open housing protests. Faced with insufficient support for renewed marches, SCLC responds with a voter-registration campaign built around the idea that, "slum dwellers can begin to break the grip of machine politics." The drive fails. In April of 1967, Daley's machine triumphs at the polls. He is reelected Mayor with 75% of the total vote — and 80% of the Black vote. As a practical matter, the summit agreement is dead (Summit Agreement 1-9).
Dr. King accepts as valid many of the complaints and criticisms. He later tells supporters, "We should have done just what a labor union does, we should have gone back to the members and voted on whether to accept the [summit agreement]." And he expresses regret for not having gone into Cicero. He too questions whether or not they should have started with a smaller, less centrally controlled city than Chicago, and whether in retrospect it would have been wiser to focus on narrower, more practical immediate goals than ending slums. "Promising to solve all their problems in one summer," was a tactical mistake he later concludes. But he also understands that the decisions of the day were forced by the imperatives of the times — pressures that hindsight often fails to take into account (Assessment 3).
Works cited:
“Assessment.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
Bernstein, David. “The Longest March.” Politics & City Life. July 25, 2016. Web. https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...
“Freedom Now! White Power!” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Summit Agreement.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
“Summit Meeting.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...
