In honor of MLK Day, I want to share a thread about his year in Chicago (did yall know he spent time here?)

In 1965, after the Voting Rights Act passed, Dr. King was asked to join the Chicago Freedom Movement to work on de facto segregation in education, housing, and employment

He moved to Lawndale (on the west side) in Jan 1966 to experience Black living conditions. Coretta Scott King said, “[it] was on the third floor of a dingy building, which had...only one dim bulb at the head of the stairs… As we walked in … the smell of urine was overpowering”

His goal: to bring attention to and overcome the more insidious racism of the north, starting with Chicago. He said, “it is reasonable to believe that if the problems of Chicago, the nation’s second largest city, can be solved, they can be solved everywhere.”

That July, he addressed a large crowd at Soldier Field and marched with 5,000 to city hall to post a list of demands to the Mayor (Daley at the time). Since Mayor Daley controlled everything in the city, if the campaign could change his mind, conditions could drastically change.

That August, his efforts were met with intense opposition and violence. As he spoke in then-predominantly white Marquette Park with a plan to march to realty offices, he was met by a mob of 700 and was hit in the head by a rock so hard that it literally brought him to his knees.

Reflecting on the incident, he stated,
“I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’m seeing in Chicago.”

“As long as the struggle was down in Alabama & Mississippi, they could look afar and think about it and say how terrible people are. When they discovered brotherhood had to be a reality in Chicago & that brotherhood extended to next door, then those latent hostilities came out.”

At the end of August, Mayor Daley agrees to sit with King and other civil rights leaders to draft the “Summit Agreement”, a list of promises with little plan or accountability for implementation. Chicago, and many other cities, continue to have significant segregation by race.

Dr. King went on to write “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” in 1967 and was assassinated the following year. In 1968, Johnson passed the Fair Housing Act, making it illegal to discriminate in the sale or rental of housing by race, in his memory and work in Chicago.

In light of the ongoing inequities in cities like Chicago, many see the Chicago Freedom Movement as a failure. Yet, those who lived through it saw it as a successful awareness campaign that highlighted racism all over the US and the plight of Black people in the north.

Historian Lerone Bennett: “Racism was sometimes hard to see here. There were structures...Dr. King came...for open housing, integration, a level economic playing field. He was successful at bringing people together...& it changed the way things are done here [in Chicago].”

References:
https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2016/Martin-Luther-King-Chicago-Freedom-Movement/

https://interactive.wttw.com/dusable-to-obama/dr-kings-chicago-crusade

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/chicago-campaign

https://news.wttw.com/2021/01/17/lawndale-legacy-martin-luther-king-jr-fight-fair-housing

https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5096937/martin-luther-king-jr-picture-chicago/%3famp=true

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/10212922/amp