Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 59

The Chicago Freedom Movement represented one of the most ambitious campaigns for African American civil rights in the North. An alliance of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), the Chicago movement attracted the attention of the national media and made the nation aware of racial problems African Americans faced under the system of de facto segregation in the northern region of the United States. The underpinning for the “northern” movement began in the summer of 1965, when the Chicago civil rights community asked Martin Luther King Jr. to lead a demonstration against segregation in education, housing, and employment. The CCCO, which was founded by the Chicago Urban League, the Chicago NAACP, and other activist organizations like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), sought to fuse the growing protest energies that emerged between 1963 and 1964, when African American parents protested against the city’s inequitable educational system.

In 1964 activists Albert Raby called the CCCO together. During the summer of the following year, the CCCO staged daily marches against the school system’s educational policies and urged Mayor Richard J. Daley to remove Superintendent Benjamin Willis. Chicago had never before experienced such a sustained demand for racial justice. In January 1966, King announced plans for the Chicago Freedom Movement, which signaled a shift from the South to the North. He appointed Bernard Lafayette to help plan and execute the campaign’s direct non-violent action campaign. After the 1965 Los Angeles riots, it seemed critical to illustrate how the methods of non-violence could be transported to the North, thereby bringing attention to how economic exploitation adversely affected northern blacks.

Considered a city impregnated with a southern mindset, Chicago practiced a brand of politics that made this appealing to many. Daley exerted a high degree of influence and power, which placed him in position to transform many of the racist practices that directly impeded black progress. The SCLC also initiated Operation Breadbasket, an enterprise under the direction of Jesse Jackson that was aimed at eradicating racist hiring practices by companies doing business in black neighborhoods. Despite its southern mindset, the “Windy City” also provided a supporting cast with substantial succor among black and white clergy and activists, who were in the struggle’s forefront against racist hiring practices, police brutality and discrimination in housing and education. Later, that month King moved his family to Chicago where they resided in one of the slum areas on the city’s west side. With that move, the Chicago Freedom Summer demanded an end to Chicago slums. Under the leadership of King and Raby, the Chicago Freedom Movement’s activities and polices were established by a committee made up of representatives of the city’s diverse civil rights organizations.

Displeased at the prospect of King and others from the SCLC coming to his city, Daley made known that outside agitators were not welcome and declared there were no slums in Chicago. Drawing a line in the sand, he refused to meet with King. Reminiscent of southerners like Alabama’s Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, George Wallace, and Georgia’s Lester Maddox, Daley exposed to the nation that there were southern counterparts in northern cities.

Chicago was set for a long hot summer. In the summer of 1966, the Chicago Freedom Movement staged numerous demonstrations in all-white neighborhoods protesting housing discrimination, a custom usually achieved by redlining (a form of mortgage discrimination directed against blacks or other minorities) and block busting (a means for real estate agents and speculators to trigger the turnover of white-owned property to African Americans; often characterized as “panic peddling,” such practices frequently accompanied the expansion of black areas of residence and the entry of blacks into neighborhoods previously denied to them). Although the demonstrators were nonviolent, the communities were just the opposite. As the marches continued and gained momentum, riots erupted on Chicago’s West Side in July. The viciousness and magnitude of the violence that met the marchers was unsurpassed by any previous attacks anywhere. On August 5, as marchers protested in an all-white community, black demonstrators were met with malevolence. Antagonists hurled a barrage of rocks, bottles, and other implements, causing bodily harm to the demonstrators. Although King was struck in the head with a rock, he kept marching.

Later, King told reporters that he had never seen such racial hatred, not even in such Klan strongholds as Mississippi. The violent response of local whites and the resolve of civil rights activists to carry on the movement for opening housing to all people captured the attention of the national press and caused Chicago’s city hall to rethink its position. By late August, Daley backed down and was eager to find a way to end the demonstrations. He agreed to meet with movement leaders. After negotiating with King, various housing boards, and others, a 10-point agreement was signed that called for various measures to strengthen the enforcement of existing laws and regulations as they related to housing. However, the agreement did not satisfy everyone, and in early September activists marched on Cicero, Illinois, the town where a fierce race riot had previously occurred in 1951.

King told reporters that he had never seen such racial hatred, not even in such Klan strongholds as Mississippi.

Following the agreement, some members of the SCLC remained to help in housing programs and voter registration, and Jackson continued Operation Breadbasket. However, city officials failed to make good on their promises of the summit agreement. By 1967 the Chicago Freedom Movement ended as the Black Power Movement swept through Chicago, questioning interracial activism and non-violent direct action.

Linda T. Wynn