00:00

Chicago skyline

[Singing acapella, lament]

00:20

Black screen, Graphic: This is a story about what happened in Chicago in 1966. This is a story about why what happened in Chicago still matters.

00:33

Lorraine Motel, Memphis, Tenneesee

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s gravesite in Atlanta, Georgia

00:40

Singer-Rutha Harris

Lyrics: You hear me crying, Bring me little water, Sylvie.

00:49

Interviewee

CT Vivian: Just thinking about it. I almost want to cry myself. You see, because the depth of the man.

01:00

Graphic: the Chicago freedom movement

01:02

Interviewee

Al Sampson: That's what non-violence is. It's an alternative to the fire.

01:09

Graphic: people who were there

01:11

Interviewee

Bill Briggs: You have to get involved with their life, with their issues, with their concerns.

01:15

Graphic: marching, talking, shouting, singing

01:19

Bernard LaFayette: He said, you know what? That fella threw that brick and outta all those people, he hit me?

01:25

Graphic: through their words

01:27

Interviewee

Jesse Jackson: You had this political machine in Chicago, had a reputation at stake.

01:34

Graphic: Dr. King lives on.

01:36

Interviewee

Clayborne Carson: Chicago is the beginning of a new period, and it might be 60, 80 years of battling before we deal with the problems of the urban ghetto.

01:46

Graphic: Chicago, King…King in Chiago

02:03

Singer-Rutha Harris

Lyrics: She brought me nearly every dang thing, but she didn’t bring me the jailhouse key.

02:13

Interviewee

CT Vivian: To me. Martin King was a prophet. True, A true prophet. A prophet of our age. Nobody takes a place as someone like that, right? But neither can you erase him, right? And what they have said continues to echo throughout the whole society.

02:29

Interviewee

Graphic: Reverend James Bevel, Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff

James Bevel: See, he was like Lincoln, he saw you can't save ...You, you gotta do two things at the same time. Save America and free black people. Or free black folk and save America. You gotta do both of these things. And both of these things are important. And you got to love both of these things. You got to love black folk and you got to love America. And he did.

02:54

Cotton field

Graphic: a cotton field near Montgomery, Alabama

03:00

Interviewee

Graphic: Reverend C. T. Vivian, Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff

CT Vivian: The three great victories. The great victories happened in Alabama with Martin in charge. Alright? And first place Montgomery. That's where we got the method. The second place was Birmingham, where we won the Civil Rights Bill, right? Uh, uh, the third was Selma, where we won the Voting Rights Bill.

03:18

Interviewee

Split screen: images of Birmingham

Graphic: Birmingham, Alabama

James Bevel: I don't know who you are, you did that. I'll be back. Just like when they blew up the church and, oh, y'all, y'all blew up the church. Okay, you, you did that. Alright, I see you. Let me go home and think it through and come back, buddy. See, cause no, you are not, we are not going to let murder and terror decide nothing here. Not here. Love and truth will what? Decide.

03:48

Interviewee

Graphic: Father Michael Pfleger, Saint Sabina Church, Chicago

Michael Pfleger: In the south, it was very out front and clear. You can go here. You can't go here in the north. It was its perception. We can all get along. But don't you come here. You should know better.

03:58

Interviewee

Photo – MLK kneeling at civic rights protests photos

James Bevel: Not only would we end segregation at lunch counters, we would take this principle and in every vestige of racial segregation, because first of all, it was anti-human, anti-Christian and unconstitutional. So it's like, no, we don't have to go along with this.

04:15

Interviewee

Graphic: Billy Hollins, Chicago Freedom Movement

Billy Hollins: I think the north as a whole, not just Chicago, has, has, has been the most segregated places where the south, there's always been this, although it was segregated, it was always been this black folks and this white folks and this something.

04:29

Interviewee

Graphic: Clayborne Cardon, Ph.D., King Papers Project

Clayborne Carson: There was kind of a tacit understanding that he wasn't gonna take his campaign into Atlanta. And Atlanta would've given him a good introduction to the problems of the urban North.

04:41

Interviewee

Graphic: Reverend Jesse Jackson, Southern Chirstian Leadership Conference staff

Jesse Jackson: The question became, will a non-violent movement work in the urban north? There are problems in the north, the slums in the north.

04:49

Interviewee

James Bevel: Well, we said, no, God is God everywhere. Nonviolence will work anywhere. If it, if it doesn't work in the North, then it's not a science. It's not a southern phenomena. It's not an Indian phenomena. It'll work anywhere in the universe. It's cause it's, it's ripe.

05:03

Interviewee

CT Vivian: Hey, we weren't deciding. We are going north. Right? They came asking us to come help them overcome the, the more structured, huh, problems of the whole matter in the, in, in, in the north.

05:17

Interviewee

Graphic: Clayborne Carson, Ph.D., professor of History, Stanford University

Photo – MLK face

Clayborne Carson: Well, Chicago was a, a whole new world for him. He had gone to, Martin went to Watts in 1965, right after the rebellion there. And that came right after the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. So just a week later, Watts explodes, south Central LA explodes. And he goes there and he understands that there's this, this whole other dimension of the problem that will occupy his attention till the end of his life.

05:50

Interviewee

James Bevel: And Dr. King at that point had the kind of notoriety and prestige, having come out of Birmingham successful and the March on Washington successful, and the Selma Right to Vote movement successful, and the Nobel Peace Prize. So he had that kind of prestige and authority, moral authority.

06:14

Interviewee

Graphic: Dorothy Tillman, Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff

Dorothy Tillman: We chose Chicago because Dr. King said these words, and I heard him. I was in the room because I wanted to go to Cleveland. And he said, we must go to Chicago.

06:27

Interviewee

Graphic: James Ralph, Ph.D., author of “Northern Protest”

James Ralph: Now, of course, there was a Chicago civil rights movement that was ongoing that in terms of what you really call a movement. There had been earlier civil rights activity. Chicago had activists. Chicago had various initiatives.

06:43

Interviewee

Plantation fields

Clayborne Carson: Chicago is Mississippi Black people who moved north. So it's during that time that I think he begins to understand the totality of the problem is that, is that what we're really dealing with is a ghetto system that has its roots in the plantation system of the black belt. And that plantation system was throwing out its excess labor. You know, anybody who could escape it is going to Chicago.

07:17

Interviewee

Dorothy Tillman: He said, we must stay first. He said, some strange kinda Negroes in Chicago, they just strange. And they're sick as some of our white brothers. They just strange. And he said, but we must take on Chicago. He said, cause what? So goes, Chicago so goes the world. And if we could crack Chicago, this movement was spread across the country like wildfire.

07:41

Interviewee

Split screen: Photos – Chicago ghettos

CT Vivian: I don't know there was a black ghetto. There were five different ghettos except that they weren't called ghettos. They were just called a ghetto if you were black community,

07:48

Interviewee

Bernard LaFayette: The discrimination in housing was mainly, uh, perpetrated by the real estate agencies.

07:55

Interviewee

Willie Barrow: Employment problems, housing problems, community problems. It was just injustice everywhere.

08:06

Interviewee

Graphic: Jerry Herman, Chicago Freedom Movement

Jerry Herman: How you bring these two movements together that both had integrity. It was about, well, opening the city up so folks in have decent housing. It was about, look, this education system has got to change. It was about jobs. It was about conditions.

08:27

Interviewee

Graphic: Herman Jenkins, Chicago Freedom Movement

Herman Jenkins: Well, the first steps were a series of meetings. Oh my God, there were meetings. There were strategies put forward. There were analyses of what the problems were. We had meetings and more meetings.

08:44

Interviewee

Photo ­– MLK and Al Raby

Photo – civil rights protests, Raby speaking, MLK on podium as well

Jerry Herman: Well, I think there's a real lack of clarity around how the two movements, the, uh, triple C, which was Al Raby, and it was all of us actually. And when the King Movement folks came, how it came together. That's why Al Raby has to really, we had to talk more about him in terms of all the qualities that he had as a, as a leader. ‘Cuz he was, I mean, he's a gentle guy, but he had the ability to bring, bring people together. I mean, he talked, when he talked with you, it was as if you were the only person there.

09:21

Photo – MLK and Al Raby

Interviewee

James Ralph: Dr. Martin Luther King, combined with the local indigenous forces under the leadership of Al Raby, who was head of an umbrella group, the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, otherwise known as TripleCO. And they put together an alliance to launch what I would argue was the most  ambitious civil rights mobilization in the north. Clearly,

09:45

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – Chicago civil rights workers

Jesse Jackson: That was a closed housing market. You could send a black and a white to the same house. They're telling black, there's no room in the inn for why they couldn't rent it. We could prove it over and over again.

09:54

Interviewee

James Bevel: There's some issues that is far more crucial. Education, economic development, employment, we know that. But the open housing issue gives us a very tangible tool to raise the question of definition of man, like the lunch counters. You know, certainly the right to vote is more important than eating a sandwich. However, if you haven't resolved in yourself your own manhood, the right to vote is a heavier fight. So you started the lunch counter to resolve first I'm a man and I have a right to be treated with respect. So the open housing is that kind of issue.

10:39

CT Vivian: In this city, they burned down buildings that accepted black people at the same, uh, to be in the same building that white people were already in.

10:51

Interviewee

Graphic: Gary Massoni, Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff

Split screen: Photo – slum housing

Gary Massoni: Building owner who had ran to as many people as he could stuff in the building. Wouldn't live anywhere near the building himself. Would put minimal repairs into it. And so, over the course of time with more people living in smaller space, things wear out faster, buildings deteriorate faster and they don't get fixed. And so pretty soon people are living in, you know, multi-story hovels.

11:16

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – civil rights workers at the Chicago Real Estate Board building

James Bevel: And then you should set a, a conduct or more standard and enforce that. But you shouldn't, you shouldn't run houses based on race. And so when he took that position, I think that was kind of like, yep. And that was, this is what we are going to do. And then we could do it.

11:36

Interviewee

Graphic: Reverend Bernard LaFayette, Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff

Bernard LaFayette: They had areas that they call block busting. So they control the movement of   blacks and that sort of thing. And they did some dirty, really terrible things.

11:50

Interviewee

Graphic: Carolyn A. Black, Chicago Freedom Movement

Carolyn Black: And it wasn't just that they were dirty. It was the buildings. You would walk up the steps and there were hardly any steps there. You can go into a bathroom and there were, there's no running water. You could go into a kitchen. And, you know, it was, it was amazing that everything didn't burn down if you turned on a stove. It was just deplorable conditions. And I, and, and at that age, I swear, I just never even realized people lived, you know, lived like that.

12:16

Interviewee

CT Vivian: It's too many people with too little resources contained in too small a space.

12:24

Photo – people living in dilapidated housing

Footage – Black neighborhoods

[Singing, Rutha Harris. Lyrics: I woke up this morning. Stay on freedom. I woke up this morning, my mind stayed on freedom. Hallelujah, hallelujah.

12:58

Dorothy Tillman: But I had never seen buildings like that. I thought they were factories. Cause I was from Montgomery. And I said, oh, Bevel, what is all them factories doing in the middle of the city? And he said, those aren't factories people live there. That's, you expect us to organize those people. Say, yeah, we're gonna do it.

13:15

Black neighborhood streets

[Singing, Rutha Harris. Lyrics: I’m walking and talking with my mind on, stay on freedom. Hallelu, hallelu.

13:29

Interviewee

Graphic: Reverend William Briggs, Warren Avenue Church, Chicago

William Briggs: We really believed that we were going to end slums that the whole city would kind of come together around this effort. And it was a matter of getting the resources in the right place and getting the hearts of minds of people to work together to bring about this sort of transformational change that would all of a sudden bring renewal like a city had never seen renewal before. And that there would, there would be love and togetherness and that this change would, would actually transform the whole city. I'd probably be a little bit too much hyperbole to say that it would be as if the kingdom of God had come. But it certainly, I think deep in our heart, in the back of our mind, we really thought that something approaching the kingdom of God was about to happen.

14:32

Split screen: Photo – MLK walks up staircase

Graphic: To highlight this new battle, in January of 1966 Dr. King and his family moved into a typical ghetto apartment.

Photo – MLK in apartment

Graphic: To avoid bad publicity, the apartment’s owner acted quickly.

Photo – MLK inspecting the refrigerator

Graphic: An 8 man crew renovated the property, before Dr. King moved in.

14:59

Interviewee

William Briggs: I was so excited that I put a sign up on my marque the bulletin board on Warren Avenue going into the town. People get ready, the days of the slums are numbered.

15:11

Interviewee

Split screen: MLK in apartment with wife, Corretta

Dorothy Tillman: Bevel position was that if we gonna talk about the union in slum, Dr. King, you gotta stay, we gotta get a slum apartment to dramatize the slum.

15:19

Interviewee

James Bevel: the class lines in the black communities just about as rigid as the the race class, the, the race lines.

15:25

Interviewee

Split Screen: Photo – people outside dilapidated housing

Clayborne Carson: So he moves in, begins to talk to the people, especially the young people in the area, understands. He gets a rude introduction to the, the frustrations they feel because he tries to give a speech. He gets booed by young people. Now, what is that all about? That never happened in the south.

15:45

Interviewee

Dorothy Tillman: And I said that, I said, you know, I don't, these people don't like us. They don't like us. I don't wanna be here. I mean, we had a strategy meeting. Al, Samson were all of us in the room, you know, I don't wanna be here. We had James Orange, a different staff that they was bringing from the South to work. And we was telling them our feedback. In fact, some of the staff members went back to Atlanta.

16:08

Interviewee

Photo – child in Chicago

Clayborne Carson: The sense of powerlessness, uh, the sense that one's life is totally beyond one's control the sense of subordination. That's not just racial, but also economic.

16:22

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – Vivian in Chicago, speaking to a crowd

CT Vivian: Here he was living in the worst slums in the city and was being charged $90 a month. At the same time $80 a month could get you a full apartment on the north side, right? On the north side where, which was some of the best housing in the city now, where we would charge $10 more for slum housing.

16:48

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – MLK speaking to people on fire escape decks of slum housing, close up of children listening, other residents

James Bevel: If he lived there. Then the boys would come in and talk with him and, and, you know, they gonna spread to, Hey man, I was in there talking to Martin King, you know, cause to them, here's a guy's way beyond Daley. This is the guy on won the Nobel Prize. He's, in other words, he is the, in that world, the biggest hero living. He's beyond all that football stars and basketball, right? And he living in the neighborhood, and we can just go knock on the door and come in and talk to this guy. And, and he'd just be glad to see us, man. I mean, you know, and he needed that kind of relationship with the people in Chicago.

17:26

Singer–Harris.

Split screen: Photo – various MLK in Chicago, sign “End Slums”

Singer–Rutha Harris. Lyrics: Oh, freedom. Oh, freedom. Oh, freedom. Oh, and before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free and be free.

17:55

Interviewee

Graphic: Bernard LaFayette, program director, SCLC

Bernard Lafayette: In nonviolence, you don't argue and debate with people who have a different point of view than yours. What you do is try to understand them.

18:07

Interviewee

Graphic: Carolyn A. Black, Chicago Freedom Movement

Carolyn Black: It's a place of being consciously aware of what's going on around you and having the ability to change what's going on, and how do you bring the forces with you to do that? And how you do it in such a way where you do no harm to anyone and not destroy yourself, but not to destroy others.

18:26

Interviewee

Herman Jenkins: It was always a struggle for most of us to sort of, um, stay within the non-violent framework.

18:36

Interviewee

James Bevel: How do you solve social problems without compromising yourself, violating other people or violating properties of other people? And that question has not generally been addressed by mankind.

18:53

Interviewee

Bernard LaFayette: He believed in talking, but he also believed in walking. And he understood that he was always willing to talk and discuss with anybody, because violence is a language of the inarticulate.

19:08

Interviewee

Graphic: Kale Williams, American Friends Service Committee

Kale Williams: It calls on the best qualities of humanity.

19:17

Interviewee

Photo – Bevel in a crowd Chicago

 Interviewee

Photo – Bevel, Jackson in a crowd Chicago

James Bevel: If it's your problem, it's a problem that's bothering you, then you have a contribution to that problem. And that's the difficult thing. The reason why most people don't get into nonviolence, because you trace the problem back to yourself, at least an aspect of the problem, then what you have to do is take your investment out of the problem, then you forgive others and don't judge others who themselves have investments in the problem. So then when you get back to the cause of the problem, you formulate a plausible solution and you begin then to dialogue toward a solution by asking questions, getting answers, making decisions, doing work. And you continue to do that until you come up with the solution. And so you solve all problems without even a thought of injuring people so that you don't see enemies at that point. You see problems, you come to see a social problem as a problem, just like you would see a mechanical problem. And you get to see that when a human being is not conducting themselves according to the law, it is because there's an area of illness or ignorance or both.

20:31

Interviewee

Jerry Herman: Let's show what we can do by organizing this community and making change happen.

20:37

Interviewee

Graphic: Carolyn A. Black, field organizer, Chicago Freedom Movement

Carolyn Black: So you could learn again, how to literally talk to people, organize people, and what it meant. What does that mean? Organize people. And I think what it means is just really talking and convincing people to join something bigger than themselves.

20:51

Interviewee

Clayborne Carson: You know, one of the things I don't think King was very good at was organizing. I think he was a great inspirational leader, a great visionary leader, but he relied on other people.

21:01

Interviewee

William Briggs: You have to get involved with their life, with their issues, with their concerns. You, you, you have to be, go with them, do what they're doing, uh, be part of their life. Hang out with them.

21:13

Interviewee

Carolyn Black: So that meant knocking on doors, getting people to sign petitions, making decisions to organize tenants, meaning struggling to get them to be a cohesive force in even just one building.

21:24

Interviewee

Graphic: Jerry Herman, field organizer, Chicago Freedom Movement

Jerry Herman: When the, when the drive is from deep within, it's not a matter of going home and going to sleep. You got something to do.

21:32

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – MLK at pulpit, kids on the streets

William Briggs: I used to spend a lot of my time when I was at Warren Avenue, just walking up and down the street, sitting with people on porch stoops. We used to sit out all the time at night, hot night, just sit out night after night, hour after hour, talking with people, talking with their kids, go shoot hoops with the kids in the playing basketball, you know, stuff. Just things that you do with people.

21:57

Interviewee

Carolyn Black: How many people do we need to organize today in order to make sure we have enough people to be at that march?

22:03

Interviewee

William Briggs: When you invite them to come to some demonstration or to get involved or to do something that's very risky, might even involve their life. They're not gonna do this unless they know you. And unless they have confidence in you.

22:16

Interviewee

Jerry Herman: We were at a very critical place. We had to work together. If we got, we had a little momentum, we needed to try to hold onto it and build on.

22:25

Interviewee

Photos – Rally at Solider Field

William Briggs: It's gonna end with some kind of direct action. I mean, we were gonna do, we were gonna spend this much time together without doing something.

22:50

23:08

23:12

23:34

23:59

Graphic: In July of 1966, Dr. King leads a rally of 50,000 at Chicago’s Solider Field

Graphic: They then marched to City Hall and posted their demands.

Split screen: Singer-Harris

Graphic: The broad goal was ending slums forever. Open housing was the immediate objective. 

Graphic: The Mayor’s office did not meet their demands. A week after the rally in a black neighborhood on the west side police shut off a fire hydrant kids played in to beat the heat. This led to a confrontation that led to days of violence. People wondered in non-violence could work in a city like Chicago. Dr. King was heard to say, “We need some victories.” They decided to march again, but this time in the white, ethnic neighborhoods.

Singer–Rutha Harris. Lyrics: Oh freedom. Oh, freedom over me, over me.

And before I’d be a slave I be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free. No segregation, no segregation, no segregation over me, over me. And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave. And go home to my lord and be free.

24:12

Interviewee

Jesse Jackson: We've been told Chicago racism is subtle, not like down south. It was quite overt, quite dynamic.

24:18

Interviewee

Bernard LaFayette Change could not take place unless you were able to win the sympathy, if not the active support of the majority.

24:28

Interviewee

Graphic: German, Irish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Czech/Slovak, Black, Scottish, Polish, Italian, Ukranian, Lithuanian, Jewish, Chinese, Greek, Yugoslav, Russian, Mexican, French, Hungarian

Split screen: map of ethnic neighborhoods in Chicago

Carolyn Black: You have a black neighborhood, you have a Jewish neighborhood, you have an Italian neighborhood, you have a Ukrainian neighborhood, you have a, a German, I mean, everything is so Polish. And I mean, it was so, so, so separated the city of, in some ways, I think that's how they were able to build up so much control here is because they did keep people so segregated and so afraid.

24:51

Interviewee

Graphic: Paul Green, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Politics, Roosevelt University

Paul Green: So when people talk about Chicago as a city of neighborhoods, like it's some kind of acute Jane Jacobs, it wasn't that at all. It was a city of little villages where ethnic groups clung together in pretty much homogeneity. And you had various groups having nothing to do with other groups. That's why governing the city historically has been different, difficult, and different because there has never been a citywide vision. It's always, the neighborhood was more important than the city.

25:18

Interviewee

Herman Jenkins: I think for working class whites, they felt that integration for them had a real cost.

25:23

Interviewee

Split screen: White reporters at City Hall

Paul Green: So when individuals who were living in all lily-white neighborhoods called these people racist because they didn't want to integrate, that was the greatest sign of let's just simply say a lack of credibility. They got away with it because the people who wrote about it were also people who lived in lily-white neighborhoods or upscale neighborhoods like Hyde Park, who, anyone who went to the U of C and had a PhD was their friend no matter what color they were. Those individuals put themselves on a plateau and condemned these low-income individuals.

25:55

Interviewee

Graphic: Mike Pfleger, social activist

Michael Pfleger: It was just this, this kind of innate prejudiced that black people are not gonna come into our neighborhood. This is our neighborhood. And was so deep that people were willing to leave homes in the middle of nights rather than stay and live with people who were different than them.

26:20

Interviewee

Graphic: Billy Hollins, social activist

Billy Hollins: The white guys used to pump the women up in, in throughout that whole thing. That these guys, white guys are going, black guys gonna rape you and take you and rape your children. And everybody. So the women would, they, they were really nuts.

26:36

Interviewee

Michael Pfleger: You know, they ran us out of our old neighborhoods. They're not gonna run us out of our new neighborhood. And there was this anger and this rage. And so as if somehow this part of the city was called to be white.

26:47

26:58

27:08

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – Jackson at pulpit

Graphic: Jesse Jackson, Operation Breadbasket

Photo – Marchers

Jesse Jackson: We had that big march in the south. Whites were just absent. There may have been some Klansmen launching here and there, some heckler here and there. We got across Halstead and Ashland, the white ethnic, the white Catholic ethnics, they came roaring by the hundreds and by the thousands because we have the right to march. Chicago police had to beat them back. That had never happened in the South before.

27:13

Interviewee

Bill Briggs: Well, they were two marches. And to be honest, I get confused between Gage Park and Marquette Park.

27:17

Interviewee

Split screen: signs for Gage Park, Marquette Park

Carolyn Black: This is my city, my hometown, right? And I, me and I knew what Gage Park and Marquette Park were like, and you just didn't go there. You just didn't go to visit there, you know.

27:27

Interviewee

Sign for Marquette Park

Bill Briggs: The park divided the black community from the white community, basically.

27:31

Interviewee

Michael Pfleger: Myself and two of my friends, um, rode our bikes without anybody knowing it over to Marquette Park.

27:37

27:44

Photo – MLK with others

Split screen: Interviewee

Billy Hollins: We were marching. He didn't have any protection cause we just marched. And he was naturally the head of the march when they started throwing rocks. People automatically came up and was catching, and they was not catching the rocks just for him. It was, it was rocks for everybody.

27:52

Interviewee

Split screen: marchers

Bill Briggs: We were trying to, to go along the sidewalk or however we could while everybody was throwing things at us and stuff.

28:00

Interviewee

Billy Hollins: Every age group that was out there, and of course they'd call you n**** and stuff and go home and every day they could possibly think of.

28:10

28:27

28:35

Interviewee

Map of Chicago, push in on SW side, Marquette Park

Interviewee

Michael Pfleger: I saw people that I knew, people who lived in my neighborhood, people who went to the church. I went to people. Some were, uh, parents of friends I went to school with and people had some, I had been in their homes before and saw them in all this rage and this hate and, and yelling things and calling him names and some throwing rocks and throwing cans. And I saw this and I'd never seen this before. And I certainly had never seen these people like this before. So it frightened me to be honest.

28:44

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – Chicago police

James Bevel: Yeah, the difference is in the south is police beat you up. In Chicago, the people beat you up. That's the difference.

Interviewee

Kale Williams: The police had been keeping the crowd back, but they disappeared for a while.

28:56

Interviewee

Bernard LaFayette: He said, you know what? That fella through that brick and outta all those people, he hit me. And he said that that thing hurt . He said, he rubbed his head. He said, he hit me right in the head. You know what I mean? So he was a little surprised that, you know, and I, I don't think anybody was throwing the brick at him. You know what I mean? Cuz Jesse Jackson was there and Jesse Jackson saw the brick coming in and ducked.

29:31

Interviewee

Michael Pfleger: It was the greatest witness of nonviolence ever saw in my life, because I came to realize that the anger of the crowd rose by him not responding to it. And here he was walking the midst of all this hate and this rage and this anger and saying, well, your brothers and your sisters, and we've lived together. And he's coming and not responding in one negative way to this and walking in the midst of all this. And I remember consciously saying to myself, riding our bikes back home that day to myself, I said, there's something about this man. Either he is totally crazy or he has some kind of a power that I wanna know about.

30:12

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – Chicago police and a marcher

Carolyn Black: The police had to finally step in because there was nowhere for us to go. I mean, we were just stuck in this park in the middle of this area. And it was starting to get dark out.

30:21

Interviewee

William Briggs: When we got back to the lagoon to get back in our car. There were no, our car wasn't there. Uh, at least our van wasn't there.

30:31

Interviewee

Billy Hollins: They had burned the cars not only burned the cars, the ones that they didn't burn, they pushed in the, in the lagoon.

30:39

Interviewee

William Briggs: I assume that I go back the next day and find it somehow by myself, you know, and get it. And the next morning it was on the front page of the Sun Times it had been burned and then pushed into the lagoon. And that's why I couldn't find it. And it sunk into the lagoon.

30:56

Interviewee

Billy Hollins: They, they said Martin Luther King made the statement that he had never, throughout Mississippi, the hatred, the, you know, the women, the children, he had never experienced that.

31:07

31:26

Interviewee

Graphic: Rev. Al Sampson, ordained by Dr. King

Empty lot where King’s apartment was

Graphic: 1550 S. Hamlin Ave.

Al Sampson: Well, that night they had a meeting. They said, Dr. King, we coming holstered up. We ain't going through this no more. And so they came through and Dr. King heard them curse, heard them say, we ain't going through how we holstering up. We were all over at Dr. King's house on 16th and Hammond. And Dr. King was a patient man. He listened to people. And then he said, I'd like to ask you a question. If the building is burning, how do you put out the fire? Oh my God, why did he say that? Because he, they thought that he was playing with him.

31:42

Interviewee

Al Sampson: They went back out again. Dr. King, don't play with us. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. Started cursing some more. And Dr. King said, I just want to answer. Everybody know, you put water on, on the fire. It's the only way you're gonna put out the fire. And Dr. King said, that's what nonviolence is. It's an alternative to the fire. And you must see yourself as an alternative to the fire. Because if you keep putting fire on top of fire, you might start the fire, but you ain't got no guarantees about your ability to put out the fire. Then he went on and started preaching. The next day they was back out there again with Dr. King, with no military weapon.

32:25

Black screen, Graphic: Richard J. Daley was Mayor of Chicago from 1955 until he died in 1976. He was known as The Boss.

Singing. Lyrics: Segregation, lord. They love segregation, like a hound dog loves a bone.

32:52

Interviewee

Herman Jenkins: It's clever man. He not in effect provide the kind of opposition that would allow Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement to create that sort of black and white moral situation.

33:09

Interviewee

Jerry Herman: So essentially they, they took the position is, we are not gonna put anybody in jail. We are not gonna beat people. Uh, we are going to embrace you. We're gonna hug you, we're gonna smile.

33:20

Interviewee

Clayborne Carson: Daley was prepared to have black people vote as long as they were part of the Democratic machine.

33:25

Interviewee

James Bevel: I mean, he was one of the few mayors that would have rallies when we was in the South. He'd had rallies up there in Chicago for us and attend those rallies.

33:34

33:44

Photo – Richard J. Daley, Mayor of Chicago

Interviewee

Paul Green: Richard  J. Daley saw in black Chicagoans another ethnic group. It was not a racial group. To him it was just another group starting their way up the ladder. He incorporated them into the Democratic machine, unlike almost any other big city mayor.

33:48

34:00

Photo – MLK face

Interviewee

Clayborne Carson: The Chicago Experience was a learning experience for him. It was a tough learning experience cuz he had never really dealt with northern liberalism. You know, the fact that that, uh, the Democratic Party was in control of Chicago trying to deal with the gulf between in the north, between the rich and the poor, and the black community.

34:15

Interviewee

Gary Massoni: Black politicians who were close to Daley or who thought they were close to Daley. And, um, and the group of black ministers, they had a press conference sort of uninviting Dr. King, telling him, don't bother to come.

34:27

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – MLK talking at a press conference

Dorothy Tillman: We didn't have elected officials in the South. So that was new to us to have this political onslaught to come on us.

34:35

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – Mayor Daley at microphone

Gary Massoni: Daley was just adamantly opposed to Dr. King coming at all. He just felt like there was no need for him. There was no room for him. D idn't need to stir up any problem. People could vote here. People couldget jobs here, blah, blah, blah, blah.

34:48

Interviewee

Billy Hollins: Because he was all powerful. He was like the king of Chicago.

34:53

Interviewee

Willie Barrow: When God made this world, he made everything in it for, for men and women to survive. He had enough trees for everybody to have a to own a home. He has enough fowl of the air, enough beast of the field. Shouldn't nobody be going hungry. Somebody is cheating. Somebody's doing something wrong.

35:17

Interviewee

CT Vivian: When we said we had in the slums program, well, his counter was, oh, we have a great slum program. He didn't say, we're stopping you.

35:26

Interviewee

Clayborne Carson: It was an establishment that was designed to keep black people at a subordinate level and to keep a lot of people at the subordinate level.

35:36

Interviewee

CT Vivian: There was never anything said about overcharging. Never thing, nothing anything said to the realtors. Never anything said about the racism that forced people into these kind of situations.

35:50

Interviewee

Billy Hollins: It was about the status quo. It was white folks fighting for something. He would've cut the legs from under them if you could, if there wasn't, didn't fit in his deal.

35:59

Interviewee

CT Vivian: He acted as though he was all for, uh, all oh, so glad that you're, you know, such a great person in the city. But, uh, a meeting after meeting, it was very clear that he wasn't a statement after statement to the press. Did not say that.

36:15

Photo – MLK at podium/pulpit

Interviewee

Clayborne Carson: He understands that he's, he's in for a very tough time. And to me, Chicago represents the beginning of a new struggle. Selma was the end of the old struggle against the Jim Crow system. You know, that was a victorious struggle and it culminated after 60 years of battling. But Chicago is the beginning of a new period. And it might be sixty, eighty, a hundred years of battling before we deal with the problems of the urban ghetto. We're still dealing with it.

37:43

37:20

37:34

Photo – MLK with a microphone

Graphic: Cicero is a Chicago suburb famous for racial violence. They would march to Cicero. And it might be a bloodbath. In response, Mayor Daley and the Chicago Real Estate Board met privately with the leaders of the Movement. The City promised to enforce open housing laws and desegregate public housing.

Dr. King called off the march. The compromise is known as the Summit Agreement.

Map of Chicago, push into the suburb of Cicero

[music, violin/fiddle playing “I Wish I Was in Dixie”]

37:43

Jerry Herman: It failed, not fully and, and totally, but it, it created some issues because there was no resolution. There was no way to implement the agreement.

37:56

Interviewee

Kale Williams: Most of the agreements were not adhered to. But the last agreement from the summit meeting was that a new organization should be created to, uh, monitor these agreements and do whatever else would be necessary to and racial segregation and housing.

38:27

Interviewee

Dorothy Tillman: We were in at Warren Avenue waiting. Kale and all of them. They tricked Dr. King. And they called off that March.

38:36

Interviewee

Black screen, Graphic: Kale Williams served for 20 years as Executive Director of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities.

Interviewee

Kale Williams: That organization was created very quickly. So that two year stretched out to 40 and closed its doors only in May of, uh, 2006, because of lack of funding.

38:58

Interviewee

Black screen, Graphic: There is no official record of this conversation between Reverend Bevel and Mayor Daley.

Interviewee

James Bevel: Mayor Daley set that up, see in his office, and Kale don't want to talk about all of that. See, he wanna make like Daley so bad that, what do you call it? The Metropolitan Housing. That's Daley's idea. That's Daley stuff. He said, that's the way you do it. He said, because see all this fear and hating folk gotta, you gotta work it through, right? He said, then when, when the court ruled, then I will say to all the other mayors, we got to obey the law of land so I won't be by myself and I'll help 'em all, work it through and then we'll work. I said, well, that makes sense. He not doing no political juggernaut stuff. He really mean what he's saying. And I can feel that this is how you would do that, because you can take the law and do it. Okay then that's the way you need to do it. Then he asked us, well, but then he says, you guys gotta make it look like I ran you outta town. I said, fine with me. I said, cause I, we are not here to make a reputation at your expense. We are really trying to solve a social problem.

39:59

Interviewee

Kale Williams: That is unbelievable to me.

40:05

Interviewee

Dorothy Tillman: Dr. King really believed what it was guiding him to was correct. It was not correct.

40:14

Interviewee

William Briggs: I was one of those people who, um, along with other people on the Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff who believed that we probably should have gone into Cicero. And I actually went to Cicero when the, you know, romp contingent of people kind of went there.

40:31

Interviewee

Kale Williams Bob Lucas's point was that it was a failure.

40:33

Interviewee

William Briggs: He, he had to say that, you know, the big mistake of the movement was that we should have gone into Cicero with CORE and with him, or he was with CORE. The CORE was his organization.

40:46

Interviewee

Dorothy Tillman: And I grew up in this movement from nine years old. So the movement is not a joke for me. So when, when they made the decision to not go to Cicero and not tell us, that destroyed our faith, that really just hurt us.

Interviewee

James Bevel: So that the people in Chicago, a lot of the guys who saw the demonstration as a way to get at Daley or to get at white people, they didn't ask for, well, what are the next logical things that we need to do?

Interviewee

Dorothy Tillman: That was the first time ever that we put people there waiting to go do something, and they take 'em to the sideline and carry out what Master Richard J. Daley will tell them to do.

41:28

Interviewee

William Briggs: We oftentimes are part of things that become so much a part of us that, you know, if it's not a hundred percent done right or done our way, then we just separate ourselves from the whole thing and don't wanna be involved or connected with it.

41:46

Black screen, Graphic: By early 1967, energies were being directed elsewhere and Dr. King moved out.

[music, violin/fiddle]

41:55

Interviewee

William Briggs: Martin Luther King never and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference never intended to be here in Chicago forever.

42:07

Interviewee

Clayborne Carson: When he's in Chicago, he also begins to develop the, the germ of the idea of the poor people's campaign.

42:17

Interviewee

Gary Massoni: He had been meeting with Appalachian Whites, with Southern blacks, with Latinos, native Americans, farm workers. I mean, he was, he was pulling together a huge coalition of all races and all interests with a, with a common thread that everybody was suffering from this problem of poverty.

42:40

Interviewee

Split screen: Photo – MLK

Clayborne Carson: Tried to confront the problem of the gulf between rich and poor by getting the nation to take the problem seriously. To take that to Washington, to the centers of power, and to insist that they begin to confront that problem of the Gulf between rich and poor.

42:57

Interviewee

James Bevel: That is not the way to address poverty in the first place. At that time, the spirit of the Lord had told us to address the problem in Vietnam and to raise it in the context of murder.

43:12

Photo – MLK speaking, marching, preaching

Black screen

Photo – newspaper cover, “Murdered in Memphis”

[sound effects: heartbeat]

Singing. Lyrics: Amazing grace. how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was…

43:58

Interviewee

CT Vivian: I was in Chicago naturally. I was living here at the time, and the when I heard it, I was on outer drive going toward home.

44:14

Interviewee

Bernard LaFayette: It was like a piece of your heart was gone.

44:30

Interviewee

CT Vivian: I didn't say he'd been killed. He said he'd been shot. To be shot at all was still too much.

44:35

44:40

Interviewee

Lorraine Hotel

Gary Massoni: I was there at the motel. I like I said, I came down in the early afternoon. I got to the Motel there, Lorraine Motel.

44:42

Interviewee

CT Vivian: Next thing I heard was that not only had he been shot, but he'd died.

44:49

Interviewee

James Bevel: Um…

44:55

Interviewee

CT Vivian: When I walked up the split level, my wife then was in the living room and she said, are you going.

45:02

Interviewee

Clayborne Carson: Anyone who goes through those experiences knows that that life is fragile.

45:08

Interviewee

CT Vivian: I didn't say anything. I just, you know, just, went toward the bedroom. And I started packing. And then a friend of ours, Billups was his name, right? Billups had come from Birmingham with the movement, and Billups had stayed and he came the house and came on in and he said, are you going? And I just nodded my head and kept packing. He said, wait for me.

45:42

Interviewee

Carolyn Black: You know, you wanna say it wasn't his time, but it was cuz he died. But he just took, I think so much with him.

45:57

Interviewee

Lorraine Hotel

Gary Massoni: And I looked at the drapes. There was big windows and the drapes there, and I looked out and I could see up the hill where the shot apparently came from. And over here I could see Dr. King on the balcony and people gathering around him. And we just knew right then that it was, that that was a major turning point.

46:17

Interviewee

CT Vivian: Billups came back to with his suitcase. When he got to Memphis, he found that all he had in it was ties.

46:27

Interviewee

Michael Pfleger: And I was living on the west side at that time, and I remember standing on the third floor of a school building at Congress in Western and watching the fire and the burning on the west side and crying.

46:40

Interviewee

Jerry Herman: What the big thing of the day was, you know, why you, why you burned down your own house. Folks don't belong to us. We just renting.

46:50

Interviewee

Michael Pfleger: I guess the crowd was the crying, was seeing the hurt, anger of people. But part of the crying was because this was my idol. This was the, you know, the prophetic leader that was calling us to, to a different standard of le of life in America, in the world. It is no doubt in my mind that had Martin lived, we would be in a different country today.

47:21

Interviewee

CT Vivian: And Billups was, uh, pretty impeccable dresser, in fact been to be going for know how long. And all you put in your bag is ties says how it really upsets you really are. It didn't know. We did not know, know what to do.

47:36

Black screen, Graphic: One week after the assassination, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 became law.

MLK gravesite & reflecting pool

Singer-Rutha Harris

Singing. Lyrics: If you miss me from the back of the bus and you can't find me nowhere, come on to the front of the bus and I'll be riding up there, I'll be riding up there, I'll be riding up there. Come on up to the front of the bus and I'll be riding up there.

48:07

Interviewee, Graphic: Bernard LaFayette

Bernard LaFayette: The most powerful memory is that Martin Luther King would be on the front line.

48:11

Interviewee, Graphic: Billy Hollins

Billy Hollins: Before he was killed the Poor Folks campaign was started. So we were already already into this poor folks national to get all these people into Washington DC and had this tent city, you know, uh, so we were already working on that. So this was ongoing.

48:28

Interviewee

Jesse Jackson: There's some lag time between the impact and the signing of a given legislation in some sense, the ‘68 Open Housing Bill was signed in his memory ‘cuz he was killed in ‘68. But it was, it was based on what the open housing drive in Chicago. So people can live where they wanna live anywhere in America today.

48:44

Interviewee, Graphic: Jerry Herman

Jerry Herman: But one of the lessons that happened, and I, and I don't lay this totally on the Summit Agreement is that when you're not unable to produce the folks standing behind, you are saying nonviolence don't work. And the subsequent movements that came after were pretty were violent and met with, with violence.

49:06

Interviewee

CT Vivian: It was Martin King's movement that remained non-violence. There's Martin King's movement that won the great victories.

49:11

Interviewee

Herman Jenkins: I was in Newark. I've organized the Poor People's Campaign, the local black nationalists, I guess I won't call his name, came into an office one day with a pistol in his waistband and told me that we don't want none of the integration here to get out of town.

49:33

Interviewee

William Briggs: And I was getting phone calls. My family was getting phone calls from, uh, I don't know who they were from. People who would call wouldn't give me their name or say who they were or anything. Who would, uh, suggest that if I didn't leave town things would happen to me.

49:51

Interviewee

Dorothy Tillman: When I see a white leader, there's leading black folks. It bothers me because if you also going over, we should work this thing together. If people are gonna follow you, fine, but you also got a responsibility to go talk to your sick white brothers and sisters because you do understand them. And then we come together and we meet to change America.

50:10

Interviewee

CT Vivian: You are very seldom ever no matter how good the white man is, right, hear him telling another white man, he's a racist. White people just don't do that to each other. It's so rare. Or they did it to their father when they were teenagers, you see? Right? But they didn't do it when they became fully adults and were in the work world.

50:33

Interviewee, Graphic: Bill Briggs

William Briggs: I think that one of the keys of Martin Luther King's movement was that it had an appeal to the hearts and minds of everybody, white and Black and so it was a universal message. And I think that there was a mistake when when black power began to be interpreted as separate power.

51:07

Interviewee, Graphic: Herman Jenkins

Herman Jenkins: Our failure to really find a way to build coalitions with poor whites was a major problem in the second half of the 20th century.

51:19

Interviewee, Graphic: Dorothy Tillman

Dorothy Tillman: But I think both black and white, if America's gonna be all it should be, we're gonna have to work. We're gonna have to struggle. But I think whites have a role too, and they don't have a role just to always lead us and take our stuff and to talk about it. Well, I'm gonna come over and help the poor thing. We have to work together, but you also have to work in your community to deal with the illness.

51:38

Interviewee, Graphic: Willie Barrow

Willie Barrow: It wasn't just Dr. King. We had Jews; we had white people; we had women, who lost their lives, because of standing up for peace, standing up for truth, standing up for justice.

51:54

Interviewee

Michael Pfleger: If, if, if the flower children and the civil rights children had somehow continued to share an exchange and, and, and unite and and transform the society. It was young people that stopped Vietnam War. It was young people ultimately that were the movement, the soldiers.

52:13

Interviewee

Jesse Jackson: Movement never left. I'm still here. I was a staff member.

52:17

Interviewee

Michael Pfleger: What's happened, Dr. King was a young man when he got killed. What's happened in this selfish me and mine mentality, society where we're realizing that our children are still fighting the battles that their parents thought they won.

52:36

Interviewee, Graphic: Al Sampson

Al Sampson: White liberals who were struggling with us, with Dr. King are no longer struggling with us now. They are silent on all of these issues. I don't know whether black leadership has been so corrupted where they feel organizationally and politically impotent, but whatever the rationale the poor people have that Dr. King lived, suffered, sacrificed, and died for are now scattered all over. Not only Chicago, but all over black America in every major city you go into now, there is this land grab on one side and what are we going to do with poor people on the other side?

53:22

Interviewee

Jesse Jackson: Some people never appreciate just how dynamic this movement had global impact. It shook the world. We won in Chicago and we are still winning.

53:30

Interviewee, Graphic: Mike Pfleger

Michael Pfleger: There certainly has been a number of improvements, but as I look at society today, I think we're worse. And the reason I say that is, is because at least then it was clear cut and open. Whether it was a sign at a door or a drinking fountain. Today it's subtle and it's mean and it's underground and it's vicious.

53:55

Interviewee, Graphic: Kale Williams

Kale Williams: We still have a very serious problem of the combination of racism and poverty and that that feed upon each other.

54:07

Interviewee, Graphic: Jesse Jackson

Jesse Jackson: We changed federal housing legislation. We removed people's artificial barriers from their minds and let them, that they could be, they could do. And it happened. We, um, gave strength to an independent political movement. We gave rise to an outstanding economic development movement for urban American. I mean, I look back, I just see victories all over the place.

54:30

Interviewee, Graphic: Carolyn A. Black

Carolyn Black: Never being able to be unactive again in any kind of way. I could never just exist without being part of the political struggle that was going on around me.

54:39

Interviewee, Graphic: Gary Massoni

Gary Massoni: It was a, it was a very high impact period. And um, I'm not sure it could have happened anywhere but in Chicago either.

54:48

Interviewee, Graphic: Clayborne Carson

Clayborne Carson: Yeah, Chicago was something new. Chicago was on a different scale. Chicago was the kind of problem that we're still confronting. We're still dealing with the rootlessness of, of young black males.

55:06

Interviewee, Graphic: C.T. Vivian

CT Vivian: But he was, there's life on the line for people that nobody else knew about or cared about. He didn't have to do any of it, get my point, but he was doing all of it, right? And, and the just thinking about it, I almost want to cry myself, you see is because the depth of the man.

55:32

Interviewee, Graphic: James Bevel

James Bevel: So that that, that the human community in, in the very short time really can be brought to social living where things like murder, miseducating children and economic exploitation and deprivation, sexual perversity and brokenness and family would be a thing of the past. And it just, we will see it as something that is, comes from a disease state that we can remedy. And that's what he brought. And it's like we have to make sure that we get that done.

56:03

Lorraine Hotel

56:20

Graphic: credits

Singing, lyrics: This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine…

END

END