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 homebuyers 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-fi1led 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-Magazine/August-2016/Martin-Luther-King-Chicago-Freedom-Movement/

“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#1966chi_watts

“Sprinkler Revolt.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm#1966chi_watts