Civil Rights Events

Chicago Freedom Movement

The Immediate Problems

Hoping to profit from economic opportunity and gain social justice, African Americans fleeing Jim Crow life in the South during the first half of the Twentieth Century had been systematically herded into and kept inside urban pockets of the industrial cities of the North.

One of the major problems that Dr. King and the SCLC had to deal with in the ghettos of Chicago was segregated housing. A black family arriving in Chicago was not permitted the freedom to choose where it might reside. The most notorious tactic used to restrict residence “was redlining, the refusal of banks and insurance firms to issue or insure mortgage loans in predominantly black neighborhoods, which would often get delineated on city maps with a red line” (Bernstein 8).

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which was created to make homeownership accessible for all Americans, denied loan insurance to African Americans and even those who lived near them. … the FHA created maps that were marked with red ink in the areas where minorities lived to signify that the FHA believed that these neighborhoods were “undesirable” for investment.

Restrictive covenants – a second tactic -- were laws that prevented African Americans from moving into white neighborhoods. These policies were a deliberate attempt by the government to segregate blacks and whites. … African Americans were forced into low-opportunity neighborhoods. (Chicago 2-3).

In the greater Chicago-area, almost all homes and apartment buildings occupied by whites are covered by restrictive covenants written into the property deeds. These covenants prohibit nonwhites (and in some cases Jews) from buying or renting. For example:

"Said Property shall not be sold, conveyed, granted or leased, in whole or in part, to any Hebrew person or family, or any person or family not of the white race, nor shall any Hebrew person, or other person not of the white race, be permitted to occupy any portion of said property or any building thereon, except a domestic servant actually employed by the owner of said property."

Courts have ruled restrictive covenants illegal and unenforceable, but owners and brokers do as they wish. From time to time, a few Blacks manage to evade real estate industry discrimination and defy the covenants to actually move into a white neighborhood. They are met with harassment and mob violence.

Back in 1963, a local Chicago ordinance was passed outlawing racial discrimination in real estate. But it was never enforced, owners, brokers, landlords, rental agencies, and mortgage lenders simply ignored it. In '65, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) tried to promote "open occupancy" through moral suasion — without success (Focus 1).

Not only were African Americans limited to living in certain neighborhoods, they also faced discrimination when they tried to buy homes. Most financial institutions would not lend to African American families. Many white realtors took advantage of this exclusion through “contract selling.” In contract sales, African Americans made monthly payments on their homes to the seller, with the promise of receiving the deeds to the homes once they were entirely paid off, usually decades later. These families had all of the responsibilities of a homeowner but none of the security—they did not build equity and they could be evicted for missing a single payment. Additionally, the realtors often sold these homes for prices that were double and triple their value. African American families were forced into these exploitative deals because they had no options to buy homes in the traditional market. It is estimated that 90% of African Americans in Chicago bought their homes through contract sales during the 1950s. This practice resulted in black families having thousands of dollars of debt and sent many spiraling into poverty (Chicago 3).

As the black population grew, the Black Belt [Chicago’s ghettos] eventually loosened, and blacks started pushing into white neighborhoods (often paying double the market value for white-owned homes). “Realtors would sell a piece of property to a Negro, … and then they tell the white people, ‘The Negroes are coming!’” These blockbusters, as such real estate agents were called, fanned white panic, warning residents that the value of their homes would plummet. Many whites sold quickly and left, most often for the suburbs.

By the mid-1960s, on the eve of King’s Chicago campaign, the Harlem of Chicago, as Bronzeville was often called, was well on its way to becoming blighted. Many of its graystone blocks had been replaced by the two-mile stretch of bleak concrete towers known as the Robert Taylor Homes or by the eight massive apartment blocks of Stateway Gardens. These public housing complexes would become, arguably, the country’s most notorious (Bernstein 8-9).

The Chicago Freedom Movement focused on homeownership and rental injustices facing black families. Dr. King and his staff visited tenants in apartments with atrocious conditions. Many of the apartments were rat-infested, without heat, dangerous, not regularly repaired by the landlords, and extremely overpriced (Chicago 3). … so long as Blacks have no alternatives because segregation walls them into the ghetto, there is no economic incentive for slum-lords to maintain their properties or charge market-rate prices because they have a captive customer base with no other choices (Focus 2). These unsafe and unaffordable housing conditions became the focus of tenant organizing over the course of 1966 (Chicago 3).

Job Opportunity was another problem that needed to be addressed. Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket was designed to open employment in companies that had previously employed whites only. Picket lines and boycotts were planned “to force businesses in black neighborhoods to hire black workers, use black-owned banks, and stock black products and brands” (Bernstein 32).

Then there was the absence of movement support from youth.

In the South, young protesters are the backbone of Freedom Movement campaigns. In the communities where they live, significant and influential segments of the Afro-American population support nonviolent strategies; both for religious reasons and because they understand that Black violence against white interests would result in ferocious and devastating repression. So SCLC can mobilize young people through the church, from Black college campuses, and by recruiting high school student-body officers, prom queens, athletes, cheerleaders, and other natural youth leaders. In the South, marching for freedom has become a respected badge of honor and those who defy Jim Crow by going to jail are by now respected by their peers and praised as heroes by many adults and community leaders.

In the North, not so much. Religion has less influence, the practical political rationale for nonviolence is not so clear, community solidarity is weaker, frustration is greater, and rage less focused. While CORE activists in the North who picket and go to jail are honored by some in the ghetto, they are also derided by others as "chumps," "suckers," "fools," and un-manly, nonviolent wimps. And in Chicago, as elsewhere in the North, it is the swaggering, macho gangs who have glamour and prestige among restless angry teenagers ….

…

Most of Chicago's Black gang members are antagonistic to authority — any authority, regardless of race. They disdain religion and clergy, are hostile to whites in general, and are openly contemptuous of nonviolence. Rival gangs hate each other and have little interest in mutual cooperation (Ghetto 1-2).

Additionally, King and the SCLC had to overcome influential individuals motivated less by empathy, more by self-interest.

King and his people would need to “force a local victory with local forces against an array of powerful economic interests all of which have supporters and allies within the Black community. Elements of the CCCO coalition itself are closely aligned with the Democratic Party which in turn is thoroughly entwined with the corporations, institutions, and associations that are deeply involved in ghetto segregation and exploitation.”

Moreover, radical solutions for economic injustice favored by CORE, SNCC, and SCLC activists are anathema to some (though not necessarily all) of the ministers, some of the business-oriented NAACP & Urban League leaders, and some of the labor unions (Chicago 5).

Dr. King’s most powerful opponent was Chicago’s mayor.

Richard J. Daley made known his displeasure that “outside troublemakers” were coming to the city and told all who would listen there were no slums in Chicago. He also declared that he would not meet with King, thus drawing a line in the sand.

For those who were to lead the summer campaign, these statements were ominous. The nation and the world were to soon learn what they already knew — that the likes of Bull Connor, Lester Maddox and George Wallace had their counterparts in the Richard J. Daleys of Chicago and other northern cities (Black 5).

Dorothy Tillman, 17, was part of the advance team that came to Chicago in the fall of 1965 to help prepare for Dr. King’s forthcoming activist movement.

She related how a lot of Chicago’s black ministers—even a few who had marched with him down south—rebuffed King. Far from rolling out the welcome mat, they told him in plain terms—in front of TV cameras, no less—to butt out and go home. “We were rejected by most of the black leadership,” says Tillman. “Dr. King could hardly get into a church to speak. We never experienced that before. And I told Dr. King, I said, ‘If they don’t want us to be here, I don’t want to stay. I want to go back home.’ ”

Back then, she says, Chicago’s black politicians, as well as nearly all of the city’s black ministers, were in the stranglehold of Mayor Daley’s Democratic machine. “Dr. King said that Daley’s plantation was worse than the plantation in Mississippi,” says Tillman. “He’d say, ‘Those Negroes was in deep.’”

Ministers who backed the administration’s policies got rewarded with patronage and political favors—$1 city lots for church expansions, say, or federal money for social service programs. Those who didn’t play ball got punished with visits from city building or health inspectors, or Sunday parking tickets, or permit and zoning denials. Tillman likes to tell the story of the South Side pastor Clay Evans. In 1964, Evans defied Daley and let King preach at his church, which happened to be under renovation. The next day, the lending institutions that were bankrolling the construction withdrew financing, and the crews stopped work. Evans continued to support King throughout the Chicago Freedom Movement; his church addition stood unfinished for eight years (Bernstein 16-17).

A key Daley supporter in the Black community is the Rev. J.H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, a large and influential organization of Afro-American ministers. He and King have long been adversaries. Jackson staunchly opposes protests and civil disobedience, favoring instead the NAACP program of litigation and legislative lobbying. In 1961, his "civil rights through law and order" stand, and his enmity to the direct action and civil disobedience strategy of SCLC, drove King and many others to form a new, rival organization, the Progressive National Baptist Convention. Now King and Jackson confront each other again in Chicago. Afro-American ministers are a mainstay of Daley's political machine, and as SCLC tries to mobilize Black clergy in support of direct action for social justice, Jackson and his conservative allies maneuver against them (Chicago 2).

Walking the streets of the neighborhood where he resides, King has yet to comprehend the magnitude of the difficulties he must surmount.

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/

Black, Carolyn, Appelhans, Bill, and Gaboury, Fred. “The Chicago Freedom Movement: Summer 1966.” People’s World. January 18, 2002. Web. https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/the-chicago-freedom-movement-summer-1966/

“The Chicago Freedom Movement.” National Low Income Housing Coalition. October 23, 2018. Web. https://nlihc.org/resource/chicago-freedom-movement

“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#1966chi_watts

“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#1966chi_watts