Week 3: Chicago
After the events of Montgomery, the Freedom Riders, Birmingham and Selma (among others); it seemed as though the civil rights movement would take hold in the South and sweep across the nation.
It was after Birmingham that King delivered his famous “I Have A Dream Speech” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in DC. In Selma, the push for black citizens to be given the ability to vote had led to new federal support and protection.
King felt that if democracy were truly implemented, it would go a long way to solve the problems in America; that if leadership in states and counties accurately reflected their population (rather than counties where 90% of the population was black, but all the political leadership was white), justice would be done.
This is where I may question Dr. King’s opinion — although I have the advantage of hindsight whereas he was looking ahead. He has a far more positive view of humanity than I do (and probably most people I know). From observation, I find that just about everyone entering a system of power is eventually controlled and changed by that system of power — especially a system of competitive power such as politics.
Replacing corrupt white politicians with black politicians has, in many cases, led to corrupt black politicians. I grew up just outside Washington DC in the Marion Barry years. Today I live just outside Baltimore where the past 3 mayors (all black) have left office in disgrace. This is not to infer that black Americans are less qualified or capable in leadership — it is a commentary on the fact our political system seems to drag just about everyone down. Dr. King did not foresee our circumstances of toxic partisan bickering, which is a credit to his optimism.
But I digress. After Dr. King saw the changes occuring in the South, he broadened his scope. He looked North and for the first time decided to personally engage in civil rights work outside the south. He looked to Chicago.
King saw that poverty — systemic poverty — affected the black residents of Chicago. So he and his family moved into a project in Chicago. He wanted to demonstrate that even without Jim Crow segregation, black Americans were being oppressed. By being forced to live in slums (through redlining), at higher prices than what white residents paid for good quality housing, the black resident was economically prevented from opportunities available to white residents.
Even more, white businesspersons would often purchase property and sell back to black residents at inflated rates, only to void the sale years down the road if a single payment was late.
The reaction of some may be to say, “well you should not be late with a mortgage payment,” but this becomes part of a system of economic injustice. Black residents were forced to work only in lower end jobs which tend to be affected most by economic struggles. When it came time to lay off some workers, the black worker was almost always laid off first. The US had a welfare system which would only help households that did not have a physically capable man of working age. So this left a man laid off with two choices: stay with his family and watch them suffer and lose everything, or leave the family so they could receive financial assistance. A demonic choice to lay at the feet of any family.
In later years, many who would criticize the breakdown of the black American nuclear family would often ignore the social systems put in place which prompted the issue in the first place.
King wanted to highlight all of this, and so following the example of Jesus, rather than trying to confront problems from afar, King decided to move into a slum apartment in Chicago. When the landlord King has obtained an apartment from discovered who would be in his apartment, he sent 8 repairmen to improve conditions before the public would discover the conditions his residents lived in on a daily basis.
King sought to shine a light on how the impoverished black citizen of Chicago lived and highlighted to a 6 tenet building which had no heat in the middle of winter. A civil rights worker had found a shivering baby wrapped in newspaper in the building and illegally seized the building to make improvements, daring the government to make arrests for restoring living conditions in the building. The government criticized the move, but did not file any charges.
King brought residents of local projects to a local church in order to publicly share stories of rats and rotted floors.
King and his wife Coretta reported that they noticed a difference in their children quickly. In the South, they had a nice house and a yard to play in. In Chicago, they had a dilapidated living area and no ability to go outside to play.
This would fairly quickly lead to King broadening his efforts. Instead of focusing solely on improving the lives of Black Americans, he realized he must advocate for all who are in poverty.
King finds it unconscionable that a nation paying almost untold millions for war in Vietnam will refuse to spend 10% of that amount for fighting poverty in its own communities. If he can unite those in poverty, it would mean a coalition of poor white Appalachians alongside Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and others. He boldly states, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
King speaks of a time he was in prison and struck up a conversation with his prison guards. After learning how little they earned, King quipped, “You ought to be out there marching with us!”
He likened America’s history of slavery to a man who is in prison for years until it is found he is not guilty of a crime, then the jailers free the man, but won’t compensate him, clothe him or even give him bus money to get back into town.
One of King's favorite biblical passages comes from Luke 16:19-31, where a rich man dies and finds himself in torment, but discovers the poor man who died at his doorstep is in paradise. King teaches that the rich man did not go to hell because he was rich, but because he never allowed himself to see the man in need right in front of him. “Dives went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible.”
But the resistance King faced in Chicago was in many ways unlike anything to that point. In the South, leaders angrily opposed him and a relatively small number of violent bigots took drastic action; but many of the residents maintained reserve while the actions played out.
In Chicago, the mayor greeted King upon arrival, welcoming him and the police were ready to protect rather than attack; but the residents' reaction was ferocious. In the videos of King leading a march in Chicago, the hostility of the residents is shocking; the language and anger topping anything seen in the videos capturing the marches in the South.
At one point, the police escorting King get separated from the rest of the march and end up in a park surrounded by anti-demonstrators. There’s a loud explosion and King, who we never see in any condition other than composed and calm nearly crumples to the ground. He can sense the hate around him and he is (understandably) distraught. It is unlike any dynamic seen in the videos from the Southern campaigns.
The effect on King shows up in his writing after this. His optimism is tinged with dire warnings. He worries that unless America deals with the injustice so prevalent on our shores, we will lose our soul and wither. Often, King is held up against Malcolm X, with King being praised and X being scorned — especially in the white community; but at the end of their respective lives, they had actually come much closer to the space between them. X had greatly toned down his calls for violence after leaving the Nation of Islam and embracing the Sunni view of the faith. But while King continued to advocate for non-violence, he predicted violence would follow unless America changed: “We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools.”
He also appealed to what JFK had spoken to another nation, but King saw them as words America was not heeding herself: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
King had spent most of his time in the South, whereas X had grown up in the projects. Likely, King did not understand Malcolms negative view of America until King had experienced life in that scenario.
I believe it is in this clear eyed vision that King’s role as a prophet to America emerges. King was far from being a perfect man. Yet God often chooses to work through imperfect people. Indeed, if he was not willing to do so, we would be hopeless.
A well read scholar, King likened what he saw in America to what he read about the downfall of Rome - that when the empire began to disintegrate from within, it tried to strengthen its military establishment rather than correcting the corruption and injustice within.
His solution was clear: “America, you must be born again!”
But it is at this time when other leaders begin to rise up and advocate more aggression than King, taking up the mantle of Malcolm's angry pronouncements. Stokely Carmichael, who would form the Black Panther Party, began to use the phrase “Black Power,” which tapped into the anger of younger activists, some of whom were tired of the sacrificial approach of non-violence.
King was concerned that this phrase gave no actual solutions to the problems in the nation.
Between this and the mountains of criticism which King gathers for speaking against the Vietnam war, Kings influence wanes drastically. His political allies are angered, many in the nation dismiss him as a communist and even allies in the civil rights movement abandon him.
King refuses to back down, saying that the only thing he is able to do is follow his conscience. A year after publicly taking this stand, King was assassinated in Memphis which supported sanitation workers on strike. Violence had marred his efforts, demonstrating his diminished influence.
The night before he was killed, King preached in a Memphis church that he, like Moses, had been to the mountaintop and he had seen the promised land, though he wasn’t sure he’d get there with everyone.
King refused to transform, like a chameleon, to maintain his fame or influence. Like his namesake, he could be said to hold his morals and faith while letting go of all else, “Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.”