American Pharaoh (69 page)

The Chicago Freedom Movement opened a new chapter when it began leading a series of peaceful open-housing marches into the
working-class white neighborhoods of Gage Park, Chicago Lawn, and Marquette Park. These Southwest Side neighborhoods were
located near the black ghetto, and had housing stock that was within the financial reach of the city’s growing black middle
class. But according to the 1960 census, only seven of the 100,000 residents of the Gage Park–Chicago Lawn–Marquette Park
area were nonwhite. Blacks who tried to buy or rent in the area quickly encountered a white wall of resistance, starting at
neighborhood real estate offices. The Freedom Movement had been sending testers into Gage Park, and had already documented
121 cases of racial discrimination. The marches began uneventfully. On Saturday, July 16, an integrated group of 120 demonstrators
marched from an “action center” in the black neighborhood of Englewood into nearby Marquette Park for a picnic. The next day,
200 marchers held a prayer vigil near a Catholic church in Gage Park, where they were taunted by neighborhood white youths.
To ensure that there was no confusion about what was at stake, a protest leader declared that the marchers “had come to take
a look at the community because this is where they plan to send their children to school and to live.”
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The peace finally gave out on July 29, when protesters held an all-night vigil at F. H. Halvorsen Realty in Gage Park. The
Freedom Movement had selected Halvorsen because, according to recent testing, it repeatedly discriminated against black applicants.
Movement staff had also done research into the various white neighborhoods and “determined that this was the area that we
were going to [get the] greatest resistance,” says civil rights activist Gloria Palmer. “And the researchers and analysts
were correct—we almost got destroyed.” Not long after the open-housing protesters arrived at Halvorsen, white counter demonstrators
showed up and the atmosphere turned tense. “The police protecting [the protesters] were getting more edgy,” recalls the Freedom
Movement’s press officer. “Jesse Jackson and Jim Bevel made an agreement to get the crowd out in paddy wagons.” The protesters
left under police guard but, worried that their departure would be seen as a giving in, a crowd of about 250 movement demonstrators
returned the next day to continue the vigil. Once again, they were met by a hostile white crowd that pelted them with rocks
and bottles. This time, the marchers were forced to turn back even before they reached Halvorsen. Fortunately, the protesters
could always escape from the white mobs by running over the racial dividing line and back into the ghetto. “The really stunning
thing about Chicago segregation was that there was this war going on — rocks being thrown, bottles — but as soon as we got
to the color line,” says activist Don Rose, “it was just peace.”
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A larger crowd of demonstrators returned on Sunday, July 31. This time, 500 neighborhood residents met them, hurling cherry
bombs, rocks, and bottles. It was the meanest crowd yet. When Sister Mary Angelica, a first-grade teacher marching with the
open-housing demonstrators, was hit in the head and fell to the ground, the counterdemonstrators cheered and shouted, “We’ve
got another one!” Others yelled “White power!” “Polish power!” and “Burn them like Jews!” Before it was over the white mob,
which had grown to 4,000, injured more than 50 people, including a Catholic priest, burned a dozen of the protesters’ cars,
overturned a dozen more, and pushed two into a lagoon. “I’d never seen whites like these in the South,” says Dorothy Tillman,
who left Alabama to join the Chicago Freedom Movement. The Gage Park counterdemonstrators were “up in trees like monkeys throwing
bricks and bottles and stuff,” Tillman says. “I mean racism, you could almost cut it.” To make clear that they were not singling
out any one part of the city, the open-housing demonstrators next shifted their focus to the Northwest Side. The reception
they received in the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood, though hostile, was more subdued than what they had seen on the Southwest
Side.
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Daley finally entered the fray on August 2, when he met with political, community, and religious leaders from Gage Park and
adjoining Chicago Lawn. The white residents of these neighborhoods had assumed Daley would come to their aid, but he had been
remarkably silent. Making matters worse, the police on the scene were widely seen as taking the side of the civil rights demonstrators,
since they generally tried to prevent the white mobs from attacking. The community leaders who met with Daley represented
some of the most conservative organizations in Gage Park and Chicago Lawn, including the infamous homeowners’ associations,
whose primary interest was in stopping integration. They wanted to hear specific plans from Daley for how demonstrators would
be kept out of their neighborhoods. But Daley spoke only about the need for all sides to observe the law. “We are in agreement
that this is a reflection on the city and that recognizing law and order is necessary,” Daley said afterward. “I appeal to
all people in all communities to cooperate with the Police Department.” The white residents felt Daley had betrayed them.
“[T]he Mayor’s only answer was ‘They have a right to march,’” one complained afterward.
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In fact, Daley was just as eager as the white neighborhood delegations to see the marches stop. But he understood that issuing
an order, or having the police stop them forcibly, would only advance the protesters’ cause. What Daley wanted to do was negotiate.
He approached the Chicago Freedom Movement through CHA board chairman Charles Swibel. Swibel argued that since King had “gotten
in over his head and needed a ‘victory,’” the movement and the city would both benefit by working out some kind of deal. Swibel
was a canny negotiator, and he opened with a lowball offer. The city would install elevator guards in public housing, establish
a committee to investigate integration issues, and build or restore about 400 units of housing. In exchange, Swibel asked
King to issue a statement lauding Daley’s “wise leadership” and promising his “cooperation to Mayor Daley in implementing
the positive programs the city has underway.” When King rejected Swibel’s offer, Daley and Swibel announced they would implement
the improvements anyway. Next, Daley dispatched a delegation of black machine politicians to negotiate with King and Raby.
The aldermen and state legislators, who met with the civil rights leaders for three hours, said they shared many of the movement’s
goals, including tougher open-housing legislation, stricter building standards, more bank loans for blacks, and a racial head
count of employees. These were strange words, certainly, coming from men who regularly opposed civil rights measures in the
City Council. But the machine delegation insisted that the city and the Freedom Movement should be able to work out some kind
of agreement. As it happened, this attempt to begin negotiating with King and his followers was well timed. After seven months
in Chicago, King had grown increasingly discouraged, and was looking for a way of ending his campaign gracefully. “He told
us they just couldn’t go any further, but they had to have some kind of victory so they could withdraw without loss of prestige
and that they wanted our help in achieving that,” said Alderman Despres, the one white elected official present. “King was
really announcing a surrender, and they worked out a formula for King to leave town.” The gathering ended with Metcalfe, the
leading black machine alderman, putting his arm around King’s shoulder.
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The whole scene made Despres “very sad,” he said later. “Metcalfe could hardly conceal his pleasure with the thought that
King was ready to leave town.”
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While both sides worked toward some process for entering into negotiations, the marches continued, and the violence in the
neighborhoods grew worse. On August 5, Raby and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson led more than five hundred demonstrators — the
biggest contingent yet — back to Marquette Park. White residents had been gathering for hours in the park, a grassy expanse
with a golf course and a lagoon. The crowd waved Confederate flags and held banners supporting Alabama governor George Wallace
for president, and a few wore Nazi helmets. When the civil rights marchers began to arrive in the late afternoon, the white
counterdemonstrators called out, “Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate,” and yelled, “We want Martin Luther Coon”
and “Kill those niggers.” A gray-haired woman shouted, “God, I hate niggers and nigger-lovers.” Other whites screamed out
“nigger-loving cops” at the police who were trying to keep the two sides apart. “About ten thousand screaming people showed
up to harass, curse, and throw debris on us,” Andrew Young recalled. “Bottles were flying and cherry bombs were going off.
We felt like we were walking through a war zone.”
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King arrived by car and joined the demonstration. While he was marching, he was struck above the right ear by a rock “as big
as [a] fist.” The nation’s foremost advocate of nonviolent protest fell to the ground. “When we saw Dr. King go down in that
line I didn’t realize that I could be so mad at the world,” said civil rights activist Nancy Jefferson. “I think everybody
in that line wanted to kill everybody that was on the other side of the line.” King got up and continued marching. As the
marchers continued to make their way toward Halvorsen Realty, another heckler threw a knife at King. It missed him and hit
a young white man in the neck. Members of the crowd yelled, “Kill him, kill him,” as King walked by. Demonstrators held up
signs with such slogans as “Reds, race mixers, queers, junkies, winos, muggers, rapists ... you are all persona non grata
here,” and “King would look good with a knife in his back.” King escaped without further harm, but the scene only got more
tense. As the marchers prepared to board buses, a crowd of about 2,500 whites threw bottles, smashed bus windows, and clashed
with the police. White women ran down the street with bags of sugar, which they poured into the gasoline tanks of protesters’
cars. Other cars were set on fire. A mob descended on Father George Clements, a black Catholic priest, and police had to escort
him to safety. Even after the marchers left, the clashes between the white mob and almost 1,000 police went on for another
five hours. In the end, forty-four people were arrested, and thirty-one were injured enough to require hospitalization. “I’ve
been in many demonstrations all across the south, but I can say that I have never seen — even in Mississippi and Alabama —
mobs as hostile and hate-filled as I’ve seen in Chicago,” King said afterward. “I think the people from Mississippi ought
to come to Chicago to learn how to hate.”
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With the open-housing campaign under way, Chicago blacks were starting to resist the CHA’s plans to build more public housing
in the ghetto. On July 6, the City Council voted down a ten-story building the CHA proposed to build in Woodlawn — one of
twelve new sites the CHA had submitted — after an outpouring of neighborhood opposition. The Reverend Arthur Brazier, chairman
of The Woodlawn Organization, testified against the building, saying it would overcrowd the neighborhood. Mrs. Tarlease Bell,
one of more than one hundred Woodlawn residents who showed up to oppose it, told the City Council that “high-rise housing
is a monument to segregation.” A few weeks later, residents of Kenwood-Oakland, another ghetto on the South Side, turned out
for a hearing at CHA headquarters to oppose plans to build more public housing in their neighborhood. A pastor from Kenwood
United Church of Chicago charged that the CHA was “intensifying the ghetto.” Swibel, however, continued to defend the CHA’s
plans. “I am taken aback that you seem to object to the poor and say they ought to live elsewhere,” said Swibel, who himself
lived in suburban Winnetka. “Everybody wants public housing to be somewhere else. I wish you would join us in making public
housing so good that it will be accepted everywhere.”
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