CHICAGO DAILY NEWS: LAST WEEK IN HISTORY
On the third Monday of January, the United States celebrates civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. However, King’s actual birthday — Jan. 15 — was last week.
Most Chicagoans know King spent time in the city in 1966, working to end housing discrimination against Black residents. But they might not know that just one year earlier, King arrived in the city for a three-day campaign to promote desegregation in schools.
Joseph Kraft, a Chicago Daily News columnist, suspected King’s arrival would bring unrest: “This weekend Martin Luther King will be concentrating on a civil rights protest on Chicago,” he wrote in a July 23 column. “There may well be violence.”
Civil rights supporters long regarded School Supt. Benjamin Willis as a segregationist, Kraft wrote, and King would likely target him in speeches and protests. Kraft noted that school desegregation had been slow, and he hinted that as civil rights leaders, King included, remained uncertain of what to do next, the upcoming generation of leaders were “remarkedly different from King.”
“They tend to be more aggressive, more keen to enter the big cities of the North, more concerned about social questions such as jobs and housing than purely legal,” he said, while adding that these young leaders might align themselves with “white malcontents” — a euphemism for communists. “But, if nothing else,” he added, “that judgment is premature.”
King touched down in Chicago on Friday, July 23, and had 20 scheduled rallies, culminating in a massive antiWillis march to City Hall. “We want a number so large that nobody can count them all,” King told reporters, including veteran Daily News reporter Edmund J. Rooney.
Rooney covered King’s first stop, El Bethel Baptist Church, where 500 Black and white clergy members greeted him. They applauded and chanted: “Willis must go.”
King referred to Chicago as a “symbol of de facto segregation,” Rooney reported, and the civil rights leader urged Mayor Richard J. Daley to “hear the issues and demands of the Negro community.”
All weekend long, Rooney followed King as he spoke to large crowds. Chicago, King said, provided vital help during the Selma protests earlier that year, and throughout the visit, he planned “to study the Chicago situation and interpret it.”
By Monday, before the big march, King had completed 23 rallies, Rooney reported. His voice was hoarse — he’d developed bronchitis from speaking so much — but the reverend never wavered.
“Chicago is no Sodom, doomed to an imminent destruction,” he said. “No, Chicago is more like Athens, a city of both tremendous shame and shining glory. And we are here to issue a call to conscience that Chicago might forsake her shame and rise to the challenge of our age and creatively pursue the paths of glory.”