A Tale of Two Cities

Two societies Two cities Two experiences with Civil Rights A Tale of Two Cities

The Chicago Freedom Movement (a.k.a the Chicago Open Housing Movement) Led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel and Al Raby. Included a large rally, marches, and demands to the City of Chicago. A Tale of Two Cities

The Chicago Freedom Movement … the most ambitious civil rights campaign in the North of the United States… lasted from mid-1965 to early 1967… largely credited with inspiring the 1968 Fair Housing Act. A Tale of Two Cities

The Chicago Freedom Movement … the most ambitious civil rights campaign in the North of the United States… lasted from mid-1965 to early 1967… largely credited with inspiring the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Demands: A Tale of Two Cities Open housing Quality education Transportation fairness Job access, income and employment Health care Crime and the criminal justice system Community development Tenants rights and quality of life.

The 1968 act “made it a federal crime to ‘by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone … by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin.’” A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities Demands: Open housing Quality education Transportation fairness Job access, income and employment Health care Crime and the criminal justice system Community development Tenants rights and quality of life.

The Chicago Freedom Movement was an alliance: Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO). They wanted to prove that nonviolent direct action could bring about social change outside of the South. Since 1962, the CCCO had harnessed anger over racial inequality, especially in the public schools, in Chicago It had become the most sustained local civil rights movement in the North. CCCO activism pulled SCLC to Chicago … A Tale of Two Cities

They organized tenants' unions, assumed control of a slum tenement, founded action groups like Operation Breadbasket, and rallied black and white Chicagoans in support. In the early summer of 1966, they focused on housing discrimination A large rally was held by Martin Luther King at Soldier Field on July 10, A Tale of Two Cities

They organized tenants' unions, assumed control of a slum tenement, founded action groups like Operation Breadbasket, and rallied black and white Chicagoans in support. In the early summer of 1966, they focused on housing discrimination A large rally was held by Martin Luther King at Soldier Field on July 10, Dr. King's first giant ‘freedom rally' in the North. Next, regular rallies outside of Real Estate offices and marches into all-white neighborhoods Violent responses of local whites, and the determination of civil rights activists attracted the attention of the national press. During one demonstration Dr. King said that even in Alabama and Mississippi he had not encountered mobs as hostile to Blacks' civil rights as those in Chicago. A Tale of Two Cities

in Chicago…

and in Detroit…