Martin Luther King's Campaign in Chicago, 1966 (Edexcel GCSE History): Revision Note

Summary

Racist and discriminatory laws in the South had been the focus of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and early 60s. However, in 1966, Martin Luther King decided to bring attention to the more informal economic discrimination of the North. King believed economic discrimination ensured Black Americans lived in worse housing, suffered higher unemployment rates and had lower standards of living than White Americans. His campaign in Chicago gained publicity but made very little progress in improving the lives of Black Americans living in Chicago.

 The Chicago Real Estate Board & Segregated Housing

• The city of Chicago is in the North and its Black residents had not been subject to ‘Jim Crow’ laws

• However, Chicago’s housing was highly segregated along racial lines

• Legal covenants preventing homeowners from selling to Black Americans had been very common in Chicago but were declared illegal by the Supreme Court in 1948

  • This did not stop segregation of housing from continuing into the 1960s due to banks refusing to give mortgages to Black Americans

  • This prevented houses in ‘Black areas’ from being bought or sold

  • The prices charged for houses were often higher for Black Americans to prevent them from moving to an area

  • This meant Black Americans in Chicago had no choice but to live in ‘Black areas’ that were rundown, deprived and overcrowded slums or ghettos

• This kind of informal, economic discrimination was to be the next target of Martin Luther King’s campaigning

The Chicago Freedom Movement & King’s campaign

• In the mid-1960s, Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) decided to change the focus and the geographical location of their campaigning

  • Up to this point, their focus has been overturning racist laws and law enforcement in the South

  • They now decided to campaign for ‘economic freedom’ for Black Americans in the Northern states

  • Although Black Americans had the right to vote and were not subject to discriminatory laws in the Northern states, King argued they did not enjoy the same level of freedom as White Americans

A quote from a speech by Martin Luther King.

In January 1966, the segregated housing of Chicago became the focus of King’s campaign in the North and he established the Chicago Freedom Movement

• He was keen to show that his non-violent approach could be effective in the North even after riots had broken out all across America

• He believed that Chicago was the ideal place for his new campaign because around a quarter of its 4 million population was Black, living in slums and suffering high rates of unemployment 

Impact of the campaign in Chicago

• King’s tactics of peaceful marches did achieve some successes

• These included:

  • Attracting publicity to the discrimination in Northern cities

  • Improving access to mortgages for Black Americans

  • Securing a $4 million federal grant for the SCLC to improve housing in Chicago

  • Getting the Mayor of Chicago to agree to discussions over housing

• However, King’s demands for the redistribution of wealth and an increase in taxes were deeply unpopular with many White Americans

  • Many saw his campaign as being less about civil rights and more about introducing communist ideas

  • King was hit by a brick thrown from the crowd on one march and he was shocked by the level of anger shown by many White Americans in Chicago

• When King left Chicago at the end of 1966, many people believed he had made things worse for Black people living in the city

  • King and his supporters were labelled as ‘professional agitators’,  accused of stirring up trouble and being at least partially responsible for the riot that broke out in Chicago in July 1966