American Pharaoh (73 page)

The day Judge Harrington issued his injunction, the summit subcommittee was holding its first meeting. Some of the Freedom
Movement delegates expressed unhappiness with the mayor’s action, but no one suggested ending the discussions. “The issue
is still justice in housing,” Raby said. Outside the negotiation room, Jesse Jackson and some others argued for defying the
court order, but King urged a more temperate response. He did not see what would be accomplished by violating the injunction,
and he worried the movement would lose its moral high ground if it broke the law. King argued that the civil rights forces
could make their point just as effectively by organizing marches that fell within the limits set out by the court. On Sunday,
August 21, a group of demonstrators did just that. King personally participated in a march on the far Southeast Side, while
others led marches in Chicago Heights and Evergreen Park, two nearby suburbs that, because they were outside the city limits,
were not covered by the injunction. American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell chose the same Sunday to come to Marquette
Park and deliver an anti-integration diatribe from a swastika-bedecked stage. Representatives of the National States Rights
Party and the Ku Klux Klan also showed up to preach white resistance. There was a troubling symbolism to the fact that King’s
followers had been pushed out to the suburbs while Nazis were happily holding forth in Marquette Park. The following day,
at his first press conference in two weeks, Daley announced that he had received thousands of phone calls, letters, and telegrams
supporting the city’s decision to obtain an injunction. He was asked if he would declare the American Nazi Party and the Ku
Klux Klan unwelcome in Chicago. “We don’t want any people who come into our city for the purpose of agitation regardless of
who they are,” Daley responded. “This includes the list you mentioned and a lot more who have been spreading words of discord
and inciting violence and everything else in our city.” It seemed that he was putting King and his followers in the same category
as the Nazis and the KKK. When a reporter asked, “Do you include some civil rights leaders in that?” Daley turned toward his
private office and shouted back, “You can answer that.”
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With tensions already running high, as black and white Chicagoans waited to see how the housing summit would turn out, King
announced plans for a march on Cicero on August 28. “Not only are we going to walk in Cicero,” King declared, “we’re going
to work in Cicero, and we’re going to live in Cicero.” There was no telling how much blood would be shed. If King’s goal was
to generate a little fear about what would happen if the summit negotiations ended badly, it worked. Cook County sheriff Richard
Ogilvie, a Republican who wanted to be governor, promptly called for the National Guard to be on hand at the march, and lamented
that “marching in Cicero comes awfully close to a suicidal act.” Jesse Jackson said that if an agreement was reached at the
summit, it was possible the Cicero march would be called off. But if no agreement were reached he warned that there would
be further “escalation” of the protests.
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Meanwhile, the summit subcommittee was still meeting, trying to reach a settlement. The group had begun its work on Friday,
August 19, two days after the initial summit meeting, and it had met for long days of negotiations on the following Monday,
Wednesday, and Thursday. The discussion started with the Freedom Movement’s nine demands, but Raby and the other civil rights
delegates were hoping to expand on them. The nine demands centered on open housing, but the Chicago Freedom Movement saw its
mission as including education, employment, and living conditions in the slums. When Raby and the other delegates tried to
bring up these broader topics, Marciniak and subcommittee chair Ayers complained they were negotiating in bad faith. The Freedom
Movement delegates were also interested in adding specifics about how the nine demands would be enforced. The subcommittee
agreed to establish a supervisory body to monitor implementation, but the precise structure and powers of the body were left
vague. On the whole, the settlement that was emerging was far less than the Freedom Movement delegates wanted. But they were
coming around to the idea of accepting it. There were reports that Daley and Swibel were playing a major behind-the-scenes
role, arguing to Berry that the deal was good, and that it was the best the Freedom Movement was likely to get. Daley may
also have spoken to Senator Paul Douglas, and gotten him to call Berry — a friend and Hyde Park neighbor — to put more pressure
on him to promote acceptance of the settlement. “Berry was a great guy, but he was a realistic, pragmatic person,” says McKnight.
“I guess the ultimate decision was what Bill thought was the best they could do.”
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The final agreement that the subcommittee arrived at had ten provisions, most of them drawn from the Chicago Freedom Movement’s
initial proposal. The provisions seemed to address the movement’s core concerns. The city would promise to do more to enforce
the 1963 open-housing ordinance, and Daley would agree to work for state open-housing legislation over the next year. The
Chicago Housing Authority would seek out scattered sites for future public housing, and would limit new buildings to no more
than eight stories. The Department of Urban Renewal and banks that offered mortgages would ensure that the mortgages did not
encourage segregation. And the Chicago Real Estate Board would drop its opposition to fair housing and encourage its members
to obey the law. Still, the language remained aspirational and unspecified, and the agreement lacked significant mechanisms
for enforcement. Still, it did not address any of the issues beyond housing that many in the Freedom Movement hoped it would.
“Our starting point became their ending point,” one negotiator said ruefully.
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On Friday, August 26, the full housing summit reassembled in the Palmer House Hotel. The meeting opened with a prayer and
then, at Heineman’s request, Ayers read the subcommittee’s report. When he was done, Heineman turned to Daley and asked for
his reaction. The report proved, Daley said, that “[w]hen men of good faith sit down and talk they can solve problems.” Without
waiting for anyone else to comment, he called for a vote on the subcommittee’s recommendation. “Just a minute here,” Raby
called out. The report still lacked specific timetables for when white neighborhoods and suburbs would be integrated, he protested,
and it did not answer Bevel’s critical question: “When do we foresee the time when a Negro can go into a real estate office
in Chicago and be served?” As Raby said the words “in Chicago,” Daley broke in and added “and in the suburbs,” reiterating
Marciniak’s earlier point about public housing being a “metropolitan problem.” But no one addressed the substance of Raby’s
objections. Archbishop Cody, Episcopal Bishop Montgomery, and some of the other delegates spoke in general terms about their
commitment to ensuring open housing. And Beatty promised the Realtors would do all they could, although the more he talked
the more he appeared to be reverting to his old position that it would be difficult for the beleaguered Realtor — who is “usually
a small businessman in a small office” — to live up to the conditions being placed on him. The more the Real Estate Board
representatives seemed to be backing off from the agreement, the more visibly nervous Daley became. The Freedom Movement also
appeared to be wavering. Raby started talking about making any vote “an indication of sentiment” and not “binding.” Heineman
responded that he would have thought the Freedom Movement would want the agreement to be unanimous and binding. Raby asked
for one last recess for the movement delegates to caucus.
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King spoke for the group when they returned. He was still unhappy about the injunction, which he regarded as “unjust and unconstitutional.”
And he was troubled that the newly created monitoring body was not better defined, and that there was no answer to Bevel’s
question about whether blacks would now be served when they showed up at real estate offices. “[W]e are very concerned about
implementation,” King said. “Maybe we are oversensitive, but there have been so many promises that haven’t materialized, that
this is a great thing in our minds.” Daley struck a conciliatory tone in response. “I want you to know that I was raised in
a workingman’s community in a workingman’s home,” Daley said. “My father was a union organizer and we did not like injunctions.
I know the injustice of injunctions. But I also faced the decision of what to do with three and a half million people.” Daley
claimed that the city’s crime rate was soaring, due to diversion of police to the sites of the marches. And police superintendent
Wilson complained that the Freedom Movement was not giving him the advance notice about march times and routes that he needed.
“The course I took was the only one I could take,” Daley said. Ultimately, he assured King, the injunction was about to become
a moot point. “[I]f this agreement is made and everybody keeps to it, you will have no worry about the injunction because
you won’t need to march.” When King continued to object, Heineman brokered a peace between the two men. Would the city be
willing to sit down with the Freedom Movement to negotiate modifications that would allow them broader demonstration rights?
“The city will sit down and talk over anything with anybody,” Daley responded. “Speaking specifically, we can amend our injunction,
I know, as a lawyer, and we would be glad to sit down and discuss [it].” When the vote was taken, it was unanimous in favor
of accepting the subcommittee’s recommendations.
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The summit ended with King standing up and speaking about his hopes and fears about Chicago’s future. “We read in the scripture,
‘Come, let us sit down and reason together,’ and everyone here has met the scriptural mandate,” King said. “We seek only to
make possible a city where men can live as brothers. I know this has been said many times today, but I want to reiterate again,
that we must make this agreement work. Our people’s hopes have been shattered too many times, and an additional disillusionment
will only spell catastrophe.” In their public statements outside the summit, the parties all tried to be upbeat. Daley called
it a “great day” for Chicago, and promised that “we will go ahead to eliminate slums, provide better schools, and more jobs
in our city.” Heineman concurred, saying that “the city of Chicago, through all elements of society represented here, the
city government, the freedom movement, religious leaders, business, and labor took a giant step forward.” Even King put aside
his private reservations to declare that “never before have such far-reaching and creative commitments been made and programs
adopted and pledged to achieve open housing in a community.”
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The reaction of the rest of Chicago was less enthusiastic. White working-class residents of the Bungalow Belt, accepting the
open-housing language of the agreement at face value, were convinced Daley had handed their neighborhoods over to blacks.
The Kilbourn Organization, a community group on the Northwest Side, voted to go down to City Hall for a meeting with Daley
to protest the agreement. “The races spoke, religion spoke, but who spoke for the taxpayers of Chicago?” one member asked.
“We demand an equal voice and equal rights for the people who pay for these promises.” In all, twelve neighborhood organizations
notified Daley they would be arriving at City Hall the following Monday to register their objections to the summit agreement.
Daley never responded to their requests for a meeting. On Monday, a small group of demonstrators gathered at the LaSalle Street
entrance to City Hall carrying signs saying “Daley Sold Out Chicago,” and “The Summit Another Munich.” A member of the Kilbourn
Organization tried to get in to the mayor’s office, but he was told Daley was not in. When the housing chairman of the Clearing
Civic League, representing the Far Southwest Side neighborhood of Clearing was turned away, she asked bitterly: “Who had the
right to give our city away, as the mayor did?”
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Black activists were just as convinced it was their side that had been betrayed. Chester Robinson, leader of the West Side
Organization, charged the negotiators with “selling out Negro interests” in exchange for “empty promises.” And the head of
Chicago’s CORE chapter, Robert Lucas, denounced the settlement as “nothing but another promise on a piece of paper.” When
King spoke about the summit to an open-housing rally, SNCC was there circulating a leaflet urging the crowd to “WAKE UP” and
oppose the agreement. “King says we should celebrate a ‘significant victory’ tonight because he got some concessions from
the city,” the flyer said. “These concessions were just more empty promises from Daley, a man who has lied and lied to the
black man in this city for years. Many people are calling it a sellout. . . .” Critics of the agreement charged that it was
just another example of King yielding too readily to government authority — one biographer has called this tendency on King’s
part the “Selma bridge syndrome,” after his willingness to delay the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march in response to federal
pressure. Some Freedom Movement activists believed he had simply found the Chicago Campaign too difficult, and had decided
to give up. King never explicitly said this to the movement’s rank and file, but some of them suspected it when he and Raby
failed to report back to the CCCO’s regular Saturday morning meetings during the summit. They seemed to be saying that there
was little left to talk about. Despite the criticism, King continued to defend the summit agreement. Preaching back at his
father’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, King declared it to be perhaps the most “far-reaching victory that has ever come
about in a Northern community on the whole question of open housing.” But it was weak praise, since the North had few other
open-housing victories, and this one had absorbed eight months of the movement’s time and effort.
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