Northwestern professors and close associates of Martin Luther King Jr. recalled the controversial 1966 decision to expand the civil rights movement into Chicago at a panel discussion in Harris Hall on Wednesday.
The 90-minute discussion, followed by a 30-minute question-and-answer session, featured Diane Nash and Timuel Black, who worked closely with King during the mid-1960s.
Black, president of the Chicago chapter of the Negro American Labor Council, said the civil rights movement in Chicago faced obstacles from the start, mostly because of the city’s political climate at the time. Black said King and others didn’t know what they were up against when they planned the movement’s expansion from the Deep South.
“(King) was going to upset the status quo,” he said. “I don’t think even the people who encouraged King to come here understood the pressure to maintain the status quo.”
There were many blacks and politicians who opposed King coming to Chicago, said Aldon Morris, professor of sociology and African-American studies. City politics also created barriers, he said.
“There were no clear-cut laws or enemies to target,” he said, adding that the sheer size of Chicago also was a problem.
“In Birmingham, you could go out and cripple the entire bus community because of the size,” he said. “(Chicago was) too big to easily disrupt.”
Nash, a native of Chicago and a former field staff organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said she was against the movement branching to Chicago from the start.
Nash and Black also discussed their personal views of King, which were overwhelmingly positive. Black recalled one meeting in which King displayed grace under fire.
“He had a total level (of calm),” Black said. “In that meeting that night, he was lambasted, but he was cool.”
Nash said working for civil rights changed her view of history.
“Most history books trace dates and battles,” she said. “After going through school and taking part in historical events, I got amazed by how much personal relationships influence history.”
But history sometimes loses focus of the cooperation between many people in creating history and instead chooses to focus on one “charismatic” leader, she said, which was particularly true of the focus on King’s role in the civil rights movement.
“We would never have dreamed that it would be portrayed that way,” she said. “It’s subversive to make it seem as if there was this magic man whose movement this was.”
Graduate student Ramla Bandele said she learned a lot about the history of civil rights in Chicago by hearing Nash and Black speak.
“It gave you an inside view of how difficult decisions were made, which battles to fight,” she said. “It put a face on history.”
