The allegations werecorroborated not only by defense attorneys and emergencyroom physicians, but by several other respected groupsincluding a broad- based Chicago citizens' coalition, aninvestigative group from the internal police review agency,and Amnesty International.4

It would be comforting to dismiss the story of Area Twoas unusual, anecdotal, and unrepresentative.Unfortunately, in many significant respects, whathappened at Area Two represents business as usual inChicago and throughout the United States." Officialreactions to police brutality fall into a familiar pattern. Theviolence inflicted on Rodney King," Malice Green," AbnerLouima3 and Amadou Diallo4 (the unarmed West Africanimmigrant in New York City who died in a hail of 41 policebullets) was, predictably, followed by police assurances thatit was an aberration, the work of a few rotten apples, acriminal act rather than routine police conduct.'

In the aftermath of the riot there were concerted attempts to discredit the nonviolent movement. Scare headlines announced paramilitary conspiracies only to have the attorney general of the United States announce that these claims were totally unfounded. More seriously, there was a concerted attempt to place the responsibility for the riot upon the nonviolent Chicago Freedom Movement and upon myself. Both of these maneuvers were attempts to dodge the fundamental issue of racial subjugation. They represented an unwillingness to do anything more than put the lid back on the pot and a refusal to make fundamental structural changes required to right our racial wrongs.

This is what we've got to do. I'm going on with nonviolence because I've tried it so long. I've come to see how far it has brought us. And I'm not going to turn my back on it now.

After the riot in Chicago that summer, I was greatly discouraged. But we had trained a group of about two thousand disciplined devotees of nonviolence who were willing to take blows without retaliating. We started out engaging in constitutional privileges, marching before real estate offices in all-white communities. And that nonviolent, disciplined, determined force created such a crisis in the city of Chicago that the city had to do something to change conditions. We didn't have any Molotov cocktails, we didn't have any bricks, we didn't have any guns, we just had the power of our bodies and our souls. There was power there, and it was demonstrated once more.

Our primary objective was to bring about the unconditional surrender of forces dedicated to the creation and maintenance of slums and ultimately to make slums a moral and financial liability upon the whole community. Chicago was riot alone among cities with a slum problem, but certainly we knew that slum conditions there were the prototype of those chiefly responsible for the Northern urban race problem.

In the early summer of 1965 we received invitations from Negro leaders in the city of Chicago to join with them in their fight for quality integrated education.

“It appears that for all intents and purposes, the public agencies have [reneged] on the agreement and have, in fact given credence to [those] who proclaim the housing agreement a sham and a batch of false promises” (King, 24 March 1967).

Although King called the agreement “the most significant program ever conceived to make open housing a reality,” he recognized that it was only “the first step in a 1,000-mile journey” (King, 26 August 1966; Halvorsen, “Cancel Rights Marches”). 

“Many whites who oppose open housing would deny that they are racists. They turn to sociological arguments … [without realizing] that criminal responses are environmental, not racial” (King, 118–119).

The campaigns had gained momentum through demonstrations and marches, when race riots erupted on Chicago’s West Side in July 1966. During a march through an all-white neighborhood on 5 August, black demonstrators were met with racially fueled hostility. Bottles and bricks were thrown at them, and King was struck by a rock. Afterward he noted: “I have seen many demonstrations in the south but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today” (“Dr. King Is Felled by Rock”). 

“In the South, we always had segregationists to help make issues clear.… This ghetto Negro has been invisible so long and has become visible through violence” (Cotton, 26–28 August 1965).

In addition to targeting racial discrimination in housing, SCLC launched Operation Breadbasket, a project under the leadership of Jesse Jackson, aimed at abolishing racist hiring practices by companies working in African American neighborhoods. 

Indeed, after riots in Watts, Los Angeles, in August 1965, it seemed crucial to demonstrate how nonviolent methods could address the complex economic exploitation of African Americans in the North. 

King believed that “the moral force of SCLC’s nonviolent movement philosophy was needed to help eradicate a vicious system which seeks to further colonize thousands of Negroes within a slum environment” (King, 18 March 1966)