The autobiography of martin luther

honored not only our embattled Negroes, but the overwhelming major-

ity of the nation, Negro and white. The victory in Selma is now being

written in the Congress. Before long, more than a million Negroes will

be new voters—and psychologically, new people. Selma is a shining

moment in the conscience of man. If the worst in American life lurked

in the dark streets of Selma, the best of American democratic instincts

arose from across the nation to overcome it.

WATTS

horror of Northern riots exploded before our eyes and we saw that

the problems of the Negro go far beyond mere racial segregation. The

catastrophe in Los Angeles was a result of seething and rumbling

tensions throughout our nation and, indeed, the world.

AUGUST 11-15, 1965

Widespread racial violence in Los Angeles results in more than 30

deaths

King arrives in Los Angeles at the invitation of local groups

AS we entered the Watts area of Los Angeles, all seemed quiet, but

there could still be sensed raging hostiHty which had erupted in

volcanic force in the days previous. What had been an inferno of

flame and smoke a few nights before was now an occupied territory.

National Guardsmen in groups of three and four stood posted on

each street corner. People, black and white, meandered through the

charred remains of the Watts business district.

1 had been warned not to visit. We were told that the people

were in no mood to hear talk of nonviolence. There had been wild

threats hurled at all Negro leaders and many were afraid to venture

into the area. But I had visited Watts on many occasions and re-

ceived the most generous of acclamations. One of the most respon-

sive and enthusiastic gatherings I ever saw was our meeting in Watts

during the "Get-Out-the-Vote" tour in 1964. So, despite the warn-

ings, I was determined to hear firsthand fi-om the people involved,

just what the riot was all about.

Let me say first of all that I profoundly deplore the events that have

occurred in Los Angeles in these last few tragic days. I believe and have

said on many occasions that violence is not the answer to social conflict

whether it is engaged in by white people in Alabama or by Negroes in

Los Angeles. Violence is all the more regrettable in this period in light of

the tremendous nonviolent sacrifices that both Negro and white people

together have endured to bring justice to all men.

But it is equally clear, as President Johnson pointed out yesterday,

that it is the job of all Americans "to right the wrong from which such

violence and disorder spring." The criminal responses which led to the

tragic outbreaks of violence in Los Angeles are environmental and not

racial. The economic deprivation, racial isolation, inadequate housing,

and general despair of thousands of Negroes teaming in Northern and

Western ghettoes are the ready seeds which gave birth to tragic expres-

sions of violence. By acts of commission and omission none of us in this

great country has done enough to remove injustice. I therefore humbly

suggest that all of us accept our share of responsibility for these past

days of anguish.

"Stirring of a deprived people"

After visiting Watts and talking with hundreds of persons of all walks

of life, it was my opinion that the riots grew out of the depths of

despair which afflict a people who see no way out of their economic

dilemma.

There were serious doubts that the white community was in any

way concerned. There also was a growing disillusionment and re-

sentment toward the Negro middle class and the leadership which it

had produced. This ever-widening breach was a serious factor which

led to a feeling on the part of ghetto-imprisoned Negroes that they

Were alone in their struggle and had to resort to any method to gain

attention to their plight.

The nonviolent movement of the South meant little to them

since we had been fighting for rights which theoretically were already

theirs; therefore, I believed what happened in Los Angeles was of

grave national significance. What we witnessed in the Watts area was

J.

the beginning of a stirring of a deprived people in a society who

minimize the racial significance and point to the fact that these were

the rumblings of discontent from the "have nots" within the midst

of an affluent society.

The issue of poHce brutality loomed as one of major significance.

The slightest discourtesy on the part of an officer of the law was a

deprivation of the dignity that most of the residents of Watts came

west seeking. Whether it was true or not, the Negro of the ghetto

was convinced that his dealings with the police denied him the dig-

nity and respect to which he was entitled as a citizen and a human

being. This produced a sullen, hostile attitude, which resulted in a

spiral of hatred on the part of both the officer and the Negro. This

whole reaction complex was often coupled with fear on the part of

both parties. Every encounter between a Negro and the police in the

hovering hostility of the ghetto was a potential outburst.

A misguided fire truck, a conflict in arrest, a sharp word between

a store owner and customer—the slightest incident can trigger a riot

in a community, but events converge in such a cataclysmic manner

that often the situation seems to be the result of a planned organized

attempt at insurrection. This was the term used by Mayor Sam

Yorty—an insurrection staged by a group of organized criminals.

I am afraid that this was too superficial an explanation. Two

separate and distinct forces were operating in Los Angeles. One was

a hardened criminal element incapable of restraint by appeals to

reason or discipline. This was a small number in contrast to the large

number involved. The larger group of participants were not criminal

elements. I was certain that the majority of the more than four thou-

sand persons arrested in Los Angeles were being arrested for the first

time. They were the disorganized, the frustrated, and the oppressed.

Their looting was a form of social protest. Forgotten by society,

taunted by the affluence around them, but effectively barred from

its reach, they were acting out hostilities as a method of relief and to

focus attention.

The objective of the people with whom I talked was consistently

work and dignity. It was as though the speeches had been rehearsed,

but on every corner the theme was the same. Unless some work

could be found for the unemployed and underemployed, we would

continually face the possibility of this kind of outbreak at every

encounter with police authority. At a time when the Negro's aspira-

tions were at a peak, his actual conditions of employment, educa-

tion, and housing were worsening. The paramount problem is one

of economic stability for this sector of our society. All other advances

in education, family life, and the moral climate of the community

were dependent upon the ability of the masses of Negroes to earn a

living in this wealthy society of ours.

In the South there is something of shared poverty, Negro and

white. In the North, white existence, only steps away, glares with

conspicuous consumption. Even television becomes incendiary,

when it beams pictures of affluent homes and multitudinous con-

sumer products at the aching poor, living in wretched homes. In

these terms, Los Angeles could have expected riots because it is the

luminous symbol of luxurious living for whites. Watts is closer to it,

and yet farther from it, than any other Negro community in the

country. The looting in Watts was a form of social protest very com-

mon through the ages as a dramatic and destructive gesture of the

poor toward symbols of their needs.

ENCOUNTER IN WATTS

I was out in Watts during the riots. One young man said to me—and

Andy Young, Bayard Rustin, and Bernard Lee, who were with me—"We

won!" I said, "What do you mean, 'we won'? Thirty-some people dead—

all but two are Negroes. You've destroyed your own. What do you mean,

'we won'?" And he said, "We made them pay attention to us."

When people are voiceless, they will have temper tantrums like a little

child who has not been paid attention to, And riots are massive temper

tantrums from a neglected and voiceless people.

July 1967

There was joy among the rioters of Watts, not shame. They were

completely oblivious to the destruction of property in their wake.

They were destroying a physical and emotional jail; they had asserted

themselves against a system which was quietly crushing them into

oblivion and now they were "somebody." As one young man put it,

"We know that a riot is not the answer, but we've been down here

suffering for a long time and nobody cared. Now at least they know

we're here. A riot may not be the way, but it is a way." This was the

new nationalist mood gripping a good many ghetto inhabitants. It

rejected the alliance with white liberals as a means of social change.

It affirmed the fact that black men act alone in their own interest

only, because nobody really cares.

Amazingly enough, and in spite of the inflammatory assertions

to the contrary, these were not murderous mobs. They were destruc-

tive of property, but with all of the reports of thousands of violent

people on the loose, very few people were kiUed, and almost all of

them by the police. Certainly, had the intention of the mob been to

murder, many more lives would have been lost.

What I emphasized is that, in spite of all of the hostility that

some Negroes felt, and as violent and destructive as the mood tem-

porarily became, it was not yet a blind and irredeemable condition.

The people of Watts were hostile to nonviolence, but when we actu-

ally went to them and emphasized the dangers of hatred and vio-

lence, the same people cheered. Only minutes before the air had

been thick with tension, but when they were reminded of the Rev.

James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, the martyrs of the Selma campaign,

they cheered the thought that white people can and do cooperate

with us in our search for jobs and dignity.

But let no one think that this is a defense of riots. The wake of

destruction of property where many Negroes were employed and

where many more were served consumer goods was one of the most

tragic sights I ever witnessed. It was second only to the thought of

thirty-seven persons dying needlessly in an uncontrolled tantrum of

devastation and death. This was more human loss than had been

suffered in ten years of nonviolent direct action, which produced the

revolutionary social changes in the South.

Violence only serves to harden the resistance of the white reac-

tionary and relieve the white liberal of guilt, which might motivate

him to action, and thereby leaves the condition unchanged and em-

bittered. The backlash of violence is felt far beyond the borders of

the community where it takes place. Whites are arming themselves

in Selma and across Alabama in the expectation that rioting will

spread South. In this kind of atmosphere a single drunken disorderly

Negro could set off the panic button that might result in the killing

of many innocent Negroes.

However, a mere condemnation of violence is empty without

understanding the daily violence that our society inflicts upon many

of its members. The violence of poverty and humiliation hurts as

intensely as the violence of the club. This is a situation that calls for

statesmanship and creative leadership, of which I did not see evi-

dence in Los Angeles. What we did find was a blind intransigence

and ignorance of the tremen'dous social forces that were at work

there. And so long as this stubborn attitude was maintained by re-

sponsible authorities, I could only see the situation worsening.

"A crisis for the nonviolent movement"

Los Angeles could have expected the holocaust when its officials tied

up federal aid in political manipulation, when the rate of Negro un-

employment soared above depression levels of the twenties, and

when the population density of Watts became the worst in the na-

tion. Yet even these tormenting physical conditions are less than the

full sign. California in 1964 repealed its law forbidding racial dis-

crimination in housing. It was the first major state in the country to

take away gains Negroes had won at a time when progress was visible

and substantial elsewhere, and especially in the South. California by

that callous act voted for ghettos. The atrociousness of some deeds

may be concealed by legal ritual, but the destructiveness is felt with

bitter force by its victims. When all is finally entered into the annals

of sociology; when philosophers, poHticians, and preachers have all

had their say, we must return to the fact that a person participates

in this society primarily as an economic entity. At rock bottom we

are neither poets, athletes, nor artists; our existence is centered in

the fact that we are consumers, because we first must eat and have

shelter to live. This is a difficult confession for a preacher to make,

and it is a phenomenon against which I will continue to rebel, but it

remains a fact that "consumption" of goods and services is the rai-

son d'etre of the vast majority of Americans. When persons are for

some reason or other excluded from the consumer circle, there is

discontent and unrest.

Watts was not only a crisis for Los Angeles and the Northern

cities of our nation: It was a crisis for the nonviolent movement. I

tried desperately to maintain a nonviolent atmosphere in which our

nation could undergo the tremendous period of social change which

confronts us, but this was mainly dependent on the obtaining of

tangible progress and victories, if those of us who counsel reason

and love were to maintain our leadership. However, the cause was

not lost. In spite of pockets of hostility in ghetto areas such as Watts,

there was still overwhelming acceptance of the ideal of nonviolence.

I was in touch with the White House on the matter and asked that

the President do everything in his power to break the deadlock

which had prevented the poverty program from entering Los

Angeles. I also asked that the government's efforts be vastly in-

creased toward obtaining full employment for both the Negro and

white poor in our country. The President was sensitive to this prob-

lem and was prepared to give us the kind of leadership and vision

which we needed in those turbulent times.

All in all, my visit to Watts was a tremendous help to me person-

ally. I prayed that somehow leadership and statesmanship would

emerge in the places of pubhc office, the press, the business commu-

nity, and among the Negro leadership and people of Watts, to avoid

further conflict. Such a conflict would bring only bloodshed and

shame to our entire nation's image abroad.

28

CHICAGO CAMPAIGN

tion's second largest city, can be solved, they can be solved every-

where.

JULY 26. 1965

sponsored by Chicago's Coordinating Council of Community

Organizations (CCCO)

JANUARY 7, 1966

Announces the start of the Chicago Campaign

JULY 10

make Chicago an "open city" for housing

JULY 12-14

Racial rioting on Chicago's West Side results in two deaths and

widespread destruction

AUGUST S

southwest side

AUGUST 26

Arranges "Summit Agreement" with Mayor R. Daley and other

Chicago leaders

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. We had watched this movement with

interest, and members of the staff of the Southern Christian Leader-

ship Conference had maintained constant communication with the

leadership. As a result of meetings between members of my staff and

leaders of Chicago civil rights organizations, I agreed to accept the

invitation to spend some time in Chicago, beginning July 24.

Later in the year, after careful deliberation with my staff, the

SCLC decided to begin a concentrated effort to create a broadly

based, vibrant, nonviolent movement in the North. Our efforts

would be directed at the social ills which plagued Chicago—the po-

tentially explosive ghetto pathology of the Northern Negro.

My concern for the welfare of Negroes in the North was no less

-than that for Negroes in the South, and my conscience dictated that

I should commit as much of my personal and organizational re-

sources to their cause as was humanly possible. Our primary objec-

tive 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 com-

munity. Chicago was not 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.

"Breaking down the infamous wall of segregation"

We worked under the Coordinating Council of Community Organi-

zations, a coalition of local civil rights groups, convened by Al Raby,

a former Chicago public school teacher. Our main concentration

would be on the school issue—a fight for quality integrated educa-

tion which had been waged in that city for more than five years. This

did not mean that we would stop there, because it was painfully clear

that the school issue was merely symptomatic of a system which

relegated thousands of Negroes into economic and spiritual depri-

vation.

gation in Chicago rested in our being able to mobilize both the white

and black communities into a massive nonviolent movement, which

would stop at nothing short of changing the ugly face of the black

ghetto into a community of love and justice. Essentially it meant

removing future generations from dilapidated tenements, opening

the doors of job opportunities to aU regardless of their color, and

making the resources of all social institutions available for their up-

lifting into the mainstream of American life.

No longer could we afford to isolate a major segment of our

society in a ghetto prison and expect its spiritually crippled wards to

accept the advanced social responsibilities of the world's leading na-

tion. Birmingham, Alabama, once the most segregated city in the

South, had been our target city for public accommodations, and our

nonviolent movement there gave birth to the Civil Rights Bill of

1964. Selma, Alabama, had been our pilot city for the Voting Rights

Bill of 1965, and I had faith that Chicago, considered one of the

most segregated cities in the nation, could well become the metropo-

lis where a meaningful nonviolent movement could arouse the con-

science of this nation to deal realistically with the Northern ghetto.

We had no illusions that we could undertake alone such a mam-

moth task; therefore, our advance SCLC team headed by the Rev.

James Bevel laid the groundwork for our movement. We were con-

fident that a convergence of many forces—religious, civic, political,

and academic—would come about to demand a solution to Chica-

go's problems.

It did not require an in-depth evaluation to determine what evils

had to be eliminated from our society. Any efforts made to extend

and prolong the suffering of Negroes imprisoned in the ghetto

would be a flagrant attempt to perpetuate a social crisis capable of

exploding in our faces and searing the very soul of this nation. In

this regard, it was neither I, nor SCLC, that decided to go north, but

rather, existing deplorable conditions and the conscience of good to

the cause that summoned us.

"Lawndale was truly an island of poverty"

During 1966 I lived and worked in Chicago. The civil rights move-

ment had too often been middle-class oriented and had not moved

to the grassroots levels of our communities. So I thought the great

challenge facing the civil rights movement was to move into these

areas to organize and gain identity with ghetto dwellers and young

people in the ghetto. This was one of the reasons why I felt that in

moving to Chicago I would live in the very heart of the ghetto. I

would not only experience what my brothers and sisters experience

in living conditions, but I would be able to live with them.

In a big city like Chicago it is hard to do it overnight, but I

thought that all of the civil rights organizations had to work more

to organize the grassroots levels of our communities. There, the

problems of poverty and despair were more than an academic exer-

cise. The phone rang daily with stories of the most drastic forms of

man's inhumanity to man and I found myself fighting a daily battle

against the depression and hopelessness which the heart of our

cities pumps into the spiritual bloodstream of our lives. The prob-

lems of poverty and despair were graphically illustrated. I remember

a baby attacked by rats in a Chicago slum. I remember a young

Negro murdered by a gang in Cicero, where he was looking for a

job.

of an ocean of plenty. Chicago boasted the highest per capita income

of any city in the world, but you would never believe it looking

out of the windows of my apartment in the slum of Lawndale. From

this vantage point you saw only hundreds of children playing in the

streets. You saw the light of intelligence glowing in their beautiful

dark eyes. Then you realized their overwhelming joy because some-

one had simply stopped to say hello; for they lived in a world where