My LVAD lifeat9200rpms: Dr. King and hate in Chicago's Marquette Park

     This post is brought to you courtesy of those wonderful people at Thoratec Corporation, who have successfully assisted in the implantation of 10,000 HeartMate II LVADs, preserving so many  lives.  That includes me, LVAD #8358, which has been on-line and  performing as designed since April 2, 2010.  I am no longer wheezing, fatigued, unable to climb stairs, sit or lay sleepless and uncomfortable in the extreme.

     As a graduate student at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in the summer of 1966, I was reporting from the Criminal Courts Building at 26th and California, looking for interesting trials.  I learned from the beat reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was living in Chicago at the time, would be leading a demonstration in the white Southwest Side neighborhood known as Marquette Park.  Since it was a slow day at the courthouse, I and other Medill student reporters headed for the site of the march.

      It was a hot, humid Friday afternoon in early August.  Dr. King came to Chicago to conduct non-violent demonstrations for open housing as part of the Chicago Freedom Movement.  Dr. King and his wife moved into a north Lawndale apartment the prior January, 1966, and from that base he and the organization, of which he was co-chairman, conducted demonstrations for integration of Chicago's notoriously racially segregated housing system.

     The Marquette Park area surrounded a park of the same name and that was to be the location of the open housing march to protest segregated real estate and rental policies.  It was one of many marches held by King's movement in the summer of '66. Eventually, the demonstrations and King's negotiations pressured the city's white leaders into making real commitments to open housing for all. The Chicago Real Estate Board finally agreed to open-housing laws in exchange for ending the demonstrations.

     It was stifling, in the mid-90s with a similar humidity.  A mostly young, jeering, all white crowd that numbered in the thousands confronted Dr. King and about 700 or so followers.  The anti-King demonstrators carried home made signs with provocative, racially charged sayings printed on them. "King would good with a knife in his back," one sign said. 

     The scene was volatile and ominous.  The taunting and jeering and racial comments were impossible to ignore.  The crowd threw rocks, bottles, and assorted other things including lots of firecrackers.

     As King marched, Chicago Police in riot gear walked between the anti-King demonstrators and King's group.  I and the other male reporters stuck out because we were in coats and neckties. The few female reporters were overdressed and easily identifiable by the mob.  As wave after wave of missiles flew, we all were targets.  

      Suddenly one of the missiles, a piece of a brick, struck King on the head, stunning him.  He went down to one knee and stayed there for a few seconds while his bodyguards and supporters surrounded him like a Secret Service protective detail.  But instead of hustling King from the area like the President's protectors, King continued to march.

      Thirty or so others were injured in the melee and 40  were arrested.  The demonstration concluded and Dr. King survived without further personal harm.  

     As a young reporter,  the brick throwing that felled Dr. King  made a significant impression. Insular and racist Marquette Park   is the same southwest side park where Frank Collin and his band of neo-Nazis held rallies and demonstrations in the 1970s. (See previous post on Collin).

      After the march, Dr. King told reporters why he marched.  "I have to do this--to expose myself--to bring this hate into the open." He was no stranger to such demonstrations but said there was a difference in Chicago.  

     "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," he said.

     As he was about to leave the city in late 1966 after the Chicago Real Estate Board conceded, Dr. King called the open housing agreement and his efforts in Chicago a first step in a thousand mile march.

    My youngest daughter later saw an AP photo of Dr. King being hit in the head and asked me about it.  I felt like Bill Mooney (previous post about Stalag 17, the movie) and said "I was there."