THE CHICAGO AREA FRIENDS OF SNCC, THE COORDINATING COUNCIL OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS, AND THE CHICAGO STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM DURING THE 1960's
Travis Wright
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
May 2019
Committee:
Nicole Jackson, Advisor
Rebecca Mancuso ii ABSTRACT
Nicole Jackson, Advisor
This project deals with the Black struggle for civil and human rights in Chicago during the 1960s. Because much of the scholarship dealing with Black Chicago focuses on the Chicago
Freedom Movement, an actual event led by King and SCLC between 1965 and 1967, this project places emphasis primarily on the years prior to its inception. There are two groups that emerged during the Chicago campaign that are the center of this project: The Chicago Area Friends of
SNCC and the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations. The CAFOS, heavily influenced by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was founded in 1962 to raise money and collect resources for SNCC workers in the South. However, they would eventually go on to begin their own battle against racism and discrimination in Chicago. The
Council on the other hand, was a coalition of influential civil rights organizations that established a strong united front against existing white power structures in the city, namely the administrations of Mayor Richard Daley and Superintendent Benjamin Willis. I argue that there was a strong local movement taking place in Chicago prior to the CFM; a movement that has frequently been overshadowed if not erased. By looking more closely at the early Chicago movement and organizations such as CAFOS and the Council, it is clear that Chicago was a place of complex racial and political insurgency. These organizations laid the ground work for the CFM. These instances of activism in Chicago during the early 1960s reveal how issues of race affected those in the Midwest while also demonstrating the various ways in which
Midwesterners and urban, Black citizens reacted to and engaged in the ongoing struggle for freedom. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe an enormous amount of gratitude to my mentor and thesis advisor, Dr. Nicole
Jackson, whose guidance, support, and patience made this project possible. It is because of her that I am a better writer, thinker, and historian. I would also like to thank Dr. Rebecca Mancuso for agreeing to serve as a member on my thesis committee and for her invaluable feedback and guidance throughout this lengthy and difficult process; her comments and suggestions have also shaped this project and my growth as a scholar.
I also owe thanks to Drs. Ruth Herndon and Benjamin Greene for creating a thesis writers group to read over the earliest drafts of this project while continuously offering their support and encouragement throughout the research and writing process. Relatedly, I thank my peers Rebekah Brown, John Stawicki, and especially Robert Carlock for constantly reading over my work and providing helpful comments and suggestions. Your support and friendship has been a tremendous source of comfort and encouragement as I navigated through the master’s program and completed this thesis.
There are many others at Bowling Green State University that contributed to this project:
Drs. Thomas Edge, Michaela Walsh, and Rebecca Kinney to name a few. I am particularly grateful to the History Department for funding my research trips and giving me endless support.
I am thankful and proud to be a member of this program and department.
Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family for being patient and allowing me the space I needed to complete this project in its final stages. Nick – thank you for being my partner in life and my best friend. Your love and support has meant everything to me. A special thank you to my parents Anita and Travis Wright for being my biggest fans and believing in me.
This achievement is just as much yours as it is mine. Thank you. v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION ...... 1
CHAPTER ONE: RACE AND BLACK EDUCATION: STUDENT ACTIVISM IN CHICAGO
DURING THE SIXTIES ...... 10
CHAPTER TWO: THE CHICAGO AREA FRIENDS OF SNCC ...... 28
Founding & “Food and Funds for Freedom” Campaign ...... 28
Women & CAFOS ...... 39
CHAPTER THREE: THE COORDINATING COUNCIL OF COMMUNITY
ORGANIZATIONS, AND THE DECLINE OF THE CHICAGO MOVEMENT ...... 48
1965 and Beyond – The Dissolution of the Chicago Movement...... 55
CONCLUSION ...... 64
REFERENCES ...... 70 1
INTRODUCTION
“Long before Dr. King and SCLC came north, Jim Crow was here, having followed the Great Migration of black folks during World War I, with an evolving color line in housing, schools, jobs, and politics.”1
In July of 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) arrived in Chicago to begin the Chicago Freedom Movement (CFM) - an ambitious campaign geared towards challenging racist and discriminatory housing policies, poverty, police brutality, and issues related to de facto segregation.2 This aggressive campaign for racial justice has resonated with many Americans as one of the major battles of the modern
Civil Rights Movement and has largely dominated the narrative of Chicago’s struggle for freedom, especially during the 1960s. A topic that has garnered considerably less attention is the local movement that shaped the national CFM. The conduit between the lesser known local movement during the early sixties and the national CFM is the center of this project.
This thesis examines the Black struggle for civil and human rights in Chicago during the
1960s. Because most of the scholarship dealing with Black Chicago during this period focuses on the CFM, an “enterprise determined to root out racial injustice, particularly housing discrimination in Chicago to improve the quality of life for the city’s Black residents, and to prod the nation as a whole to combat urban ills,” this project emphasizes the years prior to 1965.3
I began this project with a number of questions that guided my research. First, much of
Chicago’s Black history tends to deal with the Great Migration and the CFM, but what was
1 Martin Deppe, Operation Breadbasket: An Untold Story of Civil Rights in Chicago, 1966-1971 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017) 2. 2 Chicago Freedom Movement (CFM) is used when referring to housing and slums campaign led by SCLC between 1965 and 1967. I use “Chicago Movement,” or “Chicago struggle” when referring to the local, Chicago Civil Rights Movement as a whole. 3 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 1. 2 taking place between these two monumental events, particularly during the early 1960s? I wanted to know what racial inequality and discrimination in Chicago looked like, and how did local, Black Chicagoans organize themselves to combat racial inequality and injustice? Next, I considered the role women and young people – primarily high school and college students – played in the burgeoning protest environment that was unfolding at the start of the decade.
Finally, I wanted to explore the ways in which the local struggle in Chicago shaped the national
CFM.
By 1965, King and the SCLC were looking for ways to geographically expand the movement. Wide scale protests in southern cities like Birmingham and Selma were influential factors resulting in the passage of Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, respectively.
Following the passage of these laws, the emphasis of the movement was human and economic rights opposed to just civil rights. These issues were customary in northern and urban cities, which ultimately prodded King’s decision to shift north.
The SCLC had considered a number of cities where they could test the limits of nonviolent direct action. Places like Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Cleveland, and New York
City were all considered given their long histories of Black activism.4 However, many established leaders in those cities were reluctant to work with King and SCLC, fearing their local movements might be taken over by such nationally prominent leaders. In other spaces, local leaders rejected King’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance, especially as Black Power politics emerged during the second half of the decade.5 In the end, King and the SCLC decided on
Chicago because there was a strong local movement already taking shape there.
4 Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) 174. 5 Ibid. 174-177. 3
Chicago was a pragmatic location for the first major, northern battle of the modern Civil
Rights Movement. Race relations in Chicago were tense, and in some cases, proved to be just as volatile as those in the deep south.6 Prior to King’s arrival, there was already a strong civil rights insurgency taking place that the SCLC would build upon. Moreover, established leaders in the
Chicago struggle welcomed King’s presence and involvement in their movement.7
Following the Second World War, Chicago’s Black population swelled as migrants continued moving to the city and soldiers returned home. Most of these Black residents lived on
Chicago’s South and West sides, or what has become known as Chicago’s Black Belt. Many whites felt threatened by the growing Black population, especially as industrial and postwar jobs became more competitive as a result of the expanding population. Chicago historian Dominic
Pacyga states, “White neighborhoods felt under increasing pressure from Chicago’s growing
Black population, particularly when it came to schooling.”8 Because whites refused to sell homes to Black residents, the latter were confined to dilapidated and overcrowded apartment complexes that were often overpriced. Schools in these neighborhoods were segregated, and Black schools especially, were altogether inadequate. Ultimately, the city was hostile toward its Black residents in the years leading up to and during the Chicago campaign for freedom. These are the factors that spurred the local civil rights insurgency in the city.
Chicago proved to be an anomaly of the modern Civil Rights Movement. First, Chicago signaled the movement’s shift from the South to the North and “from an attack on state- sanctioned denials of basic political and civil rights to an assault on social and economic
6 Timothy Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017) 17; Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 7 Martin Luther King, Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1998) 298. 8 Dominic Pacyga, Chicago: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 50. 4 inequities.”9 In essence, Black leaders and communities began to focus on human and economic rights in addition to civil rights.10 Secondly, the examination of the early Chicago struggle adds to the burgeoning literature dealing with the struggle for civil rights outside of the South. This thesis aims to build upon the Black Freedom Struggle both geographically and temporally.
Chicago is also unique given its racial and gender dynamics. From the very beginning, the Chicago movement was interracial and remained that way until its eventual decline.11 There were certainly disagreements concerning racial alliances, especially after the popularization of
Black Power, but the movement maintained its philosophy of racial inclusiveness. Additionally, both women and students played key roles in the Chicago movement - influential actors that have often been overlooked in national narratives of the CFM. Examining the role students, and especially women, played in the local Chicago movement provides a better understanding of the role some of the lesser known individuals played in the broad Civil Rights Movement, many of which women and young people.
There are two organizations essential to the struggle for civil rights in Chicago. The first is the Chicago Area Friends of SNCC (CAFOS) which acted as a sister branch of SNCC.12 The
CAFOS was founded in 1962 to raise money and collect resources for SNCC workers in the
South, but their organizing evolved into campaigns against racism and discrimination in
Chicago. The second major organization was the Coordinating Council of Community
9 James Ralph Jr., Martin Luther King Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 2. 10 The struggle for both civil and human rights has become known as “freedom rights.” For more information, see Hasan Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt. 11 Alan Anderson and George Pickering, Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of Civil Rights in Chicago (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986) pg. 1 12 SNCC was one of the most important civil rights groups that emerged in response to the student sit-ins that took place across the South in the early sixties. In many ways, SNCC acted as the youthful and more radical student wing of the Civil Rights Movement. For more on SNCC, see Clayborne Carson’s In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. 5
Organizations (CCCO), a coalition of civil rights organizations that established a strong united front against existing white power structures in the city, namely the administrations of Mayor
Richard Daley and Superintendent Benjamin Willis.13 With a series of largescale protests and demonstrations, these organizations laid the much of the groundwork for the local Chicago movement and became the most significant civil rights groups in the city, especially during the early 1960s. An analysis of both CAFOS and the Council provides an essential framework for understanding the context from which the local movement in Chicago emerged.
This thesis is an attempt to uncover the largely unknown histories of CAFOS and the
Council to provide a more comprehensive examination of the struggle for civil rights in Chicago during the early 1960s. I argue that there was a strong local movement taking place in Chicago prior to the CFM; a movement that has frequently been overshadowed if not erased. By looking more closely at the early Chicago movement and organizations such as CAFOS and the Council, it is clear that Chicago was a place of complex racial and political insurgency. These organizations laid the ground work for the CFM. These instances of activism in Chicago during the early 1960s reveal how issues of race affected those in the Midwest while also demonstrating the various ways in which Midwesterners and urban, Black citizens reacted to and engaged in the ongoing struggle for freedom.
Despite Chicago’s long history of racial discrimination and Black, grassroots activism, much of the scholarship pertaining to the Chicago campaign for civil rights is narrowly concentrated on the CFM. James Ralph’s Northern Protest: Martin Luther King Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement, for example, is a definitive account of the CFM, though he focuses primarily on this national event with only brief generalizations about Chicago in the
13 The Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) will be referred to from this point forward as “the Council.” 6 years preceding the movement. He neglects topics such as women’s contributions, youth activism, and local organizations that were already laying the groundwork for the larger movement. Though Ralph claims the exclusive focus of Northern Protest is the CFM and to
“expand our understanding of King and SCLC and the local antecedents of the movement,” he spends little time discussing earlier years of struggle.14 This is largely because Ralph’s scope is
King, and the national notoriety King brought to the city beginning in 1965. Because his emphasis is King and the SCLC, the local movement is marginalized.
Operation Breadbasket: An Untold Story of Civil Rights in Chicago, 1966-1971 by
Martin Deppe also provides an important analysis of the Chicago movement, but like Ralph,
Deppe’s central focus is the CFM. Deppe provides a national narrative history of Operation
Breadbasket, an ambitious campaign initiated by King and Jesse Jackson for better jobs and economic stability for African American families living in poverty as a result of discriminatory employment and housing policies. Similar to Ralph, however, Deppe neglects any meaningful discussion the Chicago Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, which inevitably erases what was happening at the local and grassroots level.
The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr., and Civil Rights Activism in the North also attempts to piece together the history of the Chicago struggle for freedom. This text consists of a collection of essays written by historians such as Mary Lou Finley, James
Ralph, Clayborne Carson, Pam Smith, Kimberlie Jackson, and others who offer a critical examination of race and protest in Chicago at the height of the CFM while also considering the lasting legacies of the CFM.
14 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 3. 7
Perhaps the most successful attempt at providing a holistic view of the Chicago Civil
Rights Movement comes from Alan Anderson and George Pickering’s Confronting the Color
Line: The Broken Promise of Civil Rights in Chicago. Anderson and Pickering argue that the
“story of the civil rights movement in Chicago traces the developing dilemmas of action for racial justice, which in the end were crucial to the demise of that movement in Chicago and in the nation.”15 While Anderson and Pickering provide far more details about the early Chicago movement than other scholars, they too neglect the particulars of early grassroots activism in
Chicago.
This work utilizes a variety of primary source material to construct a narrative and analysis of the Chicago struggle for freedom, especially the Chicago SNCC History Project located at the Vivian Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature. It was here that I discovered organizational material such as meeting minutes for both CAFOS and the
Council, private correspondences between various leaders and members of the movement, flyers, photographs, financial records, and organizational constitutions and declarations. I also utilize magazine and local newspapers. These newspapers were essential in filling in the gaps of the overall narrative. Collectively, these sources provided the framework for this study and illuminate Chicago’s struggle for freedom during the sixties.
Chapter one considers the general racial and political landscape of Chicago during the
1960s. Because Black Chicagoans were primarily concerned with desegregating public schools and improving the quality of education for Black students during the early 1960s, this chapter is told mostly through the lens of students and teachers that supported racial equality. It provides
15 Alan Anderson and George Pickering, Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of Civil Rights in Chicago (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986) 6. 8 insight into local conditions that pushed the local civil rights movement and reveals how Black students reacted to and engaged in the burgeoning protest environment that was taking shape.
Chapter two assesses the Chicago Area Friends of SNCC (CAFOS), providing an organizational history of the group’s founding, structure, tactics and goals, and some of its key members. At the center of this chapter are two of CAFOS’s most successful campaigns: The
Food and Funds for Freedom campaign and the 1963 school boycott, better known as Freedom
Day. These events demonstrate the interworking’s of CAFOS in addition to its ability to mobilize urban, Black Chicagoans. Finally, this chapter examines the gender dynamics of the
Chicago Movement and of CAFOS in particular. It argues that women were essential to the success of CAFOS and did much of the ground work that transformed the organization from a local fundraising committee to one of the most influential and powerful civil rights organizations in Chicago during the 1960s.
Another organization that left an indelible impact on the early Chicago movement was the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO). This coalition group is the center of chapter three. The Council brought structure and unity to the Chicago movement and worked in conjunction with CAFOS in the early sixties to organize the local Black community.
As the decade progressed and the movement continued to grow, CAFOS eventually became a member of the Council, and collectively, the two formed a powerful relationship that posed a great threat to the existing social and political landscape of Chicago. This chapter provides an organizational history of the Council and reveals the ways in which the group organized a number of civil rights organizations to expand the Chicago movement.
Chapter three also examines the relationship between the Council and SCLC during the
Chicago Freedom Movement. By the start of the Chicago Freedom Movement in 1965, the 9
Chicago insurgency was already losing momentum and struggling to galvanize the local Black community in the face of growing white resistance and internal conflicts within the movement.
Likewise, the SCLC struggled to revitalize the Chicago movement and ultimately failed to make any significant progress within the city. Consequently, this chapter also deals with the decline of
CAFOS, the Council, and the Chicago movement as a whole.
The conclusion briefly considers the legacy of the Chicago Civil Rights Movement, and in particular, organizations such as CAFOS and the Council. In dealing with the legacy of the
Chicago movement, it becomes clear that many of the same issues – poverty, discriminatory housing policies, minimal access to reasonable jobs/wages, and police brutality – that upheld the white power structure in the 1960s and proved to be too great of an obstacle for activists during the CFM, still exist today; both in Chicago and elsewhere. This says much about domestic race relations in the U.S., and further explains why the Chicago movement has largely been remembered as a failure. 10
CHAPTER ONE: RACE AND BLACK EDUCATION: STUDENT ACTIVISM IN CHICAGO DURING THE SIXTIES
As historian Dominic Pacyga insists, Chicago is a city of many names – the “Windy
City,” the “real city”; the “promised land.”16 But for many, Chicago became the quintessential
American city as triumphant tales of white immigrant success, modernity, industrialization, and consumerism became synonymous with the region. Entangled in such romanticized tales, however, is a more complicated and troubling racial history, particularly African Americans’ quest for racial equality. This chapter is an attempt to uncover that racialized past by focusing on issues related to race in Chicago during the 1960s. The ways in which students – high school students in particular – reacted to and engaged in those issues is the central focus of this chapter.
At the onset of the Great Migration, Chicago was a popular destination for many African
Americans leaving the South. These migrants viewed Chicago as an opportunity to rebuild their lives in a space where their freedom rights would not be restricted as they were south of the
Mason-Dixon. By the 1960s, though, African Americans had been experiencing racism and discrimination for nearly fifty years in the city, and it was clear that Chicago was not the
“promised land” it was initially thought to be. Black residents remained in positions of inferiority and struggled for the same resources and opportunities that were readily available for whites. In fact, Manning Marable, scholar of the African American experience stated, “disparities between blacks and whites are far greater in Chicago than in any other metropolitan area in this country.”17 During the 1960s, though, Black residents of Chicago began challenging racial inequality in an effort to improve their experience in the quintessential American city that they
16 Dominic Pacyga, Chicago: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 1. 17 Manning Marable, “Harold Washington and the Politics of Race in Chicago,” The Black Scholar 17, no. 2 (Fall, 1986) 14. 11 helped build. In the face of racism and racial inequality that confined African Americans to low- paying menial labor, dilapidated ghettos, and in general, to the margins of society, Black
Chicagoans consistently protested and challenged the white power structure by organizing a series of nonviolent marches, boycotts, strikes, and other demonstrations.
Chicago’s contemporary prosperity is often associated with notions of whiteness while
African Americans are consistently excluded from the narrative or blamed for the dissolution of various Chicago communities. The reality, though is that Black Chicagoans radically transformed this historically ‘white’ space to a place where Black residents would have access to the same resources and opportunities as whites. At the forefront of this struggle for freedom, especially during the early 1960s, was Black students. The ways that Black students, - primarily high school, but university students as well - organized themselves and challenged racial discrimination and inequality through a series of boycotts, walk-outs, strikes and political pressure is the central focus of this chapter.
This chapter is an attempt to construct a history of race and Black student activism in
Chicago during the 1960s. It considers the ways in which Black students in Chicago attempted to not only improve the quality of their education, but also how they challenged forms of racism and discrimination outside of educational institutions. This chapter also explores the ways in which Black students were affected by white flight and postwar deindustrialization. I argue that
Black students were not apathetic bystanders to the burgeoning protest environment taking place in Chicago during the 1960s. By engaging in a series of school boycotts, walk-outs and various other demonstrations, Black students moved to the forefront of the struggle for freedom in
Chicago, thus laying the initial groundwork for a strong local movement. These students demonstrate the commitment of urban Black residents to secure their freedom rights and to have 12 a stake in their communities and institutions. Finally, student activism and an analysis of race in
Chicago during the early 1960s reveals the early instances of racial tensions, racialized violence, segregation and poverty, issues from which the local movement emerged. In essence, Chicago became the first major battleground of the Civil Rights Movement in the North long before the
Chicago Freedom Movement during the second half of the decade.
Black student activism was ubiquitous in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century; especially during the sixties and seventies. Between 1968 and 1969 alone,
Black students organized campaigns on more than two hundred college campuses around the country.18 The rise in activism occurred as part of, and in conjunction with, the Civil Rights and
Black Power movements, and as part of the overall campus unrest of the New Left. Martha
Biondi argues in the Black Revolution on Campus that the Black student movement was rooted in the Black Power Movement “whose rhetoric, political analysis, and tactics broke from the civil rights movement, but whose goals of Black representation and inclusion were shared with civil rights activists.”19 This generation of Black students sought a stake in their education as well as their institutions and communities.
Much has been written on the Black Student Movement and Black student activism in general. Clayborne Carson’s In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s considers the indelible impact the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had on Black students nationally. Biondi agrees with Carson in The Black Revolution on Campus in which she argues that SNCC was an “important source of influence on Black students nationwide,” though these two authors are not necessarily contemporaries.20 Biondi examines the ways in which
18 Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012) 1. 19 Ibid. 4. 20 Ibid. 5. 13
Black students protested for inclusive educational reforms and improvement in the quality of their educations and educational experiences. She focuses on activism in a variety of places, such as Chicago, to demonstrate that Black students wanted a stake in the educations they were receiving; they protested not only for physically sufficient schools, but also for a higher quality of education that was substantive and meaningful for their lives and experiences as African
Americans. Large-scale protest for courses in Black history and culture, for example, was omnipresent. Relatedly, most Black students wanted these courses to be taught by Black professors. She argues that most Black students were Black Power advocates and “emphasized the creation of Black-controlled institutions, racial solidarity and entailed a vigorous emphasis on culture – both in celebrating African American culture and in seeing it as a catalyst for political action and the forging of a new Black consciousness.”21 Ibram Kendi shares many of these ideas in The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher
Education, 1965-1972, in which he examines Black student activism at the local level, again focusing on cities such as Chicago.
As Biondi notes, students throughout various regions of the nation were greatly inspired by SNCC in the 1960s. Black students and residents of Chicago were no exception to this. In fact, in 1960, the Chicago Area Friends of SNCC (CAFOS) was formed by a small group of
Black Chicago residents and a handful of white sympathizers.22 This sister branch of SNCC, so to speak, was initially founded to raise money and resources in support of SNCC which was working primarily in the South.23 As a result of crippling racial inequality and injustice in
Chicago, though, CAFOS eventually began fighting its own battle against racism and
21 Ibid. 4. 22 “Who and What We Are,” 1963, Chicago SNCC History Project Archives, (Box 2, Folder 18), Chicago Public Library, Woodson Regional Library, Vivian F. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature. 23 Ibid. 14 discrimination in the city and soon became a part of the Coordinating Council of Community
Organizations (CCCO) – a coalition of civil rights organizations in Chicago. It was through the
Council, and CAFOS in particular, that Black students organized and carried out various campaigns.
One of the clearer ways to examine how young, Black students organized and contributed to the burgeoning protest environment in Chicago during the 1960s is to consider the ways they demonstrated for better schools and educational experiences. It is important to have some general background information about Chicago during this time, however, to fully understand why Black residents, and young Black students in particular were so committed to carrying out these campaigns.
Following the Second World War, African Americans became increasingly engaged and willing to overtly challenge racial injustice and inequality.24 This was certainly the case in
Chicago. During the 1950s, Black Chicagoans rallied around a number of events geared toward challenging the white power structure and producing racial uplift. For example, Black residents protested outside of Chicago’s City Hall to express their discontent concerning the Trumbull
Homes riots which occurred as a result of whites attacking Black residents that moved into a housing complex centered in an all-white neighborhood.25 In 1960, thousands marched at the
Republican National Convention to demand strong civil rights policy.26 The most publicized event, however, was the murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till. Till was viciously beaten and murdered by racist whites while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi.27 His mother, Mamie
24 Timothy Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017) 17-18. 25 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 10. 26 Ibid. 27 Timothy Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017) 205. 15
Till, insisted that Till’s body be transported back to Chicago where she would have an open casket funeral service despite the fact that Till was unrecognizable as result of the severe wounds he suffered during his murder.28 Nearly fifty thousand Chicagoans lined up to view Till’s body.
Events such as these united and galvanized Black residents in Chicago during the mid to late
1950s; especially the murder of Emmett Till. In fact, Timothy Tyson, historian and author of The
Blood of Emmett Till concludes, “The murder of Emmett Till was reported in one of the very first banner headlines of the civil rights era and launched the national coalition that fueled the modern civil rights movement.”29 Black students were certainly conscious of these events and part of the local insurgency that was gradually taking shape.
These events are also indicative of race in Chicago during the late 1950s and 1960s. After thousands of Black Chicagoans rallied together in the wake of Till’s murder, newspaper writer,
Carl Hirsch, stated “People everywhere are joining to fight because of the way Emmett Till died
– but also because of the way he was forced to live.”30 Chicago was, and remains, one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. During the 1960s there were over twenty distinct ethnic neighborhoods in Chicago: German, Italian, Mexican, French, Chinese, Irish, Black, among others.31 African Americans were confined to Chicago’s ‘Black Belt’ – a string of Black communities located in Chicago’s South Side. Scholar Roger Biles describes this area stating,
“The South Side ghetto expanded east into Hyde Park, Oakland, and Kenwood; west to Western
Avenue; south into Woodlawn, Park Manor, Chatham, and Englewood; and its southernmost edge extended to the city limits.”32 He then continues by making it clear that as the Black Belt
28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 2. 30 Carl Hirsch, “This Was Emmett Louis Till,” Daily Worker, October 9, 1955. 31 Timothy Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017) 15. 32 Roger Biles, “Race and Housing in Chicago,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 94, no. 1 (Spring, 2001) 32-33. 16 expanded, whites reluctantly gave up living space, though segregation remained intact.33 When the initial wave of Black migrants arrived in Chicago during the first migration, they were in direct competition with white migrants from earlier generations.34 Prior to the start of the twentieth century, African Americans made up only one percent of the total population in
Chicago.35 By 1920, the Black population increased to four percent of the total population. The second migration saw a considerable increase in the Black population, however, and by the
1960s, the Black population was greater than twenty five percent. Nearly one million Black people resided in Chicago and they were mostly confined to areas of the West and South Side.
Approximately 350,000 resided on the West Side while close to 650,000 lived on the South
Side.36 They competed for jobs and housing. Redlining and racist housing policies confined
Black residents to impoverished ghettos almost exclusively on the South Side. According to
Tyson, “Realtors generally refused to show homes to buyers except in neighborhoods occupied by people of their own race. Many African Americans, regardless of their means, could not get a mortgage and became ensnared in a vicious contract-based buying system that routinely ended up bankrupting them.”37 When these ghettos became overcrowded, Black residents slowly began overflowing into neighboring white communities which elevated racial tensions and initiated the process of white flight. In some instances, however, this led to extreme cases of violence. The
Chicago race riot of 1919 exemplifies this.
33 Ibid. 33. 34 Timothy Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017) 15. 35 City of Chicago, Chicago’s Black Population, Harold Washington Library, Government Publications, Chicago Commission on Human Relations, 1966-70. 36 Martin Deppe, Operation Breadbasket: An Untold Story of Civil Rights in Chicago, 1966-1971 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017) 3. 37 Timothy Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017) 19.
17
Black residents were targeted by white street gangs and vigilante groups committed to keeping their neighborhoods segregated and exclusively white. When Black families moved into white neighborhoods, their homes were often bombed, or they experienced continuous harassment. In the early 1950s, for example, thousands of whites spent several days firebombing an apartment complex in Cicero – a suburban, white neighborhood - because a unit was rented to a Black family.38 This type of violence was not uncommon.
It is out of this hostile environment that forms Black student activism in Chicago emerged. Black residents being confined to impoverished ghettos meant that children were restricted to inadequate schools in those neighborhoods. Just like the neighborhoods themselves, schools were severely overcrowded and physically inadequate as compared to schools in white neighborhoods.39 According to John Lyons, author of Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public
Education, 1929-1970, “Black enrollment climbed from 74,000 in 1950 to 253,000 in 1963, or from 21 percent to 47 percent of the total.”40 The buildings were old and dilapidated. It was not uncommon for schools in Black neighborhoods to lack sufficient heating or protection from the outside elements.41 The Black teachers that were hired to teach in these schools were underpaid and given minimal resources to supplement their teaching. Classroom materials that were supplied such as textbooks were old and dated. Historian V.P. Franklin stated that “As a result of the discriminatory funding practices of white state officials, African American children throughout the country attended inadequately funded public schools from the Reconstruction era
38 Ibid. 20. 39 V.P. Franklin, “Introduction: Cultural Capital and African American Education,” The Journal of African American History 87, no. 4 (Spring, 2002) 176. 40 John Lyons, Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education: 1929-1970 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008) 131. 41 Ibid. 18 to the 1960s.”42 He continues, “Many times the resources needed for basic instruction, including blackboards, pencils, books, chairs, desks, even land and buildings, had to be supplied by members of the local black communities.” Even more troubling, however, was that many white teachers and administrators employed in majority Black schools were overtly racist.43
Former Chicago school teacher, Ann Prosten, confirms many of these assertions in an open letter she wrote to the Chicago Board of Education in August of 1963. Ms. Prosten, was a white teacher in an all-Black neighborhood located in Chicago’s South Side. She resigned from her position stating, “I love children, and therefore cannot endure the evidence of their (Black children’s) mistreatment, nor lend myself to it; I am excited over the opportunity to teach children, and therefore cannot permit myself to be the instrument of an educational program which betrays them.”44 Ms. Prosten went on to state that her class typically had more than forty students in an “old converted 4-story clinic.” She continues, “an understaffed maintenance department waged an endless and hopeless struggle against the littered halls, classes, and almost shrub-less grounds, the dozens of broken windows and defaced walls that bespeak the unhappiness of the community and its children with their public school.” Porter then turned her attention to the issue of segregation, stating it was a system designed to keep Black children in a position of inferiority. It was not uncommon for teachers like Ms. Prosten to join students in expressing their discontent with the public-school system. At the height of the Cold War, however, Black teachers, and white teachers that were sympathetic to the Black cause, were labelled as Communist and accused of spreading Communism amongst students, a common
42 V.P. Franklin, “Introduction: Cultural Capital and African American Education,” The Journal of African American History 87, no. 4 (Spring, 2002), 176. 43 Ibid. 44 “Who and What We Are,” 1963, Chicago SNCC History Project Archives, (Box 2, Folder 18), Chicago Public Library, Woodson Regional Library, Vivian F. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature. 19 device to attack anyone advocating for significant social change. Lyons concluded that many teachers during the 1950s and 1960s, both Black and white, were limited in how much they could do to aid student activists and protest as a result of anticommunist activities. He states,
“Teachers had to be careful about what they said and did in the classroom, and they had to take oaths to prove their loyalty.”45 In this regard, anticommunism activity became a strategic method for limiting student and teacher activism in Black Chicago neighborhoods.
Conditions such as these prodded Black students, parents and residents in Chicago to protest for change. Discontent with the public-school system was the most pressing issue for many Black Chicagoans. Ralph states in Northern Protest that “Anger over Chicago public school policy, however, was the principal source of Black unrest.”46 He goes on to assert that extreme overcrowding of schools in Black residential communities ultimately led to a local civil rights insurgency in Chicago.47 By 1963, schools became so overcrowded throughout the South
Side that Benjamin Willis, superintendent of Chicago public schools, implemented a double shift program. In short, this meant there were two sets of students attending schools each day: one set would attend early in the morning and the second set later in the day.48 This was especially common in the Englewood, Chatham and Vernon Park areas. As a result, Black parents began trying to enroll their children in white schools; this too caused white residents to leave their communities.49
45 John Lyons, Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education: 1929-1970 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008) 131. 46 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 14. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Chicago Defender, March 13, 1961. 20
Black students and residents of Chicago were also greatly displeased with Superintendent
Benjamin Willis. Willis refused to believe that there was any real race problem concerning the
Chicago Public Schools system. Because de facto residential segregation confined the majority of Black residents to impoverished ghettos, primarily in Chicago’s South and West Side, Black children were confined to inadequate school’s in those neighborhoods. These schools were considerably inferior to schools in neighboring white communities. Despite glaring differences and inequalities between Black and white educational institutions, professor of education, John
Rury, concluded that Willis “refused to consider proposals for transferring children from Black schools to white areas of the city on a large scale.”50 This demonstrates that Willis, despite being ostensibly progressive, was in fact a segregationist who was unwilling to allow public schools to be a vehicle for integration. Rury declared that despite the marginalized position of Black schools, Willis vehemently resisted any conditions or reforms that would alter the transformation
“of the spatial relationships of power and privilege that defined Chicago’s landscape.”51 Chicago historian, Dominic Pacyga insisted that Willis was a “symbol of everything that black Chicago felt had gone wrong with the schools and with the city.”52 In essence, Willis reinforced de facto segregation in Chicago.
Compounding racial and segregation issues in the Chicago Public School system was major Richard J. Daley and his Democratic political machine. Daley was elected mayor in 1955 and served until his death in 1976.53 In addition to holding the office of mayor in Chicago, he
50 John Rury, “Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago’s Public Schools: Benjamin Willis and the Tragedy of Urban Education,” History of Education Quarterly 39, no. 2 (Summer, 1999) 130. 51 Ibid. 131. 52 Dominic Pacyga, Chicago: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 350. 53 Lisa Boehm, Popular Culture and the Enduring Myth of Chicago, 1871-1968 (New York: Routledge, 2004) 152. 21 also served as the chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party.54 This made him one of the most powerful politicians in Chicago and in the state of Illinois. In short, Daley was a staunch supporter of segregation and regularly dismissed claims of racial inequality. In 1961, he made the infamous assertion that Chicago “had no ghettos and no negro ghetto.”55 This certainly was not the case, however. Daley rejected Black integration into white neighborhoods and schools simply because it constituted a greater threat to his power. Lyons concludes that “Mayor Daley supported school segregation. For Daley and the Democratic Party, the movement of blacks into white neighborhoods threated to push white residents, their electoral power base and a main source of the city’s tax revenue, out of the city. Daley therefore continued to appoint members to the Board of Education who upheld segregation.”56 Lisa Boehm, author of Popular Culture and the Enduring Myth of Chicago further cements this idea by asserting that one of the biggest scandals of the Daley administration was its negligible treatment of Black residents in Chicago.57
Chicago historian, Dominic Pacyga, stated, “In the early 1960s, race presented the greatest challenge to Daley and other big city mayors… Chicago’s African American leadership began to see him as increasingly hostile to civil rights and the full integration of blacks in American society. Much of this attitude first arose over the issue of school integration.”58 The partnership between Daley and Willis proved to be a considerable hindrance to integration and racial progress in Chicago during the 1960s.
Black communities did not quietly accept these conditions. Throughout the entire decade of the 1960s, Black students, parents and teachers carried out a series of massive school boycotts,
54 John Lyons, Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education: 1929-1970 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008) 135. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 137. 57 Lisa Boehm, Popular Culture and the Enduring Myth of Chicago, 1871-1968 (New York: Routledge, 2004) 154. 58 Dominic Pacyga, Chicago: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 350. 22 walkouts, and other demonstrations to express their discontent with Willis and the quality of education they were receiving. Both Black students and parents joined organizations such as the
Urban League and the NAACP.59 In the early 1960s, the Chicago NAACP became involved in the battle for quality education for Black students. Though the NAACP consistently voiced its disapproval of discriminatory educational policies in the Chicago Public School System, many students and residents became impatient with the organization’s lack of assertiveness and real action. Moreover, the NAACP was overly bureaucratic and slow to make concrete decisions capable of producing any immediate results.
Most students, high school students in particular, joined CAFOS. In its formative years, the organization carried out a series of successful “Food and Funds for Freedom” campaigns in which food, money and resources were collected and shipped to SNCC organizers and impoverished Black families in the South. In 1963, for example, CAFOS started a “Food and
Funds for Freedom” campaign for Black sharecroppers in Leflore County, Mississippi who were evicted for attempting to register to vote.60 By late 1963, though, the group was committed to addressing issues related to race in its own city. One of its top priorities was to address discrimination and racism in the public-school system. Students and parents involved in CAFOS sought the immediate resignation of Superintendent Benjamin Willis, whose educational policies seemed to only reinforce residential segregation and continue to disadvantage Black youth. As a result, the blossoming organization initiated a series of boycotts and what they referred to as
“Freedom Day,” which was a massive school boycott of Chicago Public Schools that occurred
59 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 15-17. 60 “Who and What We Are,” Chicago SNCC History Project Archives, (Box 2, Folder 1), Chicago Public Library, Woodson Regional Library, Vivian F. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature. 23 on October 22, 196361 Over 225,000 students from more than 75 schools participated in the boycott. Flyers for the boycott listed the following reasons for carrying out the Freedom Day and boycott:
1. Chicago schools were still segregated. 2. Negro children are receiving inferior education. 3. The Board of Education refuses to do one single thing to break down racial segregation in our schools. 4. Mayor Daley has turned his back on the 812,000 Negro people of Chicago by turning down a third Negro for the Board of Education. 5. Dr. B.C. Willis, America’s most controversial educator; is still in power and it is he who keeps the schools segregated.62
The Black community grew increasingly frustrated with Willis, especially after his approval and implementation of mobile classrooms. In response to overcrowding in predominantly Black schools, Willis had mobile trailers setup in school lots as makeshift classrooms. Black residents referred to these trailer classrooms as “Willis wagons.”63 That Willis would rather Black students have class in mobile trailers instead of having them transfer to white schools nearby illustrated his commitment to maintaining power structures that historically defined Chicago. Rosie
Simpson, president of the 71st and Steward Committee made it clear, “There is no room for compromise on Dr. Willis’ continuing in Chicago. His administration will continue to hurt the progress of race relations not only in the city’s schools, but in the city of Chicago.”64 Simpson’s statements are likely reflective of the larger Black community.
Another lesser known, but significant source of student activism came from the Chicago
High School Friends of SNCC. This organization was similar to CAFOS, except it consisted only
61 Madalene Chafin, “Second Boycott May Be Held in November,” Chicago Defender, Oct. 24, 1963. 62 “Fundraising,” 1962-1964, Chicago SNCC History Project Archives, (Box 2, Folder 18), Chicago Public Library, Woodson Regional Library, Vivian F. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature. 63 Michael Homel, Down from Equality: Black Chicagoans and the Public Schools, 1920-1941 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984) 64 Dave Potter, “Willis Scram! Say 50,000,” Chicago Defender, Aug. 24, 1963. 24 of high school students. Like CAFOS, the high school friends of SNCC were also interracial, welcoming anyone who was willing to fight for racial equality. Their primary goal was to raise money and collect resources for SNCC officers in the South, but they too soon began their own battles for racial justice in Chicago.
It is unclear exactly when and who founded the Chicago High School Friends of SNCC.
Their oldest retrievable records date back to 1962, but it is possible they existed before this.
Exact members are not known, but the organization consisted of students from a variety of schools. Schools that were represented on the executive council include DuSable, Dunbar, Kelly
Calumot, Hirsh, Hyde Park, Englewood, and Forrestville North.65
The Chicago High School Friends of SNCC participated in boycotts led by CAFOS, but they also acted independent of the organizations and other civil rights groups in the city., challenging forms of racism and discrimination within their institutions. For example, a
“Statement of Grievances” was presented to the Chicago Board of Education circa 1963 (the exact date is unclear) expressing discontent with segregation in the public-school system stating,
“now is the time to do something about segregation in Chicago schools.”66 They continued, “We feel well equipped to present this statement. We have not gotten our information out of books, magazines or newspapers. We have not made assumptions. Everything listed is something some person or group of people in our group has experienced.” This is another indication of the experiences of young, Black students in Chicago Public Schools. It also reinforces the idea that students in this particular organization acted independently of other organizations.
65 “Chicago High School Friends of SNCC,” 1963 Chicago SNCC History Project Archives, (Box 3, Folder 11), Chicago Public Library, Woodson Regional Library, Vivian F. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature. 66 Ibid. 25
Chicago High Schools Friends of SNCC were also concerned with the educational content they were receiving. In another letter presented to the Chicago Board of Education during Freedom Day, they expressed the need for more Black history/studies courses. They stated, “there can never be equality of educational opportunity (in Chicago) as long as the achievements of one-tenth of our population are omitted from the pages of history.”67 They continued, “We are petitioning for the rewriting of Social Studies textbooks so that the Negro is included. Then and only then will whites be able to shed feelings of false superiority. And
Negroes, aware of their heroes, may then rid themselves of feelings of inferiority. A whole society will stop living and thinking a lie.” This was a trend that later student organizations, especially the Black Student Union (BSU), would follow during the second half of the decade and through the 1970s. This also reflective of the desire of many Black students to have a stake in their educations and communities.
The Chicago High School Friends of SNCC also show that Black students were equally concerned with issues related to race outside of their schools and even beyond Chicago. Voter registration was one of the key focuses of the Chicago High School Friends of SNCC both in
Chicago and in areas of the South. The marginal number of Black registered voters was viewed as a national problem rather than a regional problem. In a memorandum from the group’s executive council, they stated the following:
Throughout this country, North as well as South, Negroes have been suffering the evils of racial discrimination and have been denied the right to full and equal participation as citizens. In the South especially, the Negro is the chief source of inexpensive labor; in some places the Negro is still virtually a salve. SNCC is out to change this situation through nonviolence. The first thing to do is to assure the Negroes the right to vote – something almost unheard of in the South.68
67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 26
This demonstrates that Black students from Chicago were aware of issues related to race outside of their schools and even outside of Chicago. The memorandum continues, “The whites realize what will happen when the Negroes vote – their entrenched power will fall, they will no longer be able to repress the Negro and depress his wages. They see the damage true democracy can do to them as individuals and they are trying to stop it.” Here, it is clear that these students understood relationships of power and how that power was being maintained in historically white spaces.
Franklin states in “Cultural Capital and African American Education,” that African
Americans “recognized the value of literacy and schooling for themselves and their children.”69
He continues with the following:
The desire for literacy and formal education became a “core value” in the African American cultural value system as a result of the experience of enslavement and legalized oppression and discrimination in the United States. For formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants, literacy and formal schooling was closely associated with “freedom,” and they were willing to make great sacrifices to obtain them.70
This further demonstrates that inadequate education was the foremost cause of wide-scale unrest and protest amongst Black students. Students were committed to challenging forms of racism and discrimination in their communities but realized that a quality education was a fundamental stepping stone to achieving racial progress not just in their institutions, but in the rest of the community as well. Black students in Chicago exemplify this. Students organized via the
Chicago Area Friends of SNCC and the High School Friends of SNCC (amongst other civil rights organizations) to express their discontent with the public-school system and demanded
69 V.P. Franklin, “Introduction: Cultural Capital and African American Education,” The Journal of African American History 87, no. 4 (Spring, 2002) 176. 70 Ibid; V.P. Franklin, Black Self-Determination: A Cultural History of African American Resistance (Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books, 1984)147. 27 respectable institutions for themselves. When local and state governments refused to provide better resources and schools for these Black students, they provided funding to create their own institutions. The denouncement of segregation in public schools then translated to protests against segregation throughout the entire city of Chicago, and the nation. Furthermore, the actions of students in groups such as CAFOS indicate that students were clearly not just concerned with issues related to race in Chicago.
These early instances of Black student activism provide an opportunity to consider Black students in historically white spaces such as Chicago. Rather than apathetic bystanders, these students organized themselves and projected their political voices in a city whose political powers were considerably hostile to their very presence. As a result of these students’ commitment to racial equality, they were able to get a racist superintendent to resign, provide funding for their educational institutions, gradually integrate into better schools, and in general, improve their educational experience and quality of life. Lastly, their actions show that these students willingly placed themselves at the forefront of the struggle for freedom in Chicago and ultimately gave later groups like CAFOS and the Council an issue to rally around. Students played an integral role in the early Chicago movement and planted the seed for the broader struggle that would come to fruition in the coming years. 28
CHAPTER TWO: THE CHICAGO AREA FRIENDS OF SNCC
Founding & “Food and Funds for Freedom” Campaign
In 1960, SNCC organizers traveled to Fayette County, Tennessee in an effort to increase
Black voter registration.71 This was a dangerous endeavor. Though African Americans legally received the right to vote in 1870 with the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, various racial barriers prevented them from doing so – literacy tests, poll taxes, fear of losing employment, and violent backlash from local whites and groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Factors such as these kept
African Americans from voting not just in Tennessee, but in most places throughout the South.
Notwithstanding, a small group of Black sharecroppers in Fayette literally gambled their lives when they attempted to register to vote in 1960. Not only were they unsuccessful in registering, they were also evicted once their so-called “uppity” activities became known by whites. 72
Following the eviction of local Black sharecroppers, James Forman, member of SNCC, contacted two close friends in Chicago: Sylvia and Charles Fischer.73 Forman worked with the
Fischers organizing food drives in Chicago throughout the 1950s and was aware of their commitment to racial justice in Chicago and elsewhere. It is not surprising then that Forman reached out to the Fischers for assistance in raising money and collecting food and other resources to send to SNCC field workers and evicted sharecroppers in Fayette. This partnership would eventually lead to the formation of the Chicago Area Friends of SNCC (CAFOS).
This chapter functions as an introduction to the largely unknown history of the Chicago
Area Friends of SNCC. I argue that CAFOS, while derivative of SNCC in a number of ways,
71 Bobby Lovett, The Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee: A Narrative History (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005) 205. 72 Ibid; “Seek More Aid for Fayette County, Tennessee,” Chicago Defender, December 21, 1960. 73 Ibid; *To avoid confusion between the Fischers, I will from this point forward refer to Sylvia by her last name, Fischer, and her husband as Charles since he is less present in the narrative. 29 came to operate independently of SNCC and most other civil rights organizations based in
Chicago. CAFOS had its own ideologies, leaders, programs, and goals. I also argue that women played a fundamental role in CAFOS. They greatly outnumbered men and did most of the organizational work necessary to sustain the organization and the Chicago movement itself.
Because much of the scholarship dealing with the Chicago movement tends to focus on the
CFM, the role women played in the local antecedent struggle has largely been overshadowed.
Following its formation, CAFOS quickly became one of the most important civil rights groups in
Chicago by effectively mobilizing urban and middle-class Black residents through nonviolent direct action to materialize a local insurgency.
The Chicago Area Friends of SNCC emerged in conjunction with the burgeoning protest environment caused by widespread racial inequality and grew in conjunction with the Civil
Rights and Black Power Movements. In The Black Revolution on Campus, historian Martha
Biondi, argues that Black student activism was rooted in Black Power.74 The sit-ins that took place in Greensboro, North Carolina and led to the formation of SNCC, inspired Black students – in both high school and college – throughout the nation to join the fight against racial inequality and discrimination. And, SNCC was one of the most “important sources of influence on Black students nationwide.”75 For many students and others who committed themselves to the Black student movement and general Black Freedom Struggle, traveling to the South to become directly involved was not always practical or possible. 76 For this reason, northern and
74 Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012) 4. 75 Ibid. 5. 76 For more on the Black student movement, see: Muhammad Ahmad, “On the Black Student Movement, 1960- 1970,” The Black Scholar, 1978, 2-11. Ahmad argues that the Black student movement occurred in response to the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements during the sixties and seventies. This was a time when Black students from all over the country organized a series of protests and direct-action initiatives to challenge racial inequality and injustice on school campuses and within their communities. Ahmad also argues that the Black student movement bloomed in conjunction with the New Left which saw Black students becoming more radical and openly challenging 30
Midwestern communities raised money and collected resources to aid those on the frontlines of the struggle in the South. This was the initial impetus behind the establishment of CAFOS.
In January 1963, thirty local Chicagoans met in the home of Sylvia and Charles Fischer to discuss ways they could raise money for SNCC activists working in the South.77 This small but determined group of activists called themselves the Chicago Area Friends of SNCC. Fischer and her husband, with the help of James Forman, were responsible for laying the initial groundwork to get the organization up and running in terms of community publicity and fundraising.78 It was decided during the first meeting that Fischer would act as co-chair alongside
Lawrence Landry.79 Charles Fischer acted as treasurer.
Similar to Fishcer, Landry had long been involved in the struggle for racial equality.
Landry was a Chicago native who was a frequent participant in the Student Movement during the late 1950s, while a student at the University of Chicago, where he earned a bachelors and master’s degree in sociology.80 Landry was in the process of completing his doctorate degree when he dropped out in order to devote his time to the nascent Coordinating Council of
Community Organizations (CCCO), a coalition of civil rights organizations in Chicago that worked together to combat racial discrimination and inequality.81 By 1963, the Council was the umbrella term for the coalition of more than twenty organizations.82 It consisted of groups such
American politics and denouncing the Vietnam War. Also see: Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012) 1-12. 77 “Who and What We Are,” 1963, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 78 Ibid. 79 “Executive Committee Members Circa 1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 1, Folder 2, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 80 “In Memoriam of Lawrence Landry,” 1997, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 10, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 81 “In Memoriam of Lawrence Landry,” 1997, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 10, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 82 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993). Pg. 23. 31 as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Chicago Urban League, the Chicago Catholic
Interracial Council (CCIC), the Presbyterian Interracial Council, Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity, and CAFOS. Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) also worked with the Council at the start of the Chicago Freedom Movement in 1965, which historian James Ralph describes as the “enterprise determined to root out racial injustice, particularly housing discrimination in Chicago, to improve the quality of life for the city’s Black residents, and to prod the nation as a whole to combat urban ills.”83 The partnership between CAFOS, the Council, and SCLC would prove to be invaluable as the movement progressed.
Little is known about the life and experiences of Fischer; the information that is available is murky at best. She was a native of New York City and received a bachelor’s degree in social work from Hunter College, which at the time was a small liberal arts school located on the upper-east side of Manhattan.84 Upon receiving her bachelor’s degree, Fischer moved to Chicago where she earned a master’s degree in Education from the University of Chicago and later became a school teacher at Kenwood Elementary in Chicago.85 She first became involved in the struggle for civil rights through the food drives for Tent City – a series of programs geared towards combatting homelessness and poverty in Chicago during the 1950s and early 1960s.86 In
1960, Fischer also worked with James Forman and CORE to help sharecroppers in Fayette
County, Tennessee who were evicted after attempting to register to vote.87 Forman and Fischer, with the aid of others in the community, helped raise money, collect food, clothes, medical
83 Ibid. 1 84 “Who we Are,” Sylvia Fischer, The Chicago SNCC History Project, 2016. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 “Seek More Aid for Fayette County, Tennessee,” Chicago Defender, December 21, 1960. 32 supplies and other resources for evicted sharecroppers and SNCC field organizers in Fayette.88
After just a few weeks, seventy two dollars and fifteen large boxes and food and clothing were on the way south.89
The combined experience of Landry and Fischer made them ideal leaders for a new civil rights group in Chicago. They possessed strong, but distinct personalities that seemed to balance the direction of the nascent CAFOS. Landry was often labeled as militant and radical while
Fischer was more moderate and reserved. Landry was described by a close friend and fellow activist, Nahaz Rogers, as being “a very strong person and a very introspective, quiet person who was good at putting ideas together. He was a thinker and an activist.”90 James Ralph, author of
Norther Protest: Martin Luther King Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement described
Landry as a young and “fiery,” student who pushed other young Chicago activists in a more militant direction.91 Landry’s strong personality, however, often caused tensions with other groups involved in the Council, particularly with the Chicago NAACP which generally favored a legal and non-militant, bureaucratic approach. Landry’s militancy, or sometimes violent rhetoric, also caused tensions with members of CAFOS, especially after he and other activists founded
ACT in 1963 – a militant civil rights organization. This ultimately led to his expulsion from
CAFOS in 1963.92
The sharing of leadership between Landry and Fischer was symbolic in other ways, however: Landry was Black; Fischer white. This was emblematic of the organization’s philosophy in terms of race and gender. CAFOS was an interracial organization that welcomed
88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Chicago Tribune. June 8, 1997. 91 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993). Pg. 23. 92 Ibid. 25. 33 the support and participation from anyone committed to achieving racial equality and freedom rights for all people. The ground remained an interracial organization until its decline in the late
1960s. This is a departure from SNCC which was interracial in its early years but eventually sought to “resolve their differences by calling for Black Power and Black consciousness, by excluding white activists… and by building Black-controlled institutions.”93 Fischer’s leadership position as a woman was a dramatic shift from the conservative customs of the early Civil Rights
Movement which rarely saw women in positions of power. Though Landry and Fischer served as co-chairs, CAFOS, similar to SNCC, embraced the idea of collective leadership rather than the bureaucratic and hierarchical structure of groups like the NAACP and SCLC.
According to the CAFOS Constitution, drafted shortly after its founding meeting, the group’s purpose was to “affirm the general purposes of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee… Moreover, we embrace its ideal of non-violence as a foundation and guide for work dedicated to the development of a social order shaped by justice and permeated by love.”94
Though this illustrates the strong ties between CAFOS and SNCC, the group soon began to act independently of SNCC. Furthermore, this makes it clear why Landry’s militant position eventually became problematic for the organization as a whole. In a memorandum drafted shortly after the organization’s founding, it is made clear that they were initially established “for the purpose of helping provide financial and other support to what we feel is the most courageous and meaningful group working in the current second American Revolution.”95 The organization they were referring to was SNCC, of course.
93 Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981) 3. 94 “Who and What We Are,” 1963, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 95 Ibid. 34
Membership in CAFOS was open to all who resided in Chicago, though the organization consisted mostly of Black high school and college students.96 According to the Constitution
Preamble, “The membership of this association shall consist of all persons who agree with its general purposes and who shall endeavor to lend themselves to the execution of its intentions.”97
Again, this reaffirms the group’s commitment to inclusion in terms of race and gender. In short, membership was open to all who Chicago residents who supported the goals, tactics, rules, and platform laid out by the Constitution. Just like SNCC in its formative years, membership swelled with students who wanted a stake in their communities and institutions, though neither organization was made up entirely of students. SNCC’s radical and militant approach with events such as the sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter registration campaigns inspired students throughout the nation to join the Student Movement and the Black Freedom Struggle. Students in Chicago were no exception.
Active members were required to pay a small fee, of which a portion was collected for
SNCC offices in the South. High school students were required to pay 50 cents while college students paid $1.00.98 All others paid $2.00. Active status within the organization gave members the option to vote for officers and hold executive positons. At their founding, the group consisted of approximately thirty members, three of whom were executive officers: Sylvia Fischer,
Lawrence Landry, and Charles Fischer.99 There were also three staff members: Ralph Rapoport,
Roberta Galler, and Rose Jennings who did most of the administrative and secretarial work.100
96 “Administrative Records,” 1960-1964, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 1, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 97 “Who and What We Are,” 1963, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 98 “Administrative Records,” 1960-1964, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 1, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 99 “Who and What We Are,” 1963, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 100 Ibid. 35
It seems likely that CAFOS operated out of two different offices during its existence. Its primary headquarters was Sylvia and Charles Fischer’s home, located in East Madison Park.101
Administrative records and notes indicate this is where most of the group’s meetings took place, and was the address used for most of the organization’s essential documents. The second
CAFOS office was located on East Oakwood Boulevard, in a now dilapidated and vacant building. These two buildings played a significant role in the group’s success. It is where the group held most meetings, fundraising events, social gatherings, and housed field workers.
In February 1963, shortly after CAFOS’s founding, they initiated a “Food and Funds for
Freedom” campaign to send food, money and resources to SNCC organizers in the South and for sharecroppers who had been evicted for trying to register to vote, primarily in Mississippi. These
“Food and Funds for Freedom” campaigns were similar in nature to the fundraising and volunteering that occurred in 1960 for Fayette County, Tennessee. In Mississippi, however, a significant number of Black sharecroppers and other laborers in Leflore and Sunflower County were either evicted or lost their jobs for attempting to register to vote. Of course, those who lost their jobs would inevitably lose their home as well. An estimated 20,000 people were faced with
“starvation conditions” in these particular counties.102 Also in Mississippi, officials withdrew support from the U.S. surplus food distribution program of which many of families relied on for support during the winter months.103 The average sharecropper made between fifty and three hundred dollars in a single year.104 The average Black female domestic worker earned approximately three dollars per week. These less than adequate rates of pay explain why so many
101 “Administrative Records,” 1960-1964, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 1, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 102 Launch Chicago Food Drive to Aid Starving Miss. Families,” Chicago Defender, February 2, 1963. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 36
Black sharecroppers and other workers relied so heavily on the U.S. food surplus distribution program.
In the course of their work to help Mississippi residents, SNCC organizers responsible for conducting the voter registration campaigns were arrested and faced hostile conditions. SNCC workers along with 150 Black residents who attempted to register to vote at the Leflore County
Court House were viciously attacked by police dogs and then arrested.105 Also as a result of the voter registration campaign in Leflore, three SNCC workers were forced to jump from a second- floor window in order to escape from a mob of angry whites. Black stores and businesses were burned or destroyed, and other SNCC workers, like Mississippi native, Jim Travis, recalled being shot at and severely wounded by a group of white men driving by as he walked along the side of the road.106 SNCC offices, Black homes and churches were set on fire, bombed or shot at.
Conditions for volunteers transporting funds and resources to SNCC workers, and local
Black residents in the South were also hostile and violent. For instance, when volunteers from
Louisville, Kentucky traveled to Clarksdale, Mississippi to deliver food and medical supplies to sharecroppers and SNCC organizers, they were accused of carrying narcotics and eventually arrested. The two volunteers arrested were Ivanhoe Donaldson and Benjamin Taylor; both were twenty-one years old students.107 The students were initially held on 150,000-dollar bond, but widespread protests from Black communities reduced the bond to 1,500 dollars which was immediately paid by SNCC headquarters from Atlanta. Even so, Donaldson and Taylor spent a total of eleven days in prison despite doctors proving that no narcotics were present on the shipment trucks.108 Occurrences such as these were not unique. These were typical tactics used
105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. 107 “New Drive Opens for Food for Miss. Needy as 2 Face Trial,” Chicago Defender, January 14, 1963. 108 Ibid. 37 by whites at the local and state level to hinder Black mobility and uphold the white power structure. Bishop C. Ewbank Tucker, president of the Louisville CORE chapter wrote a letter to
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in which he stated that “the arrest of Taylor and Donaldson was a move to thwart the whole freedom movement in Mississippi.”109 Black Chicago residents, and CAFOS in particular, were conscious of these events and worked to lend their support and resources. They galvanized Chicagoans by urging to “Help keep the tiny flame of freedom now burning in small Leflore County alive… Help keep the tiny flame Mississippi has shown with rare courage their will to follow the heroic young leaders of the SNCC along the path to liberation.”110
Despite the many challenges facing the initial food drives, the first “Food and Funds for
Freedom” campaign proved to be a great success in terms of gaining recognition and membership for the newly formed CAFOS, and in terms of resources collected. The organization advertised this event by word of mouth in local Black communities; especially through the church. Donation centers were established primarily in the Hyde Park and Woodlawn areas as well as Evanston and Maywood.111 In local, Black grocery stores, flyers were taped to doors encouraging customers to buy extra food to send to SNCC and others suffering in Leflore
County:
In many places in Mississippi and Georgia, Negroes are starving to death because they dared to register to vote; dared to stand up for their rights… SNCC… has initiated and carried out an extensive voter education and registration drive. People who have tried to register, have not only been denied the right to vote but have also been evicted from their homes and cut off from their only source of food.112
109 Ibid. 110 “Chicago Area Friends of SNCC Urge Continued Aid to Miss.,” Chicago Defender, April 13, 1963. 111 “Launch Chicago Food Drive to Aid Starving Miss. Families,” Chicago Defender, February 2, 1963. 112 “Chicago High School Friends of SNCC,” 1963, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 3, Folder 11, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 38
In total, CAFOS shipped 113,000 pounds of food into Mississippi that year.113 By the end of
March, they collected enough money to send a total of $800 to the main SNCC office in Atlanta and another $300 for sharecroppers in Mississippi.114 In April, the group sent its last monetary donation to sharecroppers in Mississippi in the amount of nearly $600.115 Over the course of the next six months, however, they sent more than $8,000 dollars to SNCC’s main office.116
Fundraising for the “Food and Funds for Freedom” campaign took shape in a number of ways. Aside from membership fees, money was also raised through local concerts and shows.
Dick Gregory, for example, a nationally known stand-up comedian during the 1960s had close ties with many civil rights activists in Chicago and was asked by CAFOS to perform benefit concerts on more than one occasion. Gregory had long been involved in the Black Freedom
Struggle and was known for mocking American racism and bigotry during his performances. He consistently donated funds and resources to support CAFOS’s cause, and when the organization sent its first shipment of food to Mississippi, Gregory personally flew into Mississippi to hand deliver the resources.117
A great deal of fundraising also took place through the church. Though many northern
Black students and members of CAFOS were less conservative than the middle-class preachers often associated with the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement, many remained involved with the church, as did the church with the unfolding movement that was taking place in
Chicago. Several churches and religious organizations were members of the Council. In terms of
113 “Who and What We Are,” 1963, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 114 “Financials, Feb-April 1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 22, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 115 Ibid. 116 “Publications,” 1963-1965, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 3, Folder 13, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 117 “Who and What We Are,” 1963, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 39 fundraising, events were consistently held in the church to raise money. Benefit dinners and socials, special guest sermons, charity events, etc., were all customary of churches during the
1960s; Black churches, in particular. The church provided a safe space for Black people and civil rights activists to meet and organize; to raise money and collect resources for the movement.
Additionally, as Aldon Morris, author of The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, makes clear, the church provided “a leadership of clergymen largely economically independent of the larger white society and skilled in the art of managing people and resources; an institutional financial base through which protest was financed; and meeting places where the masses planned tactics and strategies and collectively committed themselves to the struggle.”118 Though Morris was likely referring to the earlier phase of the Civil Rights Movement which was dominated by men like Dr. King, Medgar Evers, or Jesse Jackson, it is clear that the Black church remained an institutional center for later and more radical activists in northern and Midwestern localities such as Chicago.
Another significant component to the history of CAFOS is its gender dynamics. Because much of the work dealing with the Chicago struggle for freedom focuses on King and the national CFM, little attention has been given to the dynamics of local group’s such as CAFOS which has led to the marginalization of women. This analysis of CAFOS reveals that women were fundamental to its success and to the larger movement.
Women & CAFOS
A discussion of women in SNCC, CAFOS and in Chicago is necessary for a few different reasons. First, it is not possible to fully understand CAFOS’s history without having some understanding of its gender dynamics, and the role women played in the organization. Similar to
118 Aldon Morris. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: The Free Press, 1984). Pg. 4. 40 every other major and minor civil rights organization, women in CAFOS were the backbone of the organization. At the first meeting that resulted in its official establishment, women accounted for more than half of its membership.119 Women continued to outnumber men in CAFOS, SNCC and most other civil rights organizations. Women, even the ones that rose to positions of leadership such as Sylvia Fischer, were often confined to domestic chores – filing, answering phones, cooking for and housing activists, and other secretarial duties. Fischer was rarely featured in the Chicago Defender or other news outlets, but in one of the rare instances she was, she was photographed taking calls in the CAFOS office.120 It is also possible that the leadership made concerted efforts to avoid placing Fischer in the public eye since she was white, fearing it would alienate Black members. Another possibility is that the Chicago Defender, the largest
African American newspaper, was simply more interested in the Black leadership. Be that as it may, women in SNCC and CAFOS made significant contributions to the organizations by recruiting, organizing, canvassing, teaching, marching on the front lines, and much more.
Additionally, examining gender relations in CAFOS demonstrates that seemingly progressive and nonhierarchical civil rights organizations such as this were not immune to sexist attitudes and behavior. Furthermore, it reveals that women involved in the struggle for civil rights in
Chicago did not always deem racial solidarity more important than gender equality. For many women in CAFOS and other groups in Chicago, the struggle for gender equality was inextricably linked to the struggle for civil rights and used the racial revolution that was unfolding in Chicago to also campaign for women’s rights. Here, too, is where one of the noticeable distinctions between SNCC and CAFOS surfaces.
119 “Who and What We Are,” 1963, Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 1, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 120 “For a School Boycott,” Chicago Defender, Feb 24, 1964. 41
In I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom
Struggle, historian Charles Payne quoted civil rights activists and SCLC staff member, Andy
Young, stating, “It was women going door to door, speaking with their neighbors, meeting in voter-registration classes together, organizing through their churches that gave the vital momentum and energy to the movement, that made it a mass movement,” to illustrate the complicated yet multifaceted and significant role women played in the struggle for freedom.
Until recently, however, the contributions of women have often been minimized as early historians of the African American experience tended to focus on charismatic men such as Dr.
King, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, John Lewis, and others. However, Jacquelyn Hall’s concept of the Long Civil Rights Movement expanded the conventional scope and narrative of the “classical” phase of the Movement which had mostly been told through the lens of middle- class, male preachers.121 Once historians began expanding the traditional timeframe of the
Movement, it became clear that Black women had long been integral components to the struggle for freedom. This has been the subject of the work from a handful of more contemporary historians.
In Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers & Torchbearers, 1941-1965, for example, editors, Vicki Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rose and Barbara Woods conclude that women always played a significant role in the freedom struggle beginning as early as the abolitionist movement. They argue then that the Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was “merely the continuation of a long-standing tradition.”122 This same concept is reiterated in Sisters in the
121 The “classical” phase of the Civil Rights Movement generally refers to the period between the 1954 Brown v Board of Education case and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Some scholars may also end this classical phase of the Movement in 1968 with the assassination of Dr. King. This narrative, however, has often been male dominated version of the Movement with King at the center. 122 Crawford, Rouse, Woods. Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers & Torchbearers, 1941-1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). xviii. 42
Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement, in which the contributors argue that Black women have been involved in the struggle for freedom and equality since they were first brought to the New World.
Other important works dealing with Black women in the Movement include Belinda
Robnett’s How Long? How Long? African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights.
Robnett examines Black women’s leadership throughout the Movement. More importantly, though, Robnett explains that the crucial role Black women played in the freedom struggle can only be understood at the local level. This is affirmed in Sisters in the Struggle in which the editors state the following:
Charismatic figures, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Farmer, set the national civil rights agenda and moved from coast to coast generating moral and financial support for the civil rights campaigns. Many African American women leaders operated at the local level, establishing the links and connections with grassroots organizations that provided the mass support for civil rights goals and objectives.123
Charles Payne further proved this point in I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, a local history of the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi. Payne’s text is not exclusive to women, but he is able to better uncover the role of women by examining the struggle for freedom at the local level. Payne also talks a great deal about women involved with SNCC. He says the following:
Founded by a woman, in its early years, women were always involved in the development of policy and the execution of the group’s program… SNCC, despite the traditional expectations of sex roles held by many of its members, was structurally and philosophically open to female participation in a way that many older organizations would not have been.124
In his work “Men Led, but Women Organized: Movement Participation of Women in the
Mississippi Delta,” Payne again speaks at length about women in SNCC, discussing the reasons
123 Bettye Collier-Thomas, V.P. Franklin. Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2001). Pg. 3-4. 124 Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) 268. 43 why a lot of women may have joined the organization. He concludes that in the South, women joined SNCC, and most other civil rights organizations, because they were members of the church. Again, this exemplifies the idea of the church serving as the institutional center of the
Black Freedom Struggle. He states “The movement grew out of the church. Women participate in the church more than men do. Therefore, women were naturally more drawn to the movement.”125 Women that were members of the church were inherently linked to the struggle for freedom. Because the church was the center of the Movement, women were always connected to someone who participated in the struggle. They were encouraged to join the fight against racial inequality and discrimination by ministers, friends and family members that were already apart of the Movement. According to Payne, in the early 1960s, Black women were especially attracted to SNCC for its non-bureaucratic and non-hierarchal type structure.126 In its formative years, SNCC was willing to accept and work with anyone that was supportive of their cause and struggle, though this philosophy was not consistent throughout the organization’s existence. Additionally, though there was no formal leader of SNCC per se, Ella Baker – a Black woman – was largely responsible for the creation of the organization; it would be fair to conclude that she was the unofficial leader of SNCC. It is likely that this too attracted women to the organization. Furthermore, Black women were sympathetic to, yet inspired by the young students risking their lives to carry out various voter registration campaigns and mobilizing
Black communities throughout the country.
Though Payne was mostly addressing women in the South who participated in SNCC,
Black women in regions outside of the South were also inspired by the organization. The church
125 Bettye Collier-Thomas, V.P. Franklin. Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2001). Pg. 5 126 Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) 266. 44 was not as prominent in urban spaces like Chicago, but it still functioned as a major institution for many Black communities and was the bridge connecting many Black women to the struggle for racial equality. Women from Chicago joined SNCC, and CAFOS in particular, for many of the same reasons women in the South joined the organization. Concerning the Chicago branch, however, women initially joined to support SNCC in the South, but soon became entangled in their own battle for racial equality and even gender equality. These women were representative of women in SNCC and various other civil rights organizations. They were the majority of the organization and played a significant role in sustaining the group. Despite the ostensible progressive nature of CAFOS, women still experienced sexist attitudes from their male counterparts within the organization; Black women especially.
As exemplified by Fischer, women did experience positions of leadership in CAFOS, but they were still largely viewed as inferior to men in the organization. Though Fischer acted as co- chair, it is clear that Landry was considered the primary “leader” or CAFOS. Of hundreds of news articles printed by the Chicago Defender – Chicago’s largest and most popular Black newspaper - between 1960 and 1965, less than five mention Fischer. The one’s that do only mention her passively. Other notable women, Black women, in particular, of CAFOS such as
Fannie Theresa Rushing, and Rosie Simpson seemed to be stripped from the narrative. On the other hand, Landry, appears in dozens of headlines concerning CAFOS activities during the early sixties.
Old checks and financial records indicate that women staff workers in CAFOS were paid significantly less than men. Roberta Galler, a field organizer and one of the most prominent members of CAFOS, was paid roughly fifty dollars per month.127 Other women were paid even
127 “Financials, Feb-April 1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 2, Folder 22, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library.” 45 less while others received no pay at all. Men such as Landry and Charles Fischer, however, were paid approximately three hundred dollars per month throughout the year of 1963.128 To some extent, it is understandable that Landry and Fischer were paid much more given their positions on the executive committee. However, their positions of leadership are not sufficient in explaining such a wide gap in pay distribution between men and women.
Wesley Hogan, author of Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America, also addresses sexism within SNCC and related organizations in her discussion of a memorandum drafted by SNCC staffers Casey Hayden and Mary King in the early sixties. The
Hayden-King letter deemed sexism to be just as bad as the racism they were all working to overturn. The memorandum asked the following: “Why were competent, qualified, and experienced SNCC women automatically assigned to the female kinds of jobs such as: typing, desk work, telephone work, filing, library work, cooking, and the assistant kind of administrative work, but rarely the executive kind?... Women are the crucial factor that keeps the movement running on a day to day basis.”129 Such positions were common for women in CAFOS as well.
Hogan continues stating, “… Black women continued to fight sexism within SNCC in the context of the Black struggle for equality. They did not publicly address the Hayden-King questions; for most, unity with their Black brothers superseded a public break over the men’s sexist behavior.”130 Whereas Black women in SNCC were less likely to overtly challenge sexist attitudes and behavior within the movement – at least publically – women in Chicago, and in
128 Ibid. 129 Wesley Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007) 232; “SNCC Position Papers,” 1964, Sherrod Papers. Civil Rights Movement Documents SNCC Conference, Waveland MS, November 1964. https://www.crmvet.org/docs/waveland.htm
130 Wesley Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007) 232. 46
CAFOS, however, were slightly more willing to express their frustrations with sexist attitudes and behaviors within the organization and the Black Freedom Movement as a whole. One of the ways women in Chicago, and CAFOS in particular, did this was by joining and aligning themselves with other notable women’s groups in the region. One group many women found themselves joining, including Fischer, was the Chicago branch of the Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), an organization that emerged in opposition to World
War I. and promoted world peace and unity in addition to advocating equal rights for women and liberation for those being oppressed or exploited in any form.131 According to Amy
Schneidhorst’s thesis, “It Wasn’t Just the Young: Mature Women’s Fight for Peace and Justice in Chicago During the Sixties,” Chicago’s WILPF treated racial equality and justice as one of its top priorities and was routinely involved in the Chicago civil rights movement. In fact, the organization’s founding member, Jane Addams was a member of the NAACP.132 WILPF was also a member of the Council, Chicago’s coalition of Civil Rights organizations. Schneidhorst states, however, that the major platform of the WILPF was human rights, human brotherhood, civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and education and economic opportunities for youth.”133
However, Chicago’s WILPF was also deeply concerned with women’s rights, the intersectionality of Black and Jewish women in particular, and labor. Women in Chicago and
CAFOS also joined organizations such as the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), an organization that sought both women’s rights and racial equality.
The willingness of women in Chicago and women in CAFOS to join organizations such as WILPF and the WYCA indicates that women were operating in an environment where sexist
131 Amy Schneidhorst, “It Wasn’t Just the Young: Mature Women’s Fight for Peace and Justice in Chicago During the Sixties,” M.A., Thesis, University of Chicago, 2007, 90. 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid. 109. 47 attitudes and behavior were pervasive despite the progressive and tolerant image that SNCC and
CAFOS portrayed. While the majority of these women may not have publically spoken out about sexism within the organization, as Hogan concludes, their decision to join such organizations demonstrates that for many women, at least in Chicago, racial solidarity did not always need to supersede gender equality. Simply by joining women’s rights organizations, women of CAFOS such as Fischer, expressed their discontent with sexism both within and outside of the organization, and the struggle for freedom.
The history of the Chicago Area Friends of SNCC has largely been overshadowed by the legacy of SNCC and the Chicago Freedom Movement. This introduction to the organization is an attempt to reveal its significance in the Chicago civil rights movement and the broader Black
Freedom Struggle. The following chapters reveal some of the specific campaigns and activities of CAFOS while this chapter contextualizes the organization and identifies some of its essential members and organizational structure. It becomes clear then that CAFOS, while certainly reflective of SNCC in a number of ways, came to function independently of not just SNCC, but most other civil rights organizations in Chicago as well. CAFOS had its own ideologies, leaders, programs and sets of goals. Additionally, this introduction to CAFOS shows that women were essential agents of change both in the group and in the broad struggle for freedom in Chicago.
48
CHAPTER THREE: THE COORDINATING COUNCIL OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS, AND THE DECLINE OF THE CHICAGO MOVEMENT
Working in conjunction with CAFOS was the Coordinating Council of Community
Organizations (CCCO), established in 1962. Like CAFOS, the Council proved to be one of the most significant organizations not just in Chicago, but throughout the Midwest as well, inspiring
King and larger organizations like the SCLC to join its efforts in Chicago. In short, the Council was integral to the Chicago struggle for freedom during the 1960s. This chapter provides an organizational history of the Council, focusing on its origins, some of its key members, and political initiatives. Through a network of complex political coalitions, a series of boycotts, sit- ins, and other social and political demonstrations, the Council dramatically transformed the racial and political landscape of Chicago and provided much of the framework for the CFM. It is also through the Council that many of the internal struggles that fragmented the movement become apparent. This chapter seeks to identify some of the struggles, both internal and external, that led to the undoing of the organization and the movement.
In addition to organizing the first Freedom Day in 1963 with CAFOS, the Council also worked in conjunction with the group to plan a number of other significant events. Together, they organized selective patronage campaigns, food and clothing drives, and pressured the Daley administration to implement a number of urban renewal policies. Additionally, these groups challenged racist and discriminatory housing policies throughout Chicago while also committing resources to assist civil rights organizations and events outside of Chicago. CAFOS, for example, sent its members to areas throughout the South to organize voter registration campaigns and also played a major role in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom during the summer of 49
1963.134 This demonstrates the influence of both CAFOS and the Council, and their commitment to challenge racial injustice not just in Chicago, but elsewhere as well. Many of these events, organized and led primarily by CAFOS with the support of the Council, helped set the stage for the Chicago Freedom Movement beginning in 1965.
The Council was formed largely in response to Chicago’s segregated school system.
Other civil rights groups such as the NAACP, the Urban League, and the Woodlawn
Organization (TWO) were already grappling with issues related to de-facto segregation in
Chicago Public Schools but did so independently of each other and with little unity.135 Their efforts were met with little success as result of their disunity and unorganized action. It was clear that the best way to combat patterns of inequality and segregation in the Chicago Public School
System was by creating a united front against Superintendent Benjamin Willis and the Daley administration. The need for this type of organizational unity ultimately led to the formation of the Council.
The Council was officially founded in 1962, less than a year before the massive school boycott in 1963.136 It did not immediately function as a direct-action organization: Its initial focus was to provide “research, publicity, and support for community groups, especially those that shared its interpretation that the school issue was one of de-facto segregation,” which was the popular view held amongst most civil rights groups throughout Chicago.137 Albert Raby was
134 “Other Orgs, Chicago Committee March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 6, Folder 8, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 135 Ibid; “Other Orgs, Chicago Urban League, 1962-1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 6, Folder 11, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 136 “Notes on Class,” August 2, 1967, W. Alvin Pitcher Papers Box 20, Folder 3: Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. 137 Alan Anderson and George Pickering, Confronting the Color Ling: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986) 100. 50 the organization’s founding member and groups such as CORE, the Urban League, CAFOS, acted as the informal leaders, or spearhead groups, of the Council along with Raby.
Albert Raby, known simply as Al to those in the movement, was a dedicated veteran of the civil rights struggle in Chicago, where he was born in 1933. Raby and his family felt the debilitating impacts of the Great Depression which hit Chicago particularly hard.138 According to
Pacyga, “Close to 60 percent of the unemployed men and women in the state lived in Chicago” during the Depression.139 Black residents were disproportionately affected by the Depression, especially on the South Side and Bronzeville area. In fact, by 1932, “40-50 percent of Chicago’s
Black workers had no job.” Shortly after Raby’s birth, however, his father passed away, leaving his mother to work several jobs to support Raby and his three siblings. Raby too was forced to work various jobs to help support his family. In fact, by the time he reached the eighth grade, he had dropped out of school in order to bring in more money delivering groceries and selling newspapers.
In 1953, Raby was drafted into the Army at twenty years old.140 Once he returned from the Army, he enrolled in night school to earn his high school diploma and later attended the
Chicago Teachers College where he earned a certificate in teaching.141 Raby became involved with the Chicago Civil Rights Movement in 1960 when he began teaching in the Chicago Public
School System. As a teacher, Raby witnessed firsthand just how inadequate Black schools were compared to those in neighboring communities for white children which likely hastened his involvement with Teachers for Integrated Education (TIE), a civil rights organization committed
138 “Raby, Albert Biography,” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Stanford University. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/raby-albert 139 Dominic Pacyga, Chicago: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 251. 140 “Raby, Albert Biography,” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Stanford University. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/raby-albert 141 Ibid. 51 to combating inequality in the Chicago Public School system.142 Raby’s involvement and popularity within TIE led to his position as convener of the Council in 1963.
According the Council’s official Constitution, the purpose of the organization was to
“coordinate the activities of member organizations by examining problems and information of mutual concern, providing collective advice and counsel to component organizations and acting jointly to resolve problems of mutual concern which cannot be resolved by the separate actions of component organizations.”143 Some of the first groups to join included the Chatham-Avalon
Council, the Chicago branches of CORE and the Urban League, TIE, the NAACP, and not long after the Council’s inception, CAFOS too joined and became one of the most transformative groups within the coalition.
In order to gain formal membership, group’s seeking admittance had to receive a majority vote from current members, and they were required to pay a fifty-dollar annual membership fee.144 Once membership was confirmed, organizations assigned two delegates to the Council.
However, organizations joining the Council did not relinquish autonomy as a result of joining the coalition. According to its Rules of Procedure form, “The structure of the Council or any subsequent bylaws or actions of the Council shall not impinge upon the autonomy of component organizations. The rights of these organizations to independent action, even upon matters that have come before the Council, shall be respected.”145 As the organization grew and became more diverse in its membership, however, this began to change. Diverse membership and personalities
142“Raby, Albert Biography,” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Stanford University. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/raby-albert; “Other Orgs – Teachers for Integrated Schools, 1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 7, Folder 18, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 143 “Coordinating Council of Community of Organizations, 1962-1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 6, Folder 19, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 144 Ibid. 145 “Coordinating Council of Community of Organizations, 1962-1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 6, Folder 18, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 52 led to varying goals, strategies, and social and political ideologies. Tensions began to rise as members questioned how to best solve issues of racism and discrimination in Chicago.
From its inception, the Council was primarily concerned with four major issues: segregated schools, housing, employment for Black Chicagoans, and police brutality.146 The issue of de-facto school segregation and inadequate educational institutions for young Black students was the most troubling and urgent concern for the Council, and most other civil rights organizations involved in the early Chicago movement. Raby, the convener of Council, was also a teacher in Chicago Public Schools and acted as the chairmen of TIE(S) which meant he had long been exposed to the inadequate educations Black students were forced to accept.147 This likely dictated the Council’s agenda in its formative years. The group played a major role in organizing the first Freedom Day school boycott on October 22, 1963, in which 250,000 students stayed out of schools to protest against segregation and other discriminatory practices in education. In 1964, the Council sponsored Freedom Day II., another massive school boycott intended to challenge Superintendent Benjamin Willis and racist school policies, particularly his double shift programs and Willis Wagons.148 The Council also made efforts to integrate Black
Studies into the curriculum, arguing that Black students’ history was being whitewashed. The
Council continuously fought to improve the educational experiences of Black students in the
Chicago Public School system.
Housing also presented itself as a major issued for the Council. Redlining and other racist housing policies confined most Black residents to slums and impoverished communities, mostly
146 Ibid. 147 “Raby, Albert Biography,” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Stanford University. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/raby-albert 148 “Other Orgs, CCC0, 1964” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 6, Folder 23, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 53 on Chicago’s West and South side.149 Additionally, Black residents living in Chicago slums were often over charged for their dilapidated and overcrowded houses and apartments because they were Black. Middle-class and professional Black residents able to afford to live in affluent neighborhoods were denied mortgages and loans from banks. In the instances that Black residents moved into white communities, they faced endless harassment, the threat of violence and even death by angry, white residents.150 Whites believed Black residents moving into their communities significantly lowered their property values which led to white flight.151 When whites left, they took with them most businesses and forms of industry which often left communities economically disadvantaged.
The Council also challenged discriminatory employment practices. For instance, members organized a number of “Don’t Shop Where You Can’t Work” campaigns throughout the city. These campaigns showcase the Council’s ability to connect with urban Black communities and address the problems that disproportionately affected them. Black residents were notoriously denied employment in local business and factories; Black women especially found it difficult to find employment in the city. The lack of access to decent jobs and wages further marginalized Black residents of Chicago and confined them to slums.
The Council, along with CAFOS, also played a major role in the famous March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Along with CAFOS, the Council served on the
Chicago Committee March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and were responsible for transporting close to 3,000 Chicago residents and civil rights activists to the nation’s capital for
149 Alan Anderson and George Pickering, Confronting the Color Ling: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986) 2-5. 150 Ibid. 151 “Map Social Boycott Against Negroes in Chicago Suburb,” Chicago Defender, January 21, 1960. 54 the event.152 This is important for a couple reasons. It indicates that both these groups, while entrenched in their own local battle, also understood what was happening at the national level.
Furthermore, the establishment of the Chicago Committee March on Washington provided more than just transportation to Washington for local Chicagoans. It was an attack on unfair and discriminatory employment policies in Chicago and throughout the rest of the country. This was a key component of the Council’s platform that would endure throughout its existence.
The Council also contributed a great deal of its resources to challenging police brutality.153 Police brutality against Black had long been issue in Chicago and other areas throughout the country. In 1963, the Council organized a largescale protest rally to challenge police brutality during freedom marches in the South.154 This also demonstrates that the group was connected to struggles outside of Chicago. The rally took place in front of the Federal
Building on S. Clark Street and was headlined by Mahalia Jackson and Dick Gregory. Gregory was no stranger to police violence as he himself suffered a serious shoulder injury as a result of being beaten by white police officers during a freedom march in Birmingham. Representatives from more than 1,000 local organizations attended the rally; twenty of those organizations were local, Chicago civil rights organizations. Charles Fischer, spokesperson and Treasurer of CAFOS sent a telegram to Mayor Daley shortly before the rally stating the following:
We call upon you as Mayor of Chicago and as the leader of the Democratic party in Illinois to speak out against police brutality against Negroes in Birmingham. To encourage the President of the U.S. to act to protect the rights of Negroes in Alabama. To use your influence with Democratic Congressmen from Illinois to press for the passage of the President’s civil rights legislation, particularly that type which is related to voting rights.155
152 “Other Orgs, Chicago Committee March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 6, Folder 23, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 153 “Coordinating Council of Community of Organizations, 1962-1963,” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 6, Folder 18, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 154 “Gregory to Highlight Chicago Protest Rally,” Chicago Defender, May 13, 1963. 155 Ibid. 55
Lawrence Landry released a statement to the Northern District of the Illinois State Court stating, “The organization of the black community of Chicago has been severely hampered by unlawful violations of due process by police, prosecutors, and courts, and a general conspiracy to deny black citizens of Chicago their basic human rights.”156 He continued, “This conspiracy has resulted in the indiscriminate arrest and imprisonment prior to trial, of individuals presumed to be innocent under our judicial system, for long periods up to a month, due to the setting of excessive bail. There has been a definite breakdown of law and justice among the very persons sworn to uphold it.” This gives some insight concerning what Black people were faced with in terms of police violence and repression.
1965 and Beyond – The Dissolution of the Chicago Movement
The tenuous relationship between civil rights coalitions and Chicago officials – police and members of Mayor Daley’s political machine – proved to be a major obstacle for the movement. Repression by city officials is a significant component to the Chicago struggle for freedom. Understanding some of the afore mentioned instances of local and state repression also provides a great deal of insight concerning the stagnation of the Chicago movement that had taken hold by the mid-sixties. This section explores some of the reasons for the deterioration of the Chicago movement and the Council, primarily considering the impact of Black Power ideology that emerged in the mid-sixties and pushback from not just city officials, but white community members as well. The growing challenges of the movement in Chicago demonstrates that the racial, social, and political conditions that led to the CFM were firmly entrenched in
Chicago prior by 1965; the struggle to adequately define how the Chicago movement would
156 “Other Orgs, ACT (Lawrence Landry), lawsuit against Chicago ordinances, 1967-1968” Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, Series 1: Box 6, Folder 2, Chicago SNCC History Project Archive, Chicago Public Library. 56 adapt to Black Power and radical Black political conscious reveals some of its deep-rooted struggles that ultimately led to the unraveling of an effective social and political insurgency. By highlighting some of these issues, however, it leads to a better understanding of the CFM, why it failed to recreate the momentum of the early Chicago struggle and why it was ultimately unsuccessful at achieving many of its objectives.
By 1965, the Council and CAFOS had laid much of the groundwork for a much larger movement in Chicago. In fact, when King and SCLC made the decision to move north, Chicago was a primary contender as a result of the civil rights activism that was taking place in the city.
In January of 1966, during the early stages of the Chicago Freedom Movement, King told reporters in an interview with Ebony Magazine that he chose Chicago “mainly because of Al
Raby.”157 He continued stating, “I had been watching Al for some time, and I must say that I became enormously impressed with his work and the sincerity of his commitment.” SCLC came to Chicago to build on much of the work that had already been done by the Council and CAFOS.
The Chicago Freedom Movement has been one of the lasting legacies of King and SCLC.
Most of the scholarship dealing with CFM places King at the center of the struggle and while
King certainly played a major role in the Chicago struggle for freedom during the mid to late
1960s, many of the other key actors have been only scarcely included in the narrative. The
Council, for example, played a major role in the CFM and had it not been for its community organizing and various direct-action campaigns, it is likely that King and SCLC would have never come to Chicago. SCLC worked in conjunction with the Council during the CFM, and in most cases, King looked to established Chicago leaders such as Raby and Landry for guidance and direction.
157 “Dr. King Carries Fight to Northern Slums,” Ebony Magazine, April 1966, 102. 57
SCLC and Council worked together to organize and carry out a series of nonviolent direct-action campaigns geared toward mitigating many of the same problems that local groups in Chicago had already been addressing. King’s primary objective in coming to the city was to use nonviolent methods to challenge racist housing policies that continuously confined Black residents to ghettos and slums. Many scholars such as James Ralph, Taylor Branch, and Martin
Deppe credit the CFM for passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, although the landmark Act was likely more a result of widespread protests following King’s assassination than the Chicago campaign itself. Fair housing was not the only concern of SCLC and the Council, however. The coalition also attempted to improve the educational experiences of Black students, improve access to decent jobs and wages, and provide healthcare for Black residents.
The Council’s partnership with SCLC marked a historic shift in the civil rights movement. Chicago became the first northern battleground for the movement and demonstrated that racism and racial violence existed in regions of the north and Midwest just as it did in the
South; in some cases, it was even worse in the North. However, the CFM also signaled a decline in the Council and the Chicago civil rights movement as a whole. Following the open-housing campaigns and the subsequent Summit agreements, the CFM began to stall and lost much of its momentum. Additionally, King’s busy schedule prevented him from fully revitalizing an effective civil rights insurgency in Chicago. He began focusing his attention elsewhere, participating in labor demonstrations and speaking engagements throughout the country. King also shifted his attention to the Vietnam War taking a public stand against the conflict. As King’s presence and influence diminished in Chicago, so too did the movement.
The mostly unsuccessful CFM was not the only factor that contributed to the decline of the Chicago movement and the organizations that catapulted the movement. There were at least 58 two other major contributing factors to the decline of the Chicago movement during the 1960s.
First, there was the emergence of Black Power in the second half of the decade. Black Power itself did not dampen the movement; it was the inability of groups like the Council and CAFOS to reach an agreement concerning what Black Power meant and how to adapt to Black Power’s radical politics. The second major contributing factor to the decline of the Chicago movement was increasing backlash from white residents in addition to government repression both at the local and state level. Combined, these factors led a significant loss influence from the organizations such as the Council and CAFOS, and ultimately led to the unraveling of the civil rights insurgency that took place in Chicago.
The emergence of Black Power had a transformative impact on Black political conscious, and the Movement as a whole. Activist and Howard University student, Stokely Carmichael popularized the Black Power slogan in 1966, and as a concept, he described it as a necessary approach for Black Americans to reclaim their history and identity; a way to become culturally and politically autonomous. While the concept of Black Power may have aroused a number of working-class Black people, it caused a great deal of tension within in the movement. Deppe states in Operation Breadbasket that SNCC’s embrace and transition into Black Power politics
“profoundly divided the civil rights leadership and enflamed a growing white backlash to the movement.”158 Carmichael himself blamed conservative civil rights leaders for racial riots in the
North and Midwest. He argued that these leaders did not give urban Black residents an appropriate outlet for their growing frustrations. Black Power also embodied Black pride, racial solidarity, and often denounced conventional tactics of nonviolent resistance. This too amplified tensions within the movement. King, for example, disassociated himself with Black Power
158Martin Deppe, Operation Breadbasket: An Untold Story of Civil Rights in Chicago, 1966-1971 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017) 42-43. 59 because of its anti-white and violent rhetoric. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP denounced SNCC’s embrace of Black Power stating “No matter how endlessly they try to explain it, black power means anti-white power.”159 Another opponent of Black Power was longtime civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin, who argued that Black Power was incapable of making any real contributions to the civil rights struggle and would roll back many of the advances that had already been made in the Movement.
In Chicago, Black Power further complicated the already tense relationship between organizations involved in the Council. From the very beginning of its formation, the organization experienced a unique set of challenges that resulted from being a coalition of several groups with multiple leaders. Conflicts over tactics and goals were not uncommon. In 1964, for example, the
Council thought another wide-scale school boycott was necessary to maintain momentum after the success of the first school boycott, or Freedom Day, in 1963. Both Raby and Landry strongly encouraged another boycott stating,
“We are deeply concerned about the educational welfare of hundreds of thousands of school children in Chicago and the quality of education they are receiving. We and thousands of mothers and fathers in this city think something should be done about it. We see no alternative at the present time to the proposed school boycott to get effective action.”160
Others involved in the Council adamantly opposed the idea of a second mass boycott. Claude
Holman, Chicago city councilmen and member of the NAACP stated, “We supported the Oct.
22nd school boycott and told our precinct captains to muster support for it.” Holman went on stating that it was because of the “new, young militant Negro leadership,” that they could not support the boycott. He concluded, “We are opposed to the Fed. 25th school boycott despite the
159 Roy Wilkins, “Where We Stand,” 57th Annual Convention of NAACP, Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1966. 160 “Chicago School Boycott Support Grows – Coloring Book for the Feb. 25th School Boycott, Chicago Defender, February 14, 1964. 60 fact that we supported the first one – and we are telling our people that it is morally and legally wrong.” Other in the Chicago branches of the Urban League and NAACP also denounced the second boycott. Superintendent Willis capitalized on the apparent disunity apparent in the group stating, “I think you Negros are looking rather silly, feuding, fussin’ and fightin’ about all of this.
Can’t you get together to do anything but protest?... Many new Negro schools have been built.
So, what if they are segregated. It’s not my fault.”161 This not only demonstrates Willis’ attempt to make Chicago activists in the Council look disorganized and without unity, but it also shows officials’ persistent attempts to uphold existing racial hierarchies and power structures that historically defined Chicago.
The Council also found itself constantly changing leadership. Most notably, Lawrence
Landry, co-chair of CAFOS, rose in the ranks of the group but quickly became frustrated with their lack of militancy. He eventually relinquished his leadership position within Council to join another more militant organization called ACT. He would eventually leave CAFOS as well after claiming they too lacked enough militancy to carry the Chicago movement.
When King came to Chicago with SCLC during the second half of the decade, the
Council and other organizations affiliated with the group were already struggling to maintain a civil rights insurgency. The Council’s inability to agree in terms of what Black Power meant and how it would alter the movement caused a great deal of division within the group and the movement. SCLC came to Chicago to build on the work that groups like CAFOS and the
Council had already started, but King and SCLC also arrived at a time when the Chicago movement was already falling apart.
161 Ibid. 61
The nascent challenges Black Power posed for the Council and the Chicago movement is not the only explanation for the decline in the Chicago civil rights movement. As James Ralph explains in Northern Protest, “The Chicago experience, moreover, confirmed that the withering of white support for black demands resulted from more than the spread of the Black Power impulse and the explosion of ghetto riots.” He continued stating, “At the heart of the collapse… that decried legal barriers to full citizenship rights for blacks – was white resistance to the new quest to expand equality of opportunity into the more private realms of American life in the
North as well as in the South.”162
In the wake of burgeoning civil rights protests, white Chicago officials and residents firmly pushed back against Black activists, and the Council in particular. In 1965, for example,
Mayor Daley banned civil rights activists and anyone else affiliated with activists from working any city jobs. According to an article printed in the Chicago Defender, “An emphatic ‘no’ resounded throughout the conference room in Mayor Daley’s office Thursday when he was asked if would hire a person who led a school boycott.”163 Daley was especially opposed to
Landry becoming a city worker in any capacity given his positions of leadership in CAFOS, the
Council, and ACT.164
White residents of Chicago also took it upon themselves to resist efforts by the Council,
CAFOS, and other civil rights organizations to integrate the city. For instance, when Black residents attempted to buy homes in North Shore, a predominantly white and affluent section of
Chicago, whites responded by organizing a boycott against “Negroes and anybody who
162 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 5-6. 163 Ted Coleman, “No Civil Righters on City Jobs says Daley,” Chicago Defender, February 16, 1964. 164 Ibid. 62 associates with them.”165 These white residents claimed that the possibility of Black citizens moving into the North Shore region would cut their property values by $10,000,000. As a result, local whites formed “protective associations” geared toward preventing Black residents from moving into their neighborhoods. These “protective associations” in many ways functioned similarly to less radical versions of the Klan. They held rallies, threatened Black families, and strongly supported segregation. Herschel W. Ward, a spokesperson for the North Shore association stated, “Our children won’t be permitted to play with Negro children, and if the children of any member play with Negro children that member will be treated as if he is a
Negro.”166 She continued, “This is not a hate organization, but we want to let Negroes know they are not welcome here and that they’ll be unhappy here.”
When King arrived in Chicago with SCLC to work in conjunction with Council, little improvement was made. Following the famous open housing marches led by King, white mobs initiated “superior white race” riots where they terrorized local Black residents by stoning them and advocating for segregation and racialized violence towards Black Chicagoans.167
As has been mentioned in previous chapters, school segregation was the most important issue for the Council and the Chicago movement. Though the Council successfully organized a series of largescale boycotts, the administrations of Superintendent Willis and Mayor Daley strongly resisted many of the Council’s demands concerning quality education for Black students. Mayor Daley insisted that there was no real segregation problem in Chicago or in
Chicago schools; Willis refused to resign as superintendent and continued to enforce racist and
165 “Map Social Boycott Against Negroes in Chicago Suburb,” Chicago Defender, January 21, 1960. 166 Ibid. 167 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 172. 63 discriminatory policies towards Black students and teachers such as the those discussed throughout the first two chapters.
Despite the Council’s dissolution in the mid and late sixties, it still greatly impacted the
Chicago movement. Both the Council and CAFOS proved to be the most significant organizations and coalition involved in the Chicago struggle for freedom. Additionally, analyzing the Chicago movement through the lens of the Council provides an opportunity to understand the local movement prior to the CFM. It reinforces the assertion that there was in fact a strong movement taking place in Chicago before King and SCLC arrived. In the years preceding the Council’s formation, the Chicago movement was unorganized and lacked any meaningful, organizational unity necessary to challenge the powerful administrations of Willis and Mayor Daley. The coalition group, functioning as the “organization of organizations” provided a strong united front against the white power structures that adamantly resisted any substantive social, economic, political, educational, and cultural advances for Black people.
Finally, examining the Council also provides a better understanding of the CFM as well as the internal and external factors that led to its demise. Scholars of the Chicago struggle for freedom have neglected the Council’s indelible impact on the movement, but also the ways in which the
Council affected the CFM. It is impossible to fully understand the outcomes of the CFM without first understanding the local movement that preceded and organizations like the Council that drove the movement. 64
CONCLUSION
More than fifty years after the end of the Chicago Freedom Movement, the ambitious campaign is still largely remembered as one of the most unsuccessful moments of the Civil
Rights Movement. Chicago historian Ralph indicates, “In the late 1960s most observers considered King’s Chicago program a ‘failure.’ Two decades later historians and journalists still employed dark adjectives to describe the Chicago venture.”168 While this may be true, it is important to look beyond the CFM itself and consider both the remote and immediate factors that limited its success. Timing proved to be the greatest challenge to the CFM.
On July 2, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a monumental piece of legislation that prohibited discrimination on the basis of race and ended segregation. Just one year later, the President singed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, outlawing racial discrimination in voting and beginning what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to as the
“second emancipation.”169 Though African Americans legally received the right to vote in 1870 with the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, a number of racial barriers – poll taxes, literacy tests, harassment, violence, and much more – prevented Black Americans from exercising their voting rights.
Combined, the Civil and Voting Rights Act proved to be a major turning point in the
Civil Rights Movement. By 1965, civil rights activists had legally dismantled segregation – at least ostensibly - and the Voting Rights Act enforced African Americans’ legal right to vote.
Following these momentous events, however, those involved in the movement began to wonder,
168 James Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 220. 169 Nick Kotz, Judgement Days: Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005) xi. 65
“Where do we go from here?”170 For many, especially King and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), the answer was to take the movement outside of the South and into the North to address poverty, slums, police brutality, and discrimination in housing and employment. King stated the following in his autobiography:
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 resources to their cause as was humanly possible. 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.171
Many, at least within SCLC, shared King’s desire to shift north.
Though these nascent legislative acts were certainly more than modest achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, they also complicated the campaign in Chicago. Despite the existence of de facto segregation, it had legally been dismantled, as had the systematic denial of
Black citizens’ right to vote. As the movement shifted its focus from civil to human and economic rights, it became increasingly difficult to challenge, or eradicate issues of racial inequality, especially related to housing, access to decent employment, police brutality, and poverty as a result of de facto segregation and discrimination. In essence, these were issues that were ostensibly solved with the Civil and Voting Rights Acts; the challenge them became how to enforce such laws. Contrary to the movement in the South in the years prior to 1965, segregation and voting rights were no longer the clear-cut targets of the movement.
Additionally, by the time King and SCLC arrived in Chicago, the war in Vietnam was ten years old. By 1966, King began to publically denounce the war and criticize the U.S. for its
170 For more information see Martin Luther King, Jr., Where do we go from Here: Chaos or Community (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968); chapter 1. 171 Martin Luther King, Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1998) 298. 66 military campaigns abroad. In doing so, he severed his alliance with President Johnson and other white liberal politicians, the level of national support for the CFM was marginal. Furthermore,
King was unable to commit all of his time and energy to the struggles local Chicagoans were facing. He was constantly traveling to different cities for speaking engagements, and his sporadic appearances in Chicago were hardly enough to fully revitalize the movement. Moreover, when
King arrived in Chicago in 1965, the Council was already showing signs of disarray and losing much of its momentum.
After city officials signed the Summit Agreement in 1966, the Council lost the little influence it had left. The Summit Agreement was the result of years of work by Chicago civil rights coalitions and SCLC. The agreement promised to ensure fair housing policies, but most activists and Black residents viewed the agreement as a defeat. Robert Lucas, for example, head of the Chicago CORE called the agreement “Nothing but another promise on a piece of paper.”172 King himself referred to the arrangement as “The first step in a 1,000-mile journey.”173
This signaled the end of the Chicago movement as well as the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Local Chicago organizations failed to revitalize the movement after the Summit agreement, and disputes over tactics and strategy caused irreconcilable differences. The Council, along with
CAFOS and other groups dissolved or joined more radical organizations, especially the Black
Panther Party.
For many, the Chicago Freedom Movement has resonated in popular memory as the defining moment or event of the Chicago struggle for freedom. Discussions of the city’s fight for racial justice, especially during the sixties, has been dominated with narratives of King, SCLC, and the moral ambiguity of the city’s signing of the Summit Agreement. In short, the legacy of
172 David Halvorsen, “Cancel Rights Marches,” Chicago Tribune, August 27, 1966. 173 Ibid. 67 the Chicago struggle for freedom is the CFM. While this event certainly deserves much attention, this narrow focus has proven to be problematic a number of reasons. First, because scholars have tended to focus solely on the CFM, the lesser known individuals and organizations that provided a movement for King and SCLC have been neglected. The significance of groups like CAFOS and the Council are minimized or altogether excluded from the narrative. This has especially been the case for CAFOS. After going through dozens of books and an endless number of journals and articles, it is evident that CAFOS has been effectively stripped from the narrative despite its tremendous impact on the movement. Scholars such as James Ralph, Martin Deppe,
Alan Anderson and George Pickering have all discussed the Council but have only done so marginally or in a way that sets up a larger and more robust discussion on the CFM and SCLC.
One of the goals of this thesis is to provide a general understanding and history of both
CAFOS and the Council. Given the limitations of time and sources, this is by no means a comprehensive study of either organization or the Chicago struggle for freedom. It is my hope, however, that this project inspires other scholars to investigate these groups and the broader movement. By focusing on these particular groups, it becomes evident that there was in fact a strong local movement taking place in Chicago long before the arrival of King and SCLC. Both
CAFOS and the Council emerged in response to local issues that affected Black residents in the city – racist and discriminatory housing policies, segregated schools, unequal access to employment, racial violence, and police brutality. Furthermore, examining the Chicago struggle with an emphasis on these groups demonstrates the invaluable role that both women and students played in Chicago’s quest for freedom. Women proved to be essential to CAFOS and were responsible for much of the organizing that took place in the years leading up to the CFM.
Relatedly, students too played salient roles in the local insurgency. The massive school boycott, 68 or Freedom Day of 1963, in which more than 250,000 students participated, demonstrates that students were not apathetic bystanders in the burgeoning struggle for freedom. They reacted to and engaged in the movement as willing participants. They adamantly fought to improve their educational experiences while also joining the broader movement to challenge racial inequality throughout the city. Despite their contributions, the role of women and children has consistently been overlooked as a result of centralized studies on King and the CFM.
This thesis also adds to the growing literature dealing with the struggle for civil rights in areas outside of the South. A number of scholars like Matthew Countryman, Jeanne Theoharis,
Martha Biondi, and others have expanded the scope of the Black Freedom Struggle, both temporally and geographically. This project is in many ways attempts to add to their analysis on race and the quest for freedom in nontraditional spaces, or spaces outside of the South. Chicago is unique for a couple reasons, however. First, both women and students played fundamental roles in the Chicago movement. Second, as the largest city in the Midwest, the local movement received national attention, which is likely one of the reasons King decided to test the limits of nonviolent direct action in the city. Third, the massive amount white resistance and pushback from local whites and city officials demonstrates that racial violence and discrimination was just as volatile in regions outside of the South; in some cases, it was worth. Chicago highlights many of the issues that urban Black people throughout the country were facing – racial violence, police brutality, poverty, political repression, etc. Finally, Chicago was the first major, northern battle of the modern Civil Rights Movement that received national attention. Ironically, it was also the last. Chicago signaled a major turning point in the national movement being that the focus shifted north, but also because the movement lost much of its momentum as the Chicago struggle 69 came apart. Unfortunately, neither the movement in Chicago or the national movement was ever revitalized.
Perhaps what is most unique about the Chicago movement is its contemporary relevance.
All of the issues that Black Chicagoans resisted and challenged during the sixties are still ubiquitous in urban Black communities and for Black Americans in general. Poverty, racist housing and employment policies, de facto segregation, police brutality, and mass incarceration rates continue to pose a significant threat to Black people in America. It is through the Chicago struggle for freedom that we can begin to better understand the current challenges and threats that exist in Black communities today. 70
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