A Decisive Decade: An Insider's View of the Chicago Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s

11. The Movement and the Decade Wind Down

174 11. The Movement and the Decade Wind Down I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the solidarity of races. —Walt Whitman, Years of the Modern With Martin Luther King moving on to projects outside Chicago and the demise of the CCCO in 1966, the civil rights movement in Chicago effectively passed from the scene, at least the direct-action phase of the “revolution” that was seeking significant change in the lives of African Americans. A similar diminution or cessation of activity occurred in other cities in the North that had witnessed civil rights campaigns during the 1960s, including New York City1 and Milwaukee.2 The exact moment when the direct-action phase ended differed, but Thomas J. Sugrue concluded that by the early 1970s “pessimists found plenty of evidence that the movement was over,” that America had entered a “post–civil rights era.”3 Some analysts have applied the concept of a life cycle—an onset, then expansion, and, ultimately, decline—to the marches, demonstrations, and riots during the decade. For example, Countryman notes this dynamic for Philadelphia: “By the 1970s, movement organizers found themselves increasingly unable to demonstrate to most black Philadelphians that the payoff from social movement strategies was worth either the risk or the effort.”4 In Chicago, several organizations, in addition to the CCCO, that had employed direct action such as boycotts, demonstrations, and marches left the scene or shifted their focus to less confrontational measures and programs. The NACL, under the leadership of Tim Black, which had forced Motorola into negotiations seeking to increase employment of minorities, had, at the The Movement and the Decade Wind Down 175 national level, morphed into a research and educational institute, and Bayard Rustin succeeded A. Philip Randolph as national head of the organization.5 Operation Breadbasket, having used consumer boycotts to force retail stores to provide shelf space for minority-owned suppliers, turned its attention to providing technical assistance to those firms. TWO, which successfully used demonstrations to get the attention of the University of Chicago, shifted its focus, joining with the university in initiating a series of partnership programs . The next chapter describes these developments. Several questions about the direct-action programs of the civil rights movement of Chicago remain: • What did the civil rights movement accomplish in Chicago? Or stated differently , were any of the strategic objectives realized? Did any change take place for African Americans as a result of the direct-action programs? • Given the variety of direct action tactics that had been employed during the 1960s, what can be said about their relative effectiveness? Did the strikes, marches, and demonstrations have any impact? • Specifically, did the negotiations (or “discussions,” as some of the target organizations preferred to describe them) produce any concrete results? The short answer to these questions has to be a qualified “yes.” In two cases, written documents emerged: the Covenant Agreements between Operation Breadbasket and the major food chains, and the summit agreement signed by the City of Chicago and the Chicago Freedom Movement. In the case of Motorola, the understandings were never formalized into a document , but did involve assurances by a key executive that the company would actively search for and hire more black employees. At the time, the negotiated agreements were hailed as important “breakthroughs ,” but did these signed pieces of paper and verbal assurances produce any significant change? Did Motorola hire more blacks? Were minority suppliers to retail food stores better off? Were blacks able to find housing in areas of Chicago that were previously “off limits”? While the overall impact of the direct-action campaigns is difficult to gauge, several failures are easy to identify. Specifically, the civil rights movement was unsuccessful in achieving two key objectives: forcing Superintendent Benjamin Willis to retire early, and unionizing workers in the hospital industry. Given the number of organizations involved in the CCCO, combined with the orchestration and drumbeat of school boycotts, frequent marches, and demonstrations, the inability of the movement to expedite the departure of The Movement and the Decade Wind Down 176 Benjamin Willis was regarded by everyone as a major failure. The unsuccessful union organizing campaign and accompanying strike at Mt. Sinai Hospital and the Home for Incurables was not unexpected, given the fact that hospitals in the 1960s were not covered by any legislation mandating union representation elections. Certainly, strikes were a weak tool: management could readily hire replacements, and low...