Chicago Freedom Movement

Chicago Freedom Movement
Part of the Civil Rights Movement
Date1965–1966 (2 years)
Location
Caused by
  • De facto racial segregation in education, housing and employment
  • SCLC's establishment of a campaign in the Northern United States
Resulted in
Parties
Lead figures

The Chicago Freedom Movement, also known as the Chicago open housing movement, was led by Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel[1][2] and Al Raby. It was supported by the Chicago-based Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

The movement included a large rally, marches and demands to the City of Chicago. These demands covered a range of areas beside housing discrimination in the United States, including educational inequality, transportation and employment discrimination, income inequality, health inequality, wealth inequality, crime in Chicago, criminal justice reform in the United States, community development, tenants rights and quality of life. Operation Breadbasket, in part led by Jesse Jackson, sought to harness African-American consumer power.

The Chicago Freedom Movement was the most ambitious civil rights campaign in the Northern United States, lasted from mid-1965 to August 1966, and is largely credited with inspiring the 1968 Fair Housing Act.[3][4]

  1. ^ "James L. Bevel The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement" by Randall Kryn, a paper in David Garrow's 1989 book We Shall Overcome, Volume II, Carlson Publishing Company
  2. ^ "Randy Kryn: Movement Revision Research Summary Regarding James Bevel – Chicago Freedom Movement". cfm40.middlebury.edu. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved April 7, 2018.
  3. ^ "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement 1954–1985". PBS Online / WGBH. Retrieved November 29, 2010.
  4. ^ Kotz, Nick (2005). "14. Another Martyr". Judgment days : Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the laws that changed America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 417. ISBN 0-618-08825-3.