As shockwaves from the news of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rippled their way around the world on April 4, 1968, Chicago was on edge. Violent rebellions in the form of riots, looting, and arson had already begun in many American cities. Parts of Chicago, particularly on the West Side of the city, would endure several days of the same. The riots on Chicago’s West Side, concentrated on Madison Street and Roosevelt Road, rose to a boiling point – an angry outpouring of grief that left lasting scars on the streets, structures, and people in the community.
People who grew up on the West Side, first responders, and others who witnessed the events told Chicago Stories. about their experiences during the several days of turmoil that consumed a large section of the city’s West Side.
Life on the West Side
“I am convinced that if democracy is to live, segregation must die. Segregation is a cancer in the body politic which must be removed before our moral and democratic health can be realized.”– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Following World War II, some 4 million African Americans moved north as part of the Great Migration. Many made their way from the American South to Chicago, and some 250,000 settled on the city’s West Side. But segregation was woven tightly into the fabric of Chicago. On the West Side, rent could be high even in the most squalid conditions. In January 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. moved into an apartment in North Lawndale to draw attention to housing conditions in Chicago. Later that year, as part of a march to draw attention to segregation on the Southwest Side, someone threw a rock that hit King on the back of the head as he marched past aggressive White counter-protestors. King famously responded to the incident: “I have been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say I have never seen – even in Mississippi or Alabama – mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’ve seen in Chicago.”
“It was a good childhood, not knowing you’re poor, having real friends, having neighbors who would invite you in, feed you with their children. So it was a lot of love in the midst of abject poverty.”Billy Brooks, West Side resident
“I came to realize that we lived in a slum – a woman with six kids living in a three-bedroom apartment. The landlord didn’t want to fix up the apartment or paint the apartment or do certain things. They did just enough to make it livable for you and were charging you a hell of a lot of rent in order to live there.”John Preston, West Side resident
“When we first lived over there, the neighborhood was all White. There were no Blacks at all. There was one Black family that lived maybe four doors down from me, and I’m still friends with them today. It was kind of gradual. And then all of a sudden when I was in eighth grade, a lot of the kids that were in my grade left – the White kids left and moved.”Mary Pat Cross, West Side resident
“You had a lot of segregation back then. They were still doing a lot of redlining. They were still putting restrictions on resources getting filtered into communities, especially in the schools. The schools were being overcrowded. They had the Willis Wagons – what they called it back then – where they were building mobile schools on the playground of the schools. So it took away our playground.”Benny Lee, West Side resident
“I learned, unbeknownst to me at that time, what racism was, what White supremacy was. Just from being on the track team and going to different track meets, we would go to relays in Palatine, Illinois, and say, ‘Whoa. These people are living good.’…Our uniforms were ragged, hand-me-downs. We sometimes had to trade shoes. And then when you go to a place like Palatine or Oak Park, you see these pristine uniforms, and you see these homes. It was a thing of wanting to have that, but at the same time, understanding that that was beyond my reach.”Billy Brooks, West Side resident
Dr. King’s Assassination and Growing Tension
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. The mood in Chicago that evening was tense as other cities around the country saw violence, looting, and unrest in the hours and days after King’s death. Mayor Richard J. Daley braced for the predicted upheaval, but initially declined to call in the National Guard. Anticipating that most of the unrest would be concentrated downtown, Daley mobilized thousands of police officers there. Meanwhile, Chicago’s Black communities mourned.
“I was either coming home from school or was at home after school, and my mother stopped everything and made us sit down and watch the news coverage of it. And it was so intense coming from her, and it made us look at it seriously. So her emotions impacted us. And then I remember going outside the next day, and people were in mourning in the community, and I knew this was something serious.”Benny Lee, West Side resident
“I couldn’t believe it. When I heard that Dr. King had been shot, the feeling was, why would somebody shoot Dr. King? I mean, he ain’t hurting nobody. And, of course, the other feeling that kicked in was that something has happened that will change the flow of America because there will be a reaction.”Danny Davis, U.S. representative, teacher on the West Side in 1968
“I was [in] downtown Chicago with my mom, and we were taking the bus home, and someone on the bus said that Dr. King had been killed. And everyone on the bus was crying and upset. I knew who he was, but I didn't really know who he was. I just knew how sad it was. And everybody was so sad.”Mary Pat Cross, West Side resident
“Liberty Baptist Church was opening their doors for people just to come and sit. I knew I needed to cover it. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know where, I didn’t know what was going on. I was hoping things would not flare up with violence…I realized the reason why there wasn’t a lot of media, because the people who maybe should have known didn’t have the connection in the community to know. I knew it because I was listening to Black radio. I was the only media person there.”Bob Black, Chicago Sun-Times photographer.
“At roll call that morning,…[t]hey talked about that there might be trouble – Martin Luther King got killed.”John O’Shea, Chicago Police Department patrolman
Chicago Stories: When the West Side Burned
In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, chaos erupted on Chicago’s West Side. Grief turned into anger as protests, riots, looting, and fires consumed some neighborhoods.
Watch Now“It was a big, devastating loss. The school was tense. It was very, very tense that day…People wanted to rebel. And you felt it. You felt it.”John Preston, West Side resident
“Rebellion had been brewing. The conditions that existed created their reaction.”Billy Brooks, West Side resident
The Fire Ignites
“A riot is the language of the unheard.”– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On April 5, the morning after King’s death, some people’s grief had turned into anger. A group of students left their high school and took to the streets and marched as a memorial for King, and soon others joined. As they headed west, they were met by police, who at one point fired a warning shot, which escalated the tension. Fights broke out, looting began, and much of the West Side devolved into chaos. By the afternoon, the first fire ignited at a shop on Madison Street. More and more buildings in the West Side’s shopping corridors would be set ablaze.
Scenes from the Uprising
“The school was closing. We had to leave immediately. They said, ‘There’s people gathering in the park. It’s not safe. You have to leave.’ So everyone started leaving the school, and my Black friends were saying, ‘You can’t go there.’ My White friends at the school were saying, ‘You can’t go there.’ I said, ‘I have to go home’…but I took [the] Madison Street bus, and I got on in Central Park, went a couple blocks…I got off, and I went to go get this lady who they were beating up, and they knocked my books out of my hands, and they started beating me up. One woman put her arm around me like she was gonna help me out. And she smacked me really hard in my head.”Mary Pat Cross, West Side resident
“You kind of became fearful that there might be large numbers of people who would be hurt and who might lose their lives…People were looting. They were dragging things up and down the street. They were dragging things out. They were dragging television sets. They were opening trucks that had merchandise and goods on the truck…They were throwing meat out of meat trucks. They were doing whatever they could do. Some people were attempting to get something of value, but others were not necessarily trying to get anything of value. They were just trying to protest.”Danny Davis, U.S. representative, teacher on the West Side in 1968
“All the clothing stores, record stores, furniture stores – none of them were spared because these were things people needed. They got refrigerators, they got stoves, they got clothes, they got TVs.”Billy Brooks, West Side resident
“There was a lot of people running in and out of stores. People were doing more than looting – they were destroying property, too. Me and my crew, our main interest was stealing something of value…We were just young and taking advantage of an opportunity to get some things we couldn’t afford.”Benny Lee, West Side resident
“I remember one girl telling me later how angry her mother was. Someone came to the door to sell her own dress that they had gotten from the cleaners.”Mary Pat Kelly, West Side resident
“It was about 11 o’clock and [a police officer] told us, ‘You got to close up.’ That was the day before the Easter business…So we closed up, went home, and watched TV and about three, four o’clock, I got a call from one of my workers telling me, ‘Sol, they broke into the store and they’re taking everything out.’…And then about an hour later, he says, ‘It’s all on fire.’ They torched it. On TV, I saw my store being burnt up.”Sol Kaplan, owner of K’s Department Store
“We saw…all the windows torn out and glass all over the street. Cars were overturned…It did look like a war zone. And then you’d come upon a fire scene. Oftentimes, you’d see the fire firefighters worn out. They had tried their best to stop the fires.”Bob Black, Chicago Sun-Times photographer.
“There was an extra alarm [fire] on Madison Street, and this is where it starts to pick up…Saw a lot of smoke as we were coming up – almost 180 degrees in front of you. Wow. I never saw this before…When I went up to the bunk room to go to bed and I closed my eyes, all I could see on this side of my eyelids was fire.”Andy Schubert, Chicago Fire Department fireman
The National Guard Arrives
“The ultimate weakness of a riot is that it can be halted by superior force.”– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
By the evening of April 5, several dozen fires were burning, and columns of smoke were rising above the West Side. Electrical power in the area had gone out. Some tried to flee the neighborhood. Daley called in the National Guard, set a 7:00 pm curfew, and banned gun and liquor sales. By April 6, some 7,500 National Guard members were stationed in Chicago. An additional 5,000 U.S. Army troops followed. As the crisis wound down, Daley responded to criticism that police hadn’t received clear orders to quickly shut the rioting down. Daley issued a directive that going forward authorities should “shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand because they are potential murderers” and “shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city.”
The National Guard on the West Side
“All of a sudden, tanks came in, and there were soldiers with pointed guns. And then we heard on the radio that looters were going to be shot…We saw the National Guard coming into Garfield Park, putting up tents and literal tanks. Now, that’s when I was shocked. It looked like something out of Vietnam or an invasion.”Mary Pat Kelly, West Side resident
“They had a tank on Roosevelt Road and Pulaski with troops lined up and down the street. They had troops marching through the community in columns. Man, wasn’t nobody moving because people were afraid, and these folks were just scary. They had these rifles, and they would shoot. And that in itself didn’t put no fear into people. It just made them more pissed.”Billy Brooks, West Side resident
“You saw National Guardsmen posted at every bridge and every entrance along I-290 on both sides of it. So people couldn’t cross those bridges…Basically we were contained. You couldn't leave that area.”John Preston, West Side resident
“We were told that there was a sniper in an alley up in an apartment building and that we were to go down there and take care of that sniper…I remember several people got on the ready to shoot at whatever was up there. And about that time, the window sash went up and a woman stuck her head out and said, ‘Joey, get yourself back in here right now and go to bed.’ And that just blew me away because I realized how close we came to maybe somebody taking a shot at that kid.”Dave Jackson, Illinois National Guardsman
“It just felt kind of eerie to walk down the street. There were these soldiers standing there with the weapons. This is the nature of things. You don’t necessarily know what the outcome of all this is going to be.”Danny Davis, U.S. representative, teacher on the West Side in 1968
The Aftermath
“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On April 10, Daley lifted his emergency declaration, and troops began to leave Chicago over the course of the next several days. In the end, 11 people died in the violence. Some 3,000 people were arrested, 1,000 people were left homeless, and approximately 200 buildings were destroyed. While some, including groups such as the Vice Lords gang, set up relief efforts to help the community, parts of the West Side never recovered from the unrest.
“I believe we were there almost a week before we packed up and went home…I do remember on the way home riding in the back of the truck. There was a guy sitting there, and he pulled out a personal private pistol and started shooting in the air while we’re going down the expressway. I thought, this is crazy. I knew the guy, that he had no boundaries around anything. I thought, if he had that on him, it’s a wonder if something else didn’t happen.”Dave Jackson, Illinois National Guardsman
“When we came back, the National Guard said to my mom, ‘This is not a tourist area.’ And she said, ‘We live here.’…It was a whole different school. The tension, the feeling – it was sad. It just was different. Everything from that point on was different.”Mary Pat Cross, West Side resident
“It reminded you of 1945 Berlin. These were all stores that I knew at the time. They were implanted in my mind for ages, and now they were empty lots or rubble or broken windows. It was just amazing how Madison Street was destroyed, how Roosevelt Road was destroyed.”John O’Shea, Chicago Police Department patrolman
“Because the Vice Lords back in the sixties had property, they was able to set up relief sites where people can come and get canned goods, clothing, and stuff like that. They did some clothing drives, donations, and all that. So the community came together.”Benny Lee, West Side resident
“We thought there was going to be these great projects, that the neighborhood was going to be rebuilt. It didn’t happen.”Mary Pat Kelly, West Side resident
“Today, when you ride down Roosevelt Road, when you go down Madison, the vacant lots are still vacant. The legacy of that to me is – this man [King] was not violent. He advocated for civil disobedience. It’s just ironic that what happened to him created this dysfunction, this madness…It’s sad because we did this through our youthfulness, our naivete. Of course I was out there. Where else was I going to be? When I talk to young people today, I talk to them about consequential thinking.”Billy Brooks, West Side resident
“The death of Dr. King, the life of Dr. King helped us to better understand how imperfect this union is. But I also think that he gave us hope that we can keep moving towards the perfection that is yet to come…We are a long ways from it, but we still have the opportunity to make perfect, in a more perfect way, the dreams, hopes, aspirations, and actions led by this gentleman.”Danny Davis, U.S. representative, teacher on the West Side in 1968
