Two Paths of Activism

During the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, the African American population of Chicago fought for their rights in multiple ways. Martin Luther King, Jr. travelled to the city in 1966 to advocate for opening housing opportunities for African Americans who had been restricted through a variety of public and private means to certain overcrowded areas of the city. King and his allies advocated for peaceful direct action and participated in several marches aimed at integrating neighborhoods in the city. The marches were met with hostility and violence from the white communities of Chicago, illustrating one type of response to the African American struggle to gain equal rights.

Others in the city's African American communities advocated a Black Nationalist strategy embodied by groups such as the Black Panthers. The group advocated empowerment within the city's African American communities and opposed the more integrationist approach of King and his allies. The Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party took a more militant approach to the struggle for equal rights, and were met with state-sponsored suppression and violence. In December of 1969, Fred Hampton was assassinated by the Chicago Police Department, working with the federal government, for his work with the Black Panther Party.