New Orleans A new book by lawyer and scholar Michelle Adams named The Containment: Detroit, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North, includes a section that is a terrible and tragic reminder of how passage of the Fair Housing Act was written in the blood of the assassination of Martin Luther King and the work of organizers and activists in the northern campaign in Chicago.
…then, on April 4, 1968, as Taylor Branch so evocatively put it, King’s “sojourn on earth went blank.” King’s assassination touched off a wave of riots across the country. More than one hundred cities large and small exploded including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh….Federal troops guarded the White House and the Capitol; thousands occupied the city for more than a week. Before it was over, thirteen people had died in the city and more than nine hundred businesses were damaged.
Reacting to the civil discord that threatened to engulf the country, President Johnson sent a letter to House Speaker John McCormack on Friday, April 5, 1968, urging passage of the stalled fair housing bill. Effective fair housing legislation meant prohibiting racial discrimination in real estate transactions and disestablishing residential segregation that had come to define the nation’s metropolitan areas. Johnson wrote, “Last night, America was shocked by a senseless act of violence. A man who devoted his life the nonviolent achievement of rights that most Americans take for granted was killed by an assassin’s bullet.” Johnson continued, “I ask you to bring this bill to a vote in the House of Representatives…The time for action is now.”
Johnson’s impatience likely stemmed from the fact that, under pressure from the Chicago Freedom Movement, he had first proposed fair housing legislation more than two years earlier….The force of his logic suggested that housing discrimination could not remain unaddressed. “We have learned by now the folly of looking for any single crucial link in the chain that binds the ghetto. All the links – poverty, lack of education, underemployment and now discrimination in housing – must be attacked together.”
On April 6, 1968, The New York Times reported that Dr. King’s assassination had likely changed the political realities on the ground: “Congressional leaders said that Dr. King’s murder could assure passage next week of a landmark civil rights bill.” Just one day after King’s funeral on April 10, 1968, the House of Representatives passed the Fair Housing Act by a vote of 250 to 171. President Johnson quickly signed the bill into law. King’s assassination was the necessary impetus. As a leading scholar of residential segregation put it, “In the end, it took a martyr’s blood finally to outlaw discrimination in housing.” The Chicago Freedom Movement played a role in the statute’s enactment, too. After King’s death, Johnson framed federal fair housing legislation as essential to honor and continue the minister’s work. King’s campaign for fair housing in Chicago, and the work of the black activists there, bolstered the credibility of Johnson’s argument immeasurably. King believed that direct action in Chicago would have a synergistic effect on federal fair housing legislation. It did. He just didn’t live to see it.
Now, 57 years later, there’s still discrimination and a lot of work to be done, but the price is high, which is worth remembering this year when King’s birthday coincided with the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States. Our work is still cut out for us.