King Calls For Sacrifice To Alter Chicago

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31109, 12 July 1966, Page 17

King Calls For Sacrifice To Alter Chicago

CN.J. Press Association—Copyright) CHICAGO, July 11. The Negro civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, called upon thousands of his followers yesterday to make any sacrifice necessary—including going to gaol—to change Chicago.

Dr. King told more than 35,000 people attending a freedom rally: “We must decide to fill up the gaols of Chicago, if necessary, in order to end slums.” Dr. King called on the Negroes at the rally to resolve their differences in a “coalition of conscience” and join forces in a non-violent army that no political machine could defeat.

After the rally Dr. King led about 5000 demonstrators on a twormile march to City Hall. There, following the lead of his reformation namesake, he posted on the City Hall door a list of 14 demands to make Chicago an “open city.” The action was symbolic of Martin Luther who tacked his “95 on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517. It was the reformer’s first public act In his crusade for reformation of the Catholic Church.

At yesterday’s rally Dr. King spurned calls for black separatism as unrealistic and said Negroes and whites were "tied in a single garment of destiny.” “This day we must declare our own emancipation proclamation,” Dr. King told the crowd of 35,000. He said Negroes must be

aggressively non-violent and on guard against “the tranquilising drug of gradualism.” This was a jibe at administration policy that integration must be a gradual process. The rally marked an apparent easing of tension between Dr. King and one of the civil rights movements chief proponents of “black power" on the issue of violence. ‘No Disagreement’ Floyd McKissick, president of the Congress of Racial Equality, drew an ovation when he told the crowd there was no disagreement between C.O.R.E. and Dr. King on that point. “Black power, contrary to what it has been misrepresented to mean, does not advocate violence,” Mr McKissick said. “It is a movement which seeks to change conditions from which riots erupt.” Dr. King has been highly critical of the term “black power,” contending it has overtones of black supremacy.

"A doctrine of black supremacy is as evil as a doctrine of white supremacy,” Dr. King said yesterday. “We (Negroes) must face the fact that we are only 10 per cent of America’s population, and no romanticised call for black separatism can be validated in reason or morality.” Mr McKissick said he would

be willing to meet Dr. King in a “summit conference" of national civil rights leaders “anytime he asks me to.” In Grenada, Mississippi, civil rights leaders vowed today to renew demonstrations broken up yesterday by a squad of steel-helmeted police who charged a crowd of about 300 Negroes. The Negroes had been protesting against the arrests of civil rights workers.