Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (18 page)

While it may have seemed that they were arguing about money, the struggle was also about power and respect and all the little things that build up over time with any married couple. If my mother did not get the respect she felt she deserved—she was an adult, after all—she would then go out for a little spiteful shopping. But she had trouble following through. Where another woman might buy piles of expensive clothes for herself at Marshall Field’s or Saks, Marsha Emanuel would buy clothes for us or maybe something practical for herself. It just wasn’t in her to spend recklessly or self-indulgently. Shopping was not, for her, a form of self-expression or an antidote to depression. She preferred to express herself in action and she got a chance to do this when her hero, Martin Luther King Jr., came to Chicago.

Having won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963 for his nonviolent campaign for civil rights, Dr. King reached the height of his fame and influence in the spring of 1966. In our city he began an almost messianic effort to end a system of segregation in housing that had been in place since the reconstruction that followed the Great Fire of 1871.

Unfortunately, many whites in Chicago had not seen the problems in the black community firsthand and they responded negatively to the pressure from King and his supporters. Angry crowds met every march, sit-in, and protest and as the summer heated up, the crowds got bigger and their taunts were accompanied by hurled bottles, rocks, and bricks. Mixed in with the crowds were young men who wore Nazistyle helmets and displayed swastikas; the insults shouted from the sidewalks included plenty of anti-Semitic rants along with racist insults. By midsummer my mother decided to join members of CORE and other groups that were going to march behind Dr. King on a three-mile route that took them through the South Side communities of Chicago Lawn and Gage Park, where real estate companies, rental agents, and landlords refused to do business with blacks.

On a hot, sunny Thursday my mother gave us lunch, packed up some sandwiches, fruits, and drinks, and got us out the door by two
o’clock. A fellow activist met us with a car and we drove from our North Side neighborhood south past the Loop and then through the all-white neighborhood of Bridgeport, where the mayor lived. By the time we reached Marquette Park in Chicago Lawn my mother had gone through her instructions—“Hold hands, stay close to me, never wander off by yourselves”—at least a dozen times. She had also told us that a lot of people who could not understand what we were doing might turn out to shout about it. Some of what these people might say would be hard to hear and they might even throw things to try to stop the march. If this happened we should listen to her instructions, and follow her lead.

By the time we got to Marquette Park, hundreds of whites, most of them teenagers, were already there to heckle and threaten the marchers. They milled around on a small hillside overlooking the spot where we were supposed to muster and chanted slogans. “Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate!” they shouted. Then they sang a song to the tune of the Oscar Mayer hot dog jingle.

To accent this performance one of the singers swung a rope that had been tied into a huge noose.

While police in the South were likely to harass and attack civil rights marchers, a sizable contingent of Chicago’s finest came to protect us. With blue riot helmets on their heads and batons in their hands they stood between the angry whites and the growing number of people arriving to participate in the march. Most of these people were black, but at least 10 percent were white. Included in this group were some Catholic priests and nuns and a good number of Jews.

As the marching group grew to more than six hundred and the stepping-off time of four o’clock came and went, local men who had gotten off from work joined the teenage hecklers and the ranks of the
hostile onlookers grew to more than two thousand, as the next day’s papers would report. Glass pop bottles, eggs, tomatoes, rocks, and the occasional cherry bomb flew over the police line to land near us and we began to hear shouts of “Cannibals! Savages!” and “Go home, niggers!” Hewing to the rules of nonviolence, none of the marchers responded in kind.

When Dr. King finally arrived by car, about two dozen police formed a wall to protect him from a hail of projectiles. Despite their efforts a rock struck him in the head over his right ear. He stumbled but caught his balance and quickly reassured everyone that he was all right and ready to walk. Reporters surrounded him and asked questions that were later broadcast on TV:

Ari, Rahm, and I watched King’s arrival from a relatively safe distance as my mother kept us on the edge of the marching group. We had participated in other marches and demonstrations, but none of them had been met with this level of anger. In my mind flashed images I had seen on TV and in magazines of high-pressure fire hoses, attack dogs, and billy clubs used against civil rights marchers in the South.
All three of us were nervous about what might happen here. But we could see that the police were on
our
side, and we knew that when we began walking we would be surrounded by friends and allies.

Our group benefited from organization and experience. The mob that gathered to oppose us had no preset plan, but in the long wait for Dr. King’s arrival they did devise a mocking kind of strategy. Borrowing from the techniques CORE had used to disrupt traffic in the Loop, about fifty of them sat in the road in front of the marchers and refused to be moved. They didn’t last very long. Once the police began using their batons to rap on their knees and ankles, the sit-down boys immediately stood up.

A phalanx of police officers led us out of the park and down Kedzie Avenue. Deep inside the ranks of the marchers, my mother held our hands and did her best to look and act unafraid. As we walked, people sang—“We Shall Overcome” and “We Shall Not Be Moved”—and at some moments the eggs and tomatoes that flew at us seemed to land in rhythm with our voices. In the lulls we heard people screaming “Nigger lovers!” at the police and some shouted out a call for one of the priests in the march to be hanged. “God, I hate niggers and nigger lovers!” yelled a woman who, by her gray hair, looked like she could be someone’s grandmother.

The worst of it came when we reached Sixtieth Street, a point that was just ten blocks east from the Airport Homes, where my mother, then just a girl, had witnessed this kind of conflict for the first time. Here a group of men and women brought out an effigy of Dr. King, which they proceeded to stab and kick and rip to shreds. Small bands of men broke the windows on the cars that trailed the march and were driven by blacks. As police officers ran to protect these drivers, the sound of glass breaking and the voices of so many angry adults who literally screamed with rage because we dared to march against bigotry sent shivers through us.

The march ended at a Baptist church, which we entered along with other marchers. Dr. King took to the pulpit.

Decades later I cannot recall what Dr. King said in the church that night, but I do recall that I felt like I was bearing witness to something
important. Those who were with him in private meetings after he preached would report that a fierce debate had broken out among the leaders of the movement, some of whom wanted to attend the next march “holstered up.” Reverend King listened and then pressed them with a question. “How do you put out a fire?” He then explained that fire won’t extinguish a fire, but water will, and nonviolence is the water that would put out the fire of hatred.

While the leaders of the movement struggled over the best way to respond to what they had experienced, my mother found a driver whose car was available to take us home. It was dark and well past our bedtime when we finally got to our block. Ari, who could always fall asleep anywhere the instant he had burned all of his energy for the day, had to be carried inside the apartment. The next morning the newspapers would report that twenty-eight people, including three police officers, had been sent to hospitals for injuries suffered during the march. Of the hundreds of people apprehended while attacking the marchers, only forty were formally arrested and charged with crimes. The rest were let go.

It would be hard to exaggerate the impact my brothers and I felt from our direct experience at the march and from learning of what happened after we left. Being part of a mass display of courage made us believe that a great many people in the world are good and decent. We learned to draw strength from a group of like-minded souls and to stay cool under pressure and resolute in our convictions. Most important, we came away with the sense that even the biggest problem should be confronted and that we could be part of the solution. Today each of us has tried to be part of the solution to society’s biggest problems, whether it is me working on improving end-of-life care and health-care reform, Rahm trying to rebuild Chicago’s infrastructure and education system, or Ari’s efforts on the environment and speaking out on learning disabilities.

After Gage Park, a great debate arose within the local civil rights movement. Many members of CORE wanted a more confrontational approach, to force Mayor Daley to do more than talk. They proposed a march through the all-white suburb of Cicero, where many people
were outspoken in their opposition to the civil rights movement. My mother sided with King and decided not to go to Cicero. When the march took place the governor of Illinois sent two thousand National Guard troops and the city marshaled five hundred police officers to keep the peace.

The Cicero march probably accelerated the flight to the suburbs by middle-class whites who saw in the chaos and anger—on both sides—a frightening future for the city. In our own circle of friends, the Glass family decided to move to the northern suburb of Glencoe. Bill Glass would say that he was looking for financial security, more living space, and better public schools for his sons, and all of this was true. But Carol Glass would forever recall that for her the decision was made when her son Jerry was mugged at knifepoint in a local park. As her friend packed and left, my mother felt sorry for her, certain that she herself would remain in the great city for the rest of her life and never stop trying to make it better for all of us.

Skippy Shein had a fast five-speed bike with easy-rolling one-inch tires. He also owned a Schwinn Sting-Ray with a banana seat and high handlebars. My bike was a one-speed clunker that my mom had bought for five dollars from a man who lived a few blocks away and sold reconditioned bikes out of his darkened basement.

On many Friday afternoons Skippy’s mom picked us up at Anshe Emet and took us to the Shein home, where I would spend the weekend. I loved getting the chance to explore the Sheins’ big house—reading Skippy’s entire collection of Tom Swift books, or playing with his pool table. I especially liked riding his bikes.

The inevitable happened on a Saturday morning when we decided, against explicit parental edicts, to pedal from his house on Bellevue Place to my home on Winona, seven miles to the north. The route took us along the trails on Lake Michigan and then onto the trails that passed through the twelve hundred acres of Lincoln Park, near the zoo. Flat as the Midwest may be, at one point on the route we hit an incline and thought we could make better progress by hopping off our bikes and pushing. Suddenly a couple of high school guys jumped out
of the bushes that lined the path and grabbed our bikes. One held a knife to my neck and demanded we empty our pockets.

Then Skippy began to cry and begged them to not take the bikes. They preferred cash, so they told us that if we emptied our pockets we could keep our wheels. As usual, mine were empty, but Skippy had around fifteen dollars in bills and change, which he handed over. The muggers took off.

We found two police officers in a patrol car and reported what had happened. One of the officers reached for his radio to broadcast an alert. Soon another patrol car rolled up. Inside sat a couple of young black men. The officers asked us if these were our muggers but we saw that they were at least four or five years older than the teenagers who had jumped us. As the minutes passed and the crime got cold, it became obvious that the muggers would get away.

Later that day our family conversation about this incident included what we all knew about race and poverty and how two black teenagers might think it would be a good idea to go to Lincoln Park, find some white kids on fancy bikes, and rob them. Nothing excused the specific crime perpetrated by those particular young men. But it was easy to understand why they might be angry and resentful enough to mug a couple of boys who looked like they had it good. The police response was also instructive. How would it feel, I wondered, to be plucked off the street and treated like a suspect based solely on your skin color and a police officer’s assumptions?