Marquette Park Changes Willy Caref
Memory fades over time. Images, incidents that lose their sharpness, and the clear lines of places, streets, even people with voices that have blurred. So I was jolted a bit to hear that it has been 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a march into Marquette Park, Chicago’s symbol of extreme racism. I was there that day, marching with King. I too was pelted, bloodied from the rocks and bottles thrown by a large racist mob. Marquette Park is on Chicago’s South West Side. Fifty years ago, it was one of the biggest and best appointed public parks in Chicago. Built around 1917, the 323 acre park proudly housed a swimming pool, golf course, many ball fields and picnic areas. The usual, just more. It just happened that the patrons of this exemplary public park were all white. In spite of the large black south side population and growing Latino population, that was to remain the reality for 62 years, until 1979. Over the years, Black people had been beaten on many occasions trying to use the park. There were many ugly racist incidents. I remember, all too well, when a black CTA bus driver was dragged off his 71st Street bus and ferociously beaten by white thugs. Western Avenue, 2400 west on the city’s grid, was the unofficial racial dividing line separating black and white Chicago with the railroad tracks just east of Western being the actual dividing line. An integrated group of about 600 marchers went down 71st Street to California into Marquette Park. Going west on 71st street, after two blocks, we passed a typical Chicago two-story building which just happened to be the headquarters the American Nazi Party. The exposed brick on the west side of the building had a sign with huge letters that could be seen from blocks away, proclaiming Niggers Beware! These Nazis were active. They showed pre-WWII German Nazi films to a packed room every Friday night. They had numerous rallies in the park, organizing among the alienated poor white working class youth. Their pipsqueak Fuhrer, Frank Collin, declared that Marquette Park was for “whites only” and declared his mission was to keep it that way. As soon as the marchers entered the park, the improvised volley of missiles began. There was a rowdy crowd of mostly young men, some waving Confederate and Nazi flags, and it seemed that every hand had a brick, bottle, rock, stone or fire cracker ready to be hurled. Their other hand held a beer bottle; and the empties in cases piled high around them attested to the fact that many of them were already drunk. These were seemingly happy, yet mean-spirited, hateful racists. And there a lot of them – thousands, perhaps as many as 7,000, outnumbering us 10 to 1. The police formed a line separating us from the haters – barely. The cops mostly ignored the assault on us marchers, occasionally pushing back a particularly unruly thug now and then. A few were arrested. But basically we were sitting ducks, awaiting the slings and arrows of the racist crowd.
I was at the rear of the march. It was the safest place to be. Most of the rocks and bottles were directed at the first line of marchers, the “dignitaries”, Al Raby, Dr. King and others. Their bodyguards held up paper placards for protection. I was one of a group of young people at the rear who didn’t subscribe to the King school of non-violence; to turn the other cheek, and get hit hard with no response philosophy. We picked up every damn rock, stone and bottle thrown at us, and threw them as hard as we could back at the bastards. The theme of the march was Open Housing. Chicago, like many cities was (and of course, still is) severely segregated and there were obvious racist policies and practices that legalized racism in the renting of apartments and the selling of homes. Real estate agents steered blacks away from particular neighborhoods, acceding to the defined racial boundaries. This despicable practice was referred to as “redlining”. The so-called faith community (mostly Catholic but others as well) also were active in maintaining racial segregation. Many churches had committees whose sole purpose was to monitor real estate agencies and agents to make sure they followed subscribed to race-based practices. What creates the hate? Where does the racism come from? A big question, one for a book, and many have been written. Racism, like all other ideas, is learned behavior. So is anti-racism. Hate is not innate; Ideas do not fall from the sky. They are taught and learned, absorbed and embraced, can be made deeper or discarded. They come from the society at large. In this case, they come straight from the leadership, from the rotten top. Capitalism needs racism, indeed would not stand without it. A hierarchal society of richer and poorer, a class society has to have a justification for why there are rulers and the ruled. They teach us that there are “smarter” and “dumber” and, of course, those strata generally correlate to richer and poorer. Behind the platitudes of “equality and justice for all”, there is the insidious reality state sanctioned separation (“black” wards, Latino “districts”, “white ethnics” (!) and the like. Politics and religion stand to maintain segregation and justify hierarchy. The rich owners stay on top, divide and rule their method, distrust and even hate (“I’m smarter than you, I’m better than you”) are the salient lessons taught every child. The year 1966 was in the middle of the now historic, but misrepresented (highlighting drugs – which existed but were absolutely secondary) “60’s”. The bombing in Birmingham and historic bloody Selma had preceded Marquette Park. The courageous actions of Mississippi Freedom Riders electrified antiracists throughout the country. But before the 60’s and the 50’s there was World War II, the “Good War”. Millions throughout the world were mobilized to fight the Nazi concept of the “Aryan Race”. And they (led by the Soviet Union) were successful. Thousands of U.S. soldiers, among them blacks, came back from Europe and Asia imbued with a sense of justice that had human equality as a foundation. They had fought the fascists to destroy the idea of a superior and inferior “race”, only to come home to segregated housing, segregated public facilities and lack of good employment opportunities. They were pissed off and knew how to fight. The Civil Right Movement didn’t grow out of thin air; it was part of the anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggles of the 50’s and 60’s. The Movement, as it was called, was based on the lessons of defeating Nazi Germany. My family believed in equality. My father lost his entire family, killed on the spot by the Germans and their fascist allies, or taken by train to gas ovens in Auschwitz and Treblinka. Thanks a lot, DuPont, GM, Ford,
Citibank and other still existing corporations who profited from these atrocities. His two sisters, my aunts Renya and Fanya escaped to the forest when the Nazis entered Bialystok. For more than two years, they fought as partisans, known today as guerillas, fighting a rear guard against the Nazis. They led and died in the Bialystok uprising of 1943. My father survived because he left home before the invasion to join the Soviet Red Army. Mom grew up in the Soviet Union. Her father was a Bolshevik, who fought in the Civil War following the Russian Revolution, and again twenty years later in the Red Army against the German invaders. As a teen-ager, Mama carried a machine gun, fighting for the cause. When my parents emigrated to the U.S., they brought their experience, ideas, dreams and fighting spirit with them. They never stopped believing in the fundamental equality of all human beings. They understood there is only one race, the human race. My brother Shelly, imbued in our family collective spirit, became a Freedom Rider in Mississippi in 1964, and we were all raised going to communist and civil rights activities. Before Marquette Park, I had participated in many marches and rallies. I picketed Woolworths’ on State Street in a sympathy boycott to support the famous student sit-ins in the South. It was my first experience taking the train downtown by myself, and I remember today how proud my mother was when I told her about the picket line. The Civil Right Movement moved steadily to the left, pulled by communists and pushed by militant black workers. Increasingly, there was broader recognition of the need for violence against the capitalist system and also that civil rights for blacks and eventually Latinos has to be tied to anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. A decisive turn was the Detroit Rebellion of 1967. Led by black veterans, some from the Viet Nam War, Detroit workers fought for better than a week against the racist establishment. It was the most significant uprising in the U.S. since the mass strikes of the 1930’s, and the most important mass event in the U.S. since World War II. More details of this historic uprising can be found here http://www.detroits-great-rebellion.com/ Detroit rocked the rulers and the Civil Rights “leaders”. Finally Dr. King spoke out aggressively against poverty affecting the whole working class – including white workers – for the first time. He also increasingly spoke out against the Viet Nam War. As time moved along, The Movement changed and so did I along with tens of thousands of others. I continued to participate in the struggle to integrate Marquette Park. This was viewed as an important battleground for the next thirteen years. Jesse Jackson, the new darling of the mainstream civil rights movement, conducted weekly marches on 71st street, from the railroad tracks till wherever the police decided to stop us from going into the park. By 1969, I was a member of Progressive Labor Party (PLP). We participated in Jackson’s Breadbasket/PUSH marches with the strategy of instilling militancy. After a while, PUSH gave up the marches. PLP picked up the responsibility. The open, public and even aggressive Nazi organizing efforts in the Marquette Park community made their existence a national issue. Frank Collin, the would-be fuehrer, was an especially repugnant figure who relished the huge spotlight given to his every miniscule racist muttering. His words had meaning and consequences. Racist attacks against black youth and workers who unknowingly ventured into the “wrong” areas were a constant occurrence. There were incidents of letter bombs delivered to black families on the racial border. Black CTA bus drivers who worked late night routes going through the area
were given escorts. And, of course, there weren’t many black families moving west of Western. The few that did buy into Marquette Park were routinely harassed. And then, there was Skokie. The Nazis applied for a permit to have a public rally in a park in the largely Jewish suburb of Skokie. Defended by the so-called civil libertarians of the ACLU, the Nazis prevailed in a legal wrangle. The Skokie lawyers tried to block the permit because of the harm that would be inflicted on the many Holocaust survivors who lived in Skokie. Each court appearance, with every twist and turn, gave the Nazis tons newspaper, radio and TV coverage, ad nauseam. The discussion about fighting racism was reduced to “free speech”. None other than the great civil libertarian, Mayor Richard J Daley, defended the Nazis “rights”. The Nazis finally had a muted mini rally, their right to congregate in the community and disseminate and preach their racist venom acknowledged. For years, PLP and its ant-racist arm, International Committee Against Racism (INCAR) maintained regular activities in Marquette Park. There were periodic marches, rallies, even integrated pop-up softball games where the outfielders played their positions with a bat at the ready. The Skokie publicity given to the Nazis demanded a decisive response. We increased our activities, looking for more creative ways to challenge the Nazis, to dislodge them from Marquette Park and their base in the community. The publicity, discussion and debate about Skokie clearly helped move the center to the left. More youth and workers wanted to wipe out the Nazis, not debate them. Initially, during the period when the courts delayed or denied the Nazis their permit for Skokie, they turned to rallies in other suburbs, whose residents openly resisted racial change such as Dolton and South Holland. The police had not yet perfected their protection strategies (such as not allowing counter-demonstrators anywhere near Nazis) so it was possible to disrupt, even attack these rallies. And we did. In the period of 1978 and 1979 we took direct actions against the Nazis, in their own headquarters and in Marquette Park. Several were successful, one a bit amusing, though not particularly a success. Collin had struck the idea of holding happy birthday festivities commemorating Hitler’s birthday in April. Because he was almost always guaranteed radio, newspaper and TV press coverage, why not? I came up with the idea of ruining Hitler’s party. I wanted to do something dramatic to embarrass and expose these Nazis as braggarts who couldn’t even protect their own building. The idea was to raise a Red Flag on the Nazis own roof. We were familiar with two-flats in Chicago. They all have a roof hatch made of wood. The idea was to wait until the middle of the night, then have someone climb up the electrical pole alongside the building to get on the roof. Once there, our comrade on the roof would take a hammer and nail the hatch shut from the outside. Then the Red Flag would be unfurled on top of Nazi headquarters! In the morning, when the press showed up to cover Collin and his cohorts celebrating Hitler’s birthday, the storyline would shift to how the communists embarrassed the Nazis in their own backyard. Collin would be exposed as the fool that he was. We had to recruit someone who was brave, intrepid and physically able to complete this task. My brother Ben agreed to do it right away. The next problem that our surveillance revealed was two German Sheppard dogs, big and loud, in the back yard. The night before, we threw two big balls of ratpoisoned laced hamburger over the fence. That took care of the dogs. But the one thing we didn’t
foresee and could not counter was the sentry in the second floor window – all night long with a rifle in his arm. That scuttled the razzamatazz approach, and the vision of the Red Flag flying over Nazi headquarters. So instead, we decided to show up for an unannounced picket on the sidewalk in front of the Nazi building on a Saturday. We didn’t even tell our own members and friends about our plan until a few minutes before the “pop-up” demonstration. We were concerned about the police spies that we routinely uncovered who came to meetings, participated in activities and filed reports with the FBI and Chicago Police Red Squad. We were having a conference, made the announcement asking volunteers to get into cars immediately and drove to the front of the Nazis 71st Street building. Loudly and with placards hoisted militantly above our heads, about 100 of us began a picket line right in front of the door. We didn’t have to wait long for the police; they were inside playing cards with Collin and a few of his goons. The Nazis were proud of their violent past. They didn’t shy away from the death camps, the mass murder, the gas ovens, their grotesque “racial science”, and the hatred and misery they brought to tens of millions. They made it clear that while they considered black people and Jews to be “untermenschen” or inferior, their main enemies were communists. Frank Collin repeated this on many occasions. The feelings were likewise. After much collective deliberation, we organized a violent attack on the Nazis in their headquarters. I recruited volunteers, an integrated group of twenty-five young men and women. They were all from Chicago. We had two more come from our PLP office in New York to insure leadership and success in the task at hand. There was no training, only a meeting to discuss the idea of a surprise attack, going inside the hall during a public event and beating the hell out of everyone in sight. No one was told the proposed date or details. We knew that the Nazis showed World War II films glorifying Hitler on select Friday nights, part of their recruitment strategy. They especially concentrated on inviting teens, eyeing to enlist them. We had someone posted down the block at a pay phone, watching the front door and counting as they entered. When the call came that said about 20-25 were inside and the movie had started, we gathered our pipes and bats, silk stocking face-masks, black stocking hats and buckets of paint and headed to 71st Street to confront the bastards. It was pitch dark and we quickly got out of the cars and lined up on the sidewalk on either side of the front door. As planned, two young women knocked on the door. When the door opened slightly, they explained that they were students from the University of Illinois interested in observing and interviewing the Nazis. The door flew open and the attackers rushed in. We struck everyone in our way. I hit one guy in the head who surprisingly shook me off. Turns out he was older, probably in his 50’s, probably a WWII veteran, a real Nazi. I hit him again and again. I later saw him in court with a broken arm. We obliterated the place. There were more people inside than we had been advised, between 40 and 50. But half, the youths that the Nazis hoped to enlist, ran out the back door. Those who stayed and fought had fought before. So it wasn’t easy. But we hurt them badly, smashing everyone and everything. The paint added a destructive coda to our action. When I heard one of them yell to get the guns, I gave the all-clear signal for us to leave hurriedly. I was the last one out and thought all of our people had
already fled. I was wrong however. One comrade, a Latina, had fallen under a table in the fight, unseen by me. The Nazis fired a pistol as we were running down the street to the corner where the cars were waiting. I was shot in the hand, a minor injury. A more serious injury was one of our guys who was struck in the eye permanently damaging his eyesight. Our comrade who was left behind was beaten and terrorized by the Nazis before the police came. She was arrested and charged with multiple felonies. There was a drawn out court case, and the charges were eventually dropped or reduced. There was some press coverage, not much, but it probably wasn’t necessary in the neighborhood. The word got out quickly. The communists beat up the Nazis in their own headquarters. Those who fled out the back door would not come back. And the ones who stayed and got bloodied only broadcast the Nazis embarrassing defeat. Collin, the new fuhrer, was exposed as a bungling idiot. In 1979, PLP decided its annual Midwest May Day March would be in Marquette Park. There was a great deal of organizing by a lot of dedicated high school students and teachers, college students, hospital workers, bus drivers, steel and auto workers and others encompassing all walks of life. Marching into Marquette Park with blacks, whites and Latinos heralded a new day. Tens of thousands of flyers, pamphlets, newspapers, stickers were produced and distributed. I don’t remember how much money we raised to pay for the whole thing, but it was a hell of a lot by our standards. We held numerous fundraisers and collected money at the places where we worked and the campuses where we studied. Getting a permit for the May Day March turned out to be a big obstacle. We applied for permits to use Ogden Park on the east in an all-black neighborhood, march west on 67th (Marquette Road) to the north side of the park and then rally in Marquette Park itself. The City through the Chicago Park District issued the permit for the rally but denied the one for the march. The trumped up reason was that we would have to go by a hospital and thus violate a “quiet zone”. We debated numerous alternative routes while filing suit in Federal Court suing the City of Chicago. We ended up having a court hearing where I testified about all the hurdles the City placed before us. I was particularly unimpressed with the City’s lawyer, one of the extended Daley family, who was especially inept. Our lawyer was the better one and for whatever reason, the judge, Frank McGarr, called a recess, taking both lawyers into his office. He asked the Daley to come up with a better reason to justify a denial of the permit application. The bumbler couldn’t. McGarr said, “What do you care, let the communists and the Nazis kill each other. Give them the permit.” An interesting aside: Clarence Page, a young black reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was the only press in the court that day. He was eager to hear as much as we were willing to tell. So, I invited him to join us afterwards at the Dill Pickle, a small deli joint at the corner of Dearborn and Van Buren for a corned beef sandwich. He asked questions and took copious notes. As we said our good-byes, I asked him, “Clarence, you think any of this will appear in the paper?” “No, they haven’t much interest in anti-racism.” He was absolutely correct – not a word. Page quickly learned and moved up the ladder. He is still with the Tribune. And a television talking head, pontificating and spouting nothings on several channels, locally and nationally.
The May Day March was a success. About 700 gathered in Ogden Park, east of Marquette on 67th. We would march twenty blocks east and the same route back. Hundreds of cops lined the route including many roof-top snipers. I was particularly worried about any incident that would incite some triggerhappy cop and create a disaster. But the beginning rally with speakers and music set the tone for a militant, yet disciplined march. Those who came knew the danger and also knew the opportunity. They had months of preparation and were committed to making the march an aggressive statement and successful declaration of anti-racism and revolutionary dedication. Most of that day was a blur. Three things stand out: a significant number – can’t really say how many, but it was noteworthy – of young blacks joined the march at Ogden Park and on the street. This was in spite of warnings, “they’ll get killed”, shouted by some from their apartment windows. The fear factor was palpable and real. Secondly, we had a group of “white” comrades in Marquette Park that day and for several weeks prior. Their job was to maintain surveillance, take the pulse of the crowd, possibly sowing dissention, when necessary. They did a great job. Lastly, I remember the roar of the march and those who shouted and cheered from their apartment windows, the loud roar as we marched under the viaduct heading east back to Ogden Park, safely returning from the first large event of blacks and whites and Latinos in Marquette Park, changing history forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wTCq6toPmM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8jP-qUuC6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nNW_7xFaWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CH0itqf_ho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TwLmsqF-pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Ww8JqwGZs
The Nazis had made it their pledge and mission: Marquette Park was for “whites only”. They could no longer claim that mantle. They had been beaten and the word spread. Slowly, then quickly, more and more blacks began to use the facilities. Then Latino families came for picnics, ball games and the rest of the things working people do to enjoy a park. As is often the case, the park resegregated, few whites use the park today. About twelve years ago, in 2004, I was working for the alternative schools in Chicago as a youth organizer, mostly after-school programs for high schoolers. I had some money available for a summer event and decided on a picnic in Marquette Park for about 100 students. These kids of 2004, mostly black with some Latinos, knew nothing of the history of the park. I provided teachers with a short film and gave them a “lesson plan”. So, most of the kids had some awareness besides the ball field and plentiful grassy space, of why we chose this particular park. A few teachers spoke, relating the civil
rights struggles of the 60’s and 70’s to today’s struggle. It was all very courteous but not too interesting. Then, Helen Hawkins asked me if she could speak. Helen was about 60 years old then. She was the principal at Olive-Harvey Community College’s Alternative High School. Helen, who was a dynamic and well-respected principal, asked the kids to listen to her story. She pointed across 67th Street, also known as Marquette Road. “See that house over there? “, as she directed our view to a bungalow across the street, slightly west, to the left. “My mother used to clean houses, many of those houses, when I was a little girl. She used to bring me to work with her. I can’t tell you how many times I asked Mamma to let me come to this park, to play in the grass, to swing on the swings, to do the things little girls do in a nice park like this. Mamma always said, NO. I am a life-long South-Sider, been near this park all my life. I came to this picnic today because I have never felt free to come here before. This is the first time in my life setting foot in Marquette Park.” One year when I taught a modern history class at an alternative high school, I decided to take up the question of change. “Do things change”, I asked the class and asked each student to give their opinion and give examples to explain their thinking. I was a bit blown away with the over-whelming majority view that nothing really ever changes. Oh, they would concede change in weather, weight, age, culture and the like but were adamant that nothing ever changes in society and particular, racism. These kids were almost all black, with a few Latino kids and one white kid. Even the white student held the static view. I had to go back to the drawing board and re-think how to persuade them that change is everpresent, unconditional (even though not all “good” or progressive) and that they can have something to say about what kind of change occurs, indeed they have no choice, fight for positive change or suffer the consequences or some of both simultaneously. For a few weeks, we concentrated on examples and examination of the process of change. I avoided one of the best – from science –bacteria to fish to mammal to human. Too much religious fervor; it would have derailed the discussion before it could be engaged. I used examples from human history like the classic transition from cave to slave to serf to modern capitalist wage slave. I reviewed the really recent development of society from agrarian to industrial with the innovation of the factory and mega-city. Or the creation of police after thousands of years of human existence when there was no need. Or the 40 hour work week and other labor laws. Or, the changes in civil rights. I used to read from the Covenant that was the official document from the South Shore Country Club which specifically forbade “negroes or Mexicans or Jews” as members of guests. It was quite a struggle. I certainly didn’t convince them all. Life had dealt them a tough hand of poverty, instability and daily disappointment. They were angry without the tools to understand who to be angry with and how to utilize that anger, to make themselves into a weapon of change. I made some headway, but only some. But at least I engaged the struggle to change their thinking, to give them another, opposite view of life besides the prevailing “climb the (illusory) ladder of success” poppycock. Struggle and change are constant in life. That’s the story.