The Leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. | Customers, Etc.
On meetings, vision, and moral conviction
In the summer of 19661, in Chicago, a few dozen civil rights leaders, elected officials—including Mayor Richard Daley—and local business leaders held a summit meeting at the Episcopal diocese offices. The mayor opened the meeting. “We have to do something to resolve the problems of the past few weeks.” The problems, from his perspective, were the ongoing civil rights protest marches happening in his city, which required near constant police presence and which many whites feared showed signs of becoming violent. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was at the meeting, expressed the problem differently: “We have a dual school system, a dual economy, a dual housing marketing.” The segregated conditions, he argued, were the primary problem that they needed to come together to resolve.
While there were many areas of improvement that needed to be discussed, the conversation quickly turned to fair housing practices and real estate. Many Black2 Chicagoans were locked out of buying or renting property because real estate agents wouldn’t work with Black people. Real Estate Board President Ross Beatty argued:
The most important thing for us to understand is what the situation really is as it exists, not what we’d like it to be or want it to be, but what it really is.… We are not here to negotiate because the problem can’t be solved between us and the civil rights people…. We cannot persuade property owners to change their attitudes about whom they want to sell their property to.… We are the ones that are easy to blame,… but the problem is not ours. The realtor is an agent; we must represent our clients. And therefore, because our clients are opposed to the open occupancy law, we must oppose the law if we are to honestly represent our clients.3
The Chicago Real Estate Board’s position was that they served as representatives of local real estate agents, who in turn were merely agents of their clients, the property owners of Chicago. The Board wasn’t in a position to negotiate contrary to the position of their clients. Beatty declared, “We can’t sit across the table and bargain with the civil righters for something that we don’t have the power to give.” Gordon Groebe, another representative of the Chicago Real Estate Board, explained:
If King would come out against the fair housing ordinance, then he would lose his supporters and he would lose his position and he would not be a leader. And you’ve got to realize that you’re asking us to do the same thing. When we ask our realtors to abrogate their position as agents, then you’re asking us to do what you’d be asking Dr. King to do if you told him he had to come out against the fair housing ordinance.
King responded:
I must appeal to the decency of the people on the Chicago Real Estate Board. You’re not negotiating this question with us. You are men confronted with a moral issue. I decide on the basis of conscience. A genuine leader doesn’t reflect consensus, he molds consensus. Look at myself. There are lots of Negroes these days who are for violence, but I know that I am dealing with a moral issue, and I am going to oppose violence if I am the last Negro in this country speaking for nonviolence. Now the real estate people must act on principle in that same manner, or they’re not leaders. The real estate industry has not only reflected discriminatory attitudes, it has played a significant part in creating them. In fact, in California the real estate people spent five million dollars to kill the open occupancy law there. Now don’t tell me that you’re neutral.
Attendees were surprised when Mayor Daley insisted that they continue to work through the issue and not adjourn until they had reached consensus. It seemed that King’s words had an affect on moving the discussion through what would have been a standstill. Yet, even after the Real Estate Board made verbal concessions to no longer oppose the city’s open housing ordinance, tensions lingered as the civil rights leaders pressed for firmer written commitments and Real Estate Board insisted they weren’t able to make such commitments without meeting in person with their members.
Mayor Daley, also frustrated by what had become another standstill in the discussion, wanted to show he meant action: “We’ve got to show the City Council that you’ll do something. We’ll pass what we said we’d pass if we get a moratorium [on protest marches].” Daley was making clear that what he was most interested in was getting the protests to stop and hoped a quid pro quo would do the trick. This only heightened tensions in the room and groups appeared to retreat into their camps and cling to their respective demands.
King spoke carefully and quietly:
This has been a constructive and creative beginning. This represents progress and a sign of change. I’ve gone through this whole problem in my mind a thousand times about demonstrations, and let me say that if you are tired of demonstrations, I am tired of demonstrating. I am tired of the threat of death. I want to live. I don’t want to be a martyr. And there are moments when I doubt if I am going to make it through. I am tired of getting hit, tired of being beaten, tired of going to jail. But the important thing is not how tired I am; the important thing is to get rid of the conditions that lead us to march.
I hope we are here to discuss how to make Chicago a great open city and not how to end marches. We’ve got to have massive changes. Now, gentlemen, you know we don’t have much. We don’t have much money. We don’t really have much education, and we don’t have political power. We have only our bodies and you are asking us to give up the one thing that we have when you say, “Don’t march.”
We want to be visible. We are not trying to overthrow you; we’re trying to get in. We’re trying to make justice a reality. Now the basic thing is justice. We want peace, but peace is the presence of justice. We haven’t seen enough for the massive changes that are going to be needed. To the Chicago Real Estate Board, I want to say particularly that your second point about the demonstrations being the wrong approach bothers me, because the problem is not created by the marches. A doctor doesn’t cause cancer when he finds it. In fact, we thank him for finding it, and we are doing the same thing.
Our humble marches have revealed a cancer. We have not used rocks. We have not used bottles. And no one today, no one who has spoken has condemned those that have used violence. Maybe there should be a moratorium in Gage Park. Maybe we should begin condemning the robber and not the robbed. We haven’t even practiced civil disobedience as a movement. We are being asked to stop one of our most precious rights, the right to assemble, the right to petition. We asked Chicago to bring justice in housing, and we are starting on that road today.
We are trying to keep the issue so alive that it will be acted on. Our marching feet have brought us a long way, and if we hadn’t marched I don’t think we’d be here today. No one here has talked about the beauty of our marches, the love of our marches, the hatred we’re absorbing. Let’s hear more about the people who perpetrate the violence.
We appreciate the meeting. We don’t want to end the dialogue. We don’t see enough to stop the marches, but we are going with love and nonviolence. This is a great city and it can be a greater city.
Kings words completely changed the sentiment in the room, leading to the formation of a subcommittee with a firm timeline to meet the following week. Near 9:00 PM, after meeting all day, the session ended.
Meetings, vision, and moral conviction
The somewhat lengthy story4 above stands out to me for a few reasons. The first is what the story is about. It's about a meeting, literally a group of people gathered inside a room to work through a problem together. How often do we think of meetings with derision, unproductive gatherings where decisions aren’t made and progress is avoided? What I love about the example above is how the group flirted multiple times with having their meeting end in disaster, but were able to work through it by focusing on realistic goals and coming together to write them out.
The second reason the story stands out to me is how they made progress. Although it was necessary for everyone to clearly state their position, this wasn’t sufficient to progress toward a common agreement. In fact, many positions were in conflict with one another. Something needed to be introduced so they would have something to align on together. This was where King’s vision came in. It wasn’t about the marches, he said. It was about the reason the marches existed in the first place. In order for everyone in the room to agree, they needed a vision that was greater than their respective agendas. King gave them that.
The third reason the story stands out to me is why behind King’s vision. King wasn’t just skilled at presenting his vision, though he was a phenomenal orator. He held a deep moral conviction about what freedom and equality actually meant, and that conviction drove him to effectively communicate a vision of justice to the people in that room.
In midst of the ups and downs of that meeting, it would have be easy to let the group adjourn for dinner and head to their homes, which likely would have meant that no agreement would have been made. But Martin Luther King, speaking from a place of deep moral conviction, led the people in the room to align on a higher purpose and reach an agreement, bringing an amicable end to their humble meeting.
This story of Martin Luther King Jr. is derived from Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J. Garrow.
I’m using the current AP style guidance on using the word Black. Historical quotations using the word “Negroes” are left in place.
This and subsequent quotes from Garrow, p. 504, and following.
It’s much lengthier in the book.