[Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968

Tue Apr 11 15:30:19 PDT 2017

I was on switchboard when we came back into the building - smoke around us
and everything.  Tony had followed the gang folk around putting out the
fires they had started.

Bill Schlesinger

From: Dialogue [mailto:dialogue-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of
Marianna Bailey via Dialogue
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2017 11:35 AM
To: Diann A McCabe; George Holcombe via Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968

I remember the night!! We were escorted to a car by the Vice Lords in order
to get out of 5th City. We headed "west" and just kept driving

Much later that night someone suggest we call the Institute. Although we
didn't think anyone would answer, we called! To our surprise someone
answered (can't remember who).  They said they were hiding under the desk
but the National Guard was there. The next morning, Bill and I took a taxi
to the Institute the others never returned to the Institute.

Marianna

On Apr 10, 2017, at 1:01 PM, McCabe, Diann A via Dialogue
<dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

Thank you, Jo. I loved reading this and living through your telling of it.
Diann McCabe, San Marcos, TX

From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of Jo
Nelson via Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Reply-To: Jo Nelson <jnelson at ica-associates.ca>, Colleague Dialogue
<dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Date: Sunday, April 9, 2017 at 8:54 PM
To: Dialogue List <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Subject: [Dialogue] MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968

I posted this in my blog on the weekend, and it forwarded to my Facebook
page.  Someone requested that I also send it to the O:E list, but I am no
longer on it, so I chose to put it here.    

MLK Weekend, April 6, 1968

49 years ago, I participated in a history- and life-changing event on the
West Side of Chicago.

I was 19 years old, in my second year at the University of Iowa, and
traveled with my campus Wesleyan Foundation group to take a course called
"Cultural Studies I" at the Ecumenical Institute on the West Side of
Chicago.  

 The day before the course was scheduled to begin, Martin Luther King was
assassinated.  From our small-town Iowa perspective, though, we saw no
reason not to go to Chicago for the course.

 When we arrived in Chicago after a 5-hour drive on Friday, it was clear
that the assassination had catalyzed unrest, but it wasn't clear what was
going to happen.  The others in the car decided to turn around and go home,
just in case.  My brother and his family (David and Linda Zahrt, Jay and
Heidi) were working at the Institute, and they weren't fleeing, so I decided
to stay. 

 The first session on Friday evening began as scheduled in a lower floor
room with windows at ground level.   I remember sitting next to what seemed
to me to be an older man, Sheldon Hill, and thinking "there is no generation
gap", because we seemed to be on the same page of understanding.  As the
session progressed, we heard shouting out on the street and saw legs running
by with gun barrels. 

 After the session ended, I went up to my dorm room and looked out.  I could
see fires burning within a block or so on 3 sides of the building, and on
the fourth side was the Eisenhower Expressway filled with cars getting out
of the city. 

 I went to my brother's apartment to talk with him and hang out with family.
I didn't want to be alone, as it was pretty scary and I was stranded. After
a little while there was a knock on the door, and we were told everyone was
evacuating the building, as someone had broken in and tried to start a fire
in the building.

 There was a long-unused tunnel between the Institute campus and a hospital
across the street.  Somehow the tunnel was opened and we all went across to
the hospital basement.  By this time almost every participant had escaped
via the expressway, so there were only a couple of participants and
Institute staff.  My brother and sister-in-law asked me to watch their two
small children, who were wild with the energy around us.  At various points
the National Guard would come in to get coffee, and smoke would roll in with
them.  Someone had a radio, and we heard that inner cities were burning all
over America.  It felt like Armegeddon. 

 At daybreak on Saturday, when the rioters were exhausted and it was a bit
quieter, we walked across the street back to the Institute.  The entire
staff (maybe 40 people) gathered in Room A to decide what to do.  The
children were in a nearby room with a couple of mothers.  There were only 3
of us who were not staff, one of whom was the president of the Institute's
board.  I watched as the staff talked through their profound commitment to
help the community develop, and the dangers that staying there would have.
In the end, they decided by consensus to stay and risk their lives to
support the community, since they had made a commitment.  They also decided
to send out the children and the women who were pregnant to friends and
supporters in the suburbs for safety, since the children had not made a
conscious decision to risk their lives to stay.  

 As a non-staff family member who did not live there, I was also sent out
with the children to the home of a suburban colleague who was mobilizing her
entire network to find places for all the "refugee" kids to stay.  I was
then sent to a home in Lake Forest, Illinois, which at the time was the
richest town per capita in the world, with two toddlers. David Prather was 1
and Dietrich Laudermilk was 2 years old.  I had no idea of how to take care
of toddlers, and spent the night putting them back on the bed after they had
rolled off. 

 On Sunday morning I was able to get through to my brother and tell him
where his kids were, and where I was.  The one other stranded participant
was a student from Nebraska, and got in touch with me to ride back with her.
By Sunday afternoon we were on the road home.

 The next day I got up for my first class, but couldn't make it through.  I
came back to the dorm, and slept for 24 hours straight.  

 During that event in Chicago, I witnessed a group of people deciding by
consensus to risk their lives to honour their commitment to work with the
community.  That is a rare experience.  I realized that this group of people
were no ordinary group.  Their care was profound.  It's a big part of the
reason I started to work with the Institute (which morphed into the
Institute of Cultural Affairs) as soon as I graduated from university, and
why I am still with it all these years later.

 Some of the impact of that event was the catalyst that created ICA's mode
of radical participation in development:  it became very obvious that
communities didn't thrive from nice white educated do-gooders trying to
help, but that they change deeply from local people and local leadership
working collaboratively.  Outsiders have a role in the partnership, but the
lead comes from the community.  The facilitative approach as an equal
partner is the only way to make a difference. 

--
Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF  <jnelson at ica-associates.ca
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