Civil Rights: Crossing the Red Sea

To Negro civil rights workers, Cicero, Ill. (pop. 70,000), is a symbol of Northern discrimination—a Selma without the Southern drawl. The last time a Negro tried to live in Cicero, in 1951, city police harassed him, then did little to quell three days of rioting as mobs burned his possessions and wrecked his apartment. Some 3,000 National Guardsmen finally restored order but, from that day to this, no Negro has openly sought residence in the town that gave Al Capone haven, a suburb of Chicago that is largely populated by blue-collar workers of East European extraction.

Dr. Martin Luther King,...

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