As noted in a number of diaries here, the Chicago Tribune has published archival photos of an August 1963 civil rights protest in Chicago at which Bernie Sanders was arrested.
The story at the Tribune includes a series of 16 photos from the protest, the first of which depicts Sanders being hauled away by Chicago police. The photos also include a devastating image of a mother and child being hauled away together (photo 4/16), and a photo of the protest leaders meeting with police (photo 11/16).
The protest involved racial discrimination and segregation in Chicago public schools. The images at the Tribune cover a day of protest on Chicago’s south side over the placement of trailers (known derisively as “Willis Wagons,” after the segregationist school superintendent, Benjamin Willis) to serve as classrooms as a way to keep black students out of white schools on Chicago’s south side.
The day’s protest was part of a much larger, months-long, effort by parents, students, supporters and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) to desegregate Chicago schools and improve conditions for black students across the city. Black students were forced to attend schools that were often substandard (or even “Willis Wagons”), overcrowded and lacking in adequate textbooks and supplies.
The protest culminated in a student boycott in October of 1963.
The caption on photo 11/16 of the protest leaders meeting with the police explains the protest:
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) leader Scott Smith, second from left, and parent committee president Rose Simpson, second from right, seek permission from Capt. William McCann, right, to hold a prayer meeting at a mobile school site at 73rd Street and Lowe Avenue on Aug, 16, 1963. The Tribune reported that McCann told the group they "would need a permit from the board of education." When no permit appeared, the protesting group, including children, trespassed on the mobile school site property and held a kneel-in anyway. McCann said, "We're not going to stop children, and we're not going to play into their hands." The Tribune reported, "The demonstrators object to the use of mobile classrooms as 'degrading' to children, object to the school location because it is bordered by railroad tracks, and want the pupils sent to existing schools which are primarily white." Meanwhile, construction of the 13 mobile units continued. Smith is the chairman of CORE, Englewood district, and Simpson is the president of the 71st and Stewart parent committee.
The award-winning Chicago documentary film company, Kartemquin Films, has been working on a documentary about this protest for the last several years. The film, tentatively titled “`63 Boycott,” includes film footage, photographs, interviews, archival news stories and rich historical detail of the protest. Here is trailer for the work-in-progress film:
The Kartemquin blog includes a section devoted to the film project. There, you will find a treasure trove of information on this protest and those involved during the summer and fall of 1963. The makers of the film have been working on identifying the participants in the protest, and have identified Sanders in their archival film footage. The Tribune photos add veracity to the Kartemquin footage of Sanders at these protests. Here is the Kartemquin footage of Sanders’ arrest:
What becomes apparent in delving deeper into this protest is just how much has not changed in the intervening years, especially in Chicago — an incredibly sad commentary on “living while black” in America.
In some ways, I feel like pointing all of this back to Sanders is besides the point, as I’m sure a few black folks here would agree. Still, Sanders was walking the walk as a young man, engaged in his community and trying to make a difference in the lives of those being beaten down by the system.
If there is one quality that marks Sanders, it is his incredible consistency as an advocate for the downtrodden.
David Brock, the Clinton’s dedicated, in-house hitman, said of Sanders a couple of days ago:
“In a lot of ways he’s a typical politician. And I think he’s gotten a pass being able to present himself as something other than that.
“And so I think he needs to be brought back down to Earth and looked at more objectively.”
I think Brock is wrong. Sanders has been walking the walk his entire life. He’s the farthest thing from a “typical politician.”