When Did Hillary See MLK?

According to The King Center at http://www.thekingcenter.org/mlk/chronology.html March 25, 1967 is his first "PUBLIC" speech in Chicago and it was one that was attacking the government's Vietnam policy at the Chicago Coliseum. It was not his Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution speech.
Further reading at The King Center indicates that he decided to merge the SCLC with Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), led by Al Raby, in the Chicago Project in July 1966.

He delivered "The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life" sermon at New Covenant Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois, on 9 April 1967, but the King Center doesn't mention any speeches in Chicago prior to this time.

The following is certainly no proof that Dr. King had never visited Chicago prior to 1966, but it's a damn good indication that he never did any public speaking in Chicago prior to 1966. That is, how could be have spoken publically in 1963, and not discovered the hatred for him in Chicago until 1966?

Before anyone has a heart attack over the Wiki reference, the same can be found at The King Center.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.#Chicago

In 1966, after several successes in the South, King and other people in the civil rights organizations tried to spread the movement to the North, with Chicago as its first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both middle class folk, moved into Chicago's slums as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.

The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, Jr., and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of The Chicago Freedom Movement (CFM). During that spring several dual white couple/black couple tests on real estate offices uncovered the practice, now banned by the Real Estate Industry, of "steering"; these tests revealed the racially selective processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income, background, number of children, and other attributes, with the only difference being their race.

The needs of the movement for radical change grew, and several larger marches were planned and executed, including those in the following neighborhoods: Bogan, Belmont-Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (a suburb southwest of Chicago), Gage Park and Marquette Park, among others.

In Chicago, Abernathy later wrote that they received a worse reception than they had in the South. Their marches were met by thrown bottles and screaming throngs, and they were truly afraid of starting a riot. King's beliefs mitigated against his staging a violent event; if King had intimations that a peaceful march would be put down with violence he would call it off for the safety of others. Nonetheless, he led these marches in the face of death threats to his person. And in Chicago the violence was so formidable it shook the two friends.

Another problem was the duplicity of the city leaders. Abernathy and King secured agreements on action to be taken, but this action was subverted after-the-fact by politicians within Mayor Richard J. Daley's corrupt machine. Abernathy disliked the slums and secretly moved out after a short period. King stayed and wrote of the emotional impact Coretta and his children suffered from the horrid conditions.

When King and his allies returned to the south, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization. Jackson displayed oratorical skill and organized the first successful boycotts against chain stores. One such campaign targeted A&P Stores which refused to hire blacks as clerks; the campaign was so effective that it laid the groundwork for the equal opportunity programs begun in the 1970s.

Fraying of alliances http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_%281955-1968%29

King reached the height of popular acclaim during his life in 1964, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His career after that point was filled with frustrating challenges, as the liberal coalition that had made the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began to fray.

King was becoming more estranged from the Johnson Administration, breaking with it in 1965 by calling for peace negotiations and a halt to the bombing of Vietnam. He moved further left in the following years, moving towards socialism and speaking of the need for economic justice and thoroughgoing changes in American society beyond the granting of the civil rights that the movement had sought to that date.

King's attempts to broaden the scope of the Civil Rights Movement were halting and largely unsuccessful, however. King made several efforts in 1965 to take the Movement north to address issues of employment and housing discrimination. His campaign in Chicago failed, as Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley marginalized King's campaign by promising to "study" the city's problems. In 1966, white demonstrators holding "white power" signs in notoriously racist Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, threw stones at King and other marchers demonstrating against housing segregation, injuring King.

lol....you bad

http://www.cso.org/main.taf?p=7,3,1,5 The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has an article on the history of Orchestra Hall and Martin Luther King is clearly referenced as a speaker, but no date is given.

Great work, Gecko, but I found this personal recollection of a 1965 King speech in Orchestra Hall:

(http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/TELECOM_Digest_Online2005-1/1784.html

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had the distinct honor of meeting Dr. King and having an intimate dinner (eight of us in total present) with him and his wife in 1965. Martin L. King and his wife Coretta Scott King were in Chicago that winter weekend in January, 1965 for various reasons, one of which was to speak at the Chicago Sunday Evening Club at Orchestra Hall. My roomate, Roy Anderson was the organist for Sunday Evening Club, and he told me King would be there that night, so I decided to go along. As always, Dr. King spoke very eloquently and forcefully. It was the custom there that after the weekly meetings, one or more of the Trustees of the Club would take the speaker (of that week) out for dinner, as often as not at a place called Miller's Pub, on Adams Street just around the corner from Orchestra Hall. Mr. Hanson, president of Sunday Evening Club invited my roomate Roy to join them and Roy in turn invited me to go along. So, MLK, and his wife; Mr. Hanson and his wife; another of the trustees and his wife; Roy and I all went to Miller's Pub for drinks and dinner that evening. Even in those long ago times, I was quite accustomed to writing my Editor's Notes, often times full of piss and vinigar to make my points. But on this night, I thought it was more prudent to just sit and listen as Dr. King spoke again to those of us at the dinner table, in a conversation that went on for about three hours and far too many vodka gimlets for me at least. Finally, as it neared midnight, Dr. King announced he and his wife had to get back to the hotel where they were staying, and this late evening dinner party broke up. Mr. Hanson and the others all left to get their cars to drive home (he lived in Hinsdale as I recall); Roy and I went out on Adams Street to fetch a cab for Dr. and Mrs. King; the cab took them to their hotel (close by, the Conrad Hilton), then Roy and I retained the cab and went on to our apartment in Hyde Park. At this time, the Chicago Police Department had its infamous 'Red Squad' spy unit going full time, causing much hatred and discontent for everyone. Even though King knew they could have just walked the three blocks or so to the Hilton hotel, they did not want to get stopped or hassled by police downtown, so we got a cab instead. The same Chicago Police were causing some very sophisticated problems for any group which deigned to have speakers or 'politicians' or community leaders of whom they (police) or Mayor Daley disapproved. About a month later, I happened to be downtown one day and ran into a fellow I knew, Francis Gregory who was the office manager and administrator for the Sunday Evening Club. I asked him quite innocently if 'Doctor King will be back again next year to speak.' Fran said to me, "the Trustees did not invite him to return, they said he was 'too controversial', even though he has been here three or four times in as many years." That's all he would say. Illinois Bell Telephone Company had always paid Dr. King's honorarium when he came to Chicago to speak, and rumor was that IBT in a very hush-hush way also was told to quit their largesse to him, that Mayor Daley did not care for it. Then about three years later, King was gunned down and silenced permanently at the motel in Memphis, causing Chicago and many other cities to go up in flames in riots that lasted several days. PAT]

The way this reads, it seems authentic to me, and it is the earliest I can find of any internet reference to an MLK speech in Chicago.

I'll keep digging and I hope you will too. In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out the best way to get this story out on the 'net. Novak is the obvious place, but I don't know how to contact his people.

BTW, I think I finally figured out the reason why HRC definitively stated in her Selma speech that she saw MLK in 1963. (If you haven't already guessed, I've already convinced myself that the story is completely BOGUS, along with the claim that HRC was introduced to King that night.)

And my theory also can go along way in explaining why there are so many differenct published versions of HRC's alleged trip to see King.

Well, Stanford has about the best info on the net for MLK and is missing the page needed to corroborate HRC Jan '63 claim. It's really a chronological reproduction of Dr. King's "diary" and letters to his wife. 1965 does seem to be the right time frame.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/autobiography/chp_16.htm Covers January 30, 1961 until August 10, 1961

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/autobiography/chp_17.htm Covers August 11, 1961 until March 27, 1963 (And is missing)

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/autobiography/chp_18.htm Covers March 28, 1963 until April 15, 1963

As a footnote, here is an excerpt of King's notes:

"The problems of poverty, urban life, unemployment, education, housing, medical care, and flexible foreign policy were dependent on positive and forthright action from the federal government. But so long as men like Senators Eastland (D-MS), Russell (D-GA), Byrd (D-WV-KKK), and Ellender (D-LA) held the positions of power in our Congress, the entire progress of our nation was in as grave a danger as the election of Senator Goldwater (R-AZ) might have produced."

Dr. King was worried that Goldwater would get us into Vietnam. :-)

Here's a picture of MLK, now we all can say we've seen him.

Are you sure that’s not Flip Wilson with a moustache?

My theory of different published versions is simply L-A-Z-Y journalism. HRC has made the claim and the journalists simply Googled (or more likely Lexis/Nexis) the title of the speech and grabbed the first date that came up. The best I can tell, he wrote the speech in 1958 and gave it periodically until March 31, 1968.

In this Boston Globe article, they actually interview this Minister Don Jones and he claims to have taken her to Orchestra Hall with others to watch King. The article says he appeared in Park Ridge when she was 13 (1960) and was pushed out of the church within a couple of years (1962). That does jibe with the "spring of 1962" that Hillary claims in this article. Clinton has said she knew almost nothing about Martin Luther King Jr. until Jones brought a group from the church to hear King speak at Chicago's Orchestra Hall in spring 1962.

It doesn't agree with her 1963 remark, as Don Jones would be gone by now, and it doesn't correlate with his known speech in January 1965. Of course maybe the two kept in contact from the time he was canned in 1962 until 1965 when she was a high school senior and nearly 18. The article does say: "it is clear from the letters she wrote from Wellesley to Jones that she wrestled with them [struggle between the views of Park Ridge and slum worldviews] for a long time."

This "hip" minister taught her the writings of T.S. Eliot, E.E. Cummings, Dostoyevsky and Bob Dylan. I'm okay with the timeline of '60-'62 with respect to the first three people. But Bob Dylan? Dylan grew up in Minnesota and graduated from high school in '59. He moved to Denver in 1960 and New York's Greenwich Village in 1961 and didn't really become mainstream and known until 1963 when Peter, Paul & Mary recorded his "blowing in the wind" and started dating Joan Baez who also recorded his songs. So this guy was in a church in Park Ridge from 1960-1962 that we know of, and somehow knows of Bob Dylan.

It's not a big thing, but quirks in timelines give me gas. The only people that knew of Dylan before me would have been people in coffee shops in Denver and New York. The article says clearly that this Don Jones while "in seminary, imbibed Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian philosophers who preached social improvement. He had hung out in New York City, tuning in to beat poets."

The problem is by 1960 Jones was in Park Ridge as a Methodist minister and Bob Dylan had never been to New York. I'm thinking this guy had more to do with Hillary at Wellesley than Park Ridge. Maybe Bill learned his trick from Hill... :-)

My theory is that the story of HRC going to hear MLK is entirely bogus. If you do more research, you will see that many accounts of Jones taking Hillary and her group into Chicago to hear King include a scenario where Hillary is actually "introduced" to King by the Reverend Jones!

While Bill was busy mapping out his future of "political viability," as he put it in his nowfamous letter to the Arkansas ROTC, Hillary had already come to a strong political consciousness of her own. Hillary's mother, Dorothy Rodham, attributes her liberal- Democrat identity, athwart the rock-ribbed Goldwater Republicanism of Hillary's businessman-father Hugh, to her experiences at the local Methodist church, working with the underprivileged in Chicago's inner city and caring for the children of Mexican migrantworkers in rural Illinois. "I know that was very meaningful to her. It kind of opened her eyes," said the Rev. Don Jones, an ethics professor at New Jersey's Drew University who was the youth minister of Hillary's church. "I remember that when she was 16, I took the whole youth group to Chicago to hear this famous preacher one Sunday night in Orchestra Hall. Afterward, we all went up and I introduced her to Martin Luther King Jr."

The above is from a March 10, 1992 Washington Post article by Lloyd Grove entitled "Hillary Clinton, Trying to Have it All;"

There are many other references in books about Hillary actually meeting Dr. King (see, for instance Gail Sheehy, Hillary's Choice, at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_19991210/ai_n13834950)

So you think this twenty-something minister waltzes up to King after the speech and introduces Hillary to MLK?

This account has a bunch of Chicago inner-city kids in 1961 making reference to the Rolling Stones song "Satisfaction" even though the song wasn't released until June 5, 1965:

On Sunday evenings, starting in September 1961, [Reverend Jones] would offer Hillary's church youth his version of the "University of Life" program. He had been outside the sterile world of suburbia and could offer a window onto the more exotic worlds of abstract art, Beat poetry, existentialism, and the rumblings of radical political thought.

Even as a precocious 13-year-old, Hillary was not ready to separate her worldview from her father's, but she listened intently to Jones. And when he invited his youth group to go into Chicago to meet with their counterparts belonging to inner-city gangs, she was excited.

At a community center on Chicago's South Side, Jones gathered the diverse group of young teenagers around a print of Picasso's "Guernica." He had been inspired by Paul Tillich's claim that Picasso's terrifying mural of war and destruction was the most Protestant piece of art in the 20th century.

Employing a Socratic style, the minister opened a dialogue between the ghetto kids and his own coddled charges.

"What strikes you about this?" he began. "Any imagery?"

Then he asked, "If you had to title this painting with a current piece of music, what would it be' " The inner-city kids were the ones who responded. One paraphrased the Stones: "It ain't got no satisfaction."

The above is from Gail Sheehy, "Hillary's Choice" see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_19991209/ai_n13835693

I have you both beat.
I actually lived in Montgomery, AL
when MLK was a preacher there.

.
“I must be getting old.”

‘
No you aren’t ‘cause if you are,
that means we are, too. ;o)

btt

This thread was from December.

Last Sunday Hillary said on Russert that it happened in 1962