EPISODE 8: CHICAGO ## CHAPTER 1: THE NORTH The movement had always been Southern. Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma—the battlegrounds were below the Mason-Dixon Line, where segregation was written into law and enforced with unashamed brutality. The victories had been clear: integrate the buses, pass the Civil Rights Act, secure the Voting Rights Act. But Martin knew the problem was not just Southern. In Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York—everywhere Black Americans lived in the North—racism wore different clothes but was no less real. There were no "Whites Only" signs, but there was residential segregation enforced by real estate agents, banks, and mobs. There were no literacy tests, but there was economic discrimination that trapped Black families in poverty. There were no Bull Connors, but there were police forces that treated Black neighborhoods as occupied territory. "The next phase of the movement must address these issues," Martin told the SCLC. "We have won the right to sit at a lunch counter. We have not won the right to afford lunch." In January 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. moved to Chicago. --- ## CHAPTER 2: THE SLUM Martin rented an apartment in Lawndale, one of Chicago's poorest Black neighborhoods. The building was a slum. Rats in the walls. Heat that barely worked. Plumbing that failed regularly. Garbage piling up in hallways. The...