The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. turned his focus to Chicago 60 years ago this month.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner came to the city at the request of Al Raby — then a young public schoolteacher and co-founder of the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations — to assist with the city’s fledgling civil rights efforts.

Though King told reporters he only expected to spend a few days a week here, his presence was significant and even viewed as provocation by some.

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“He was not very well received by the white establishment and, in particular, by Mayor (Richard J.) Daley who saw him as an outsider, a troublemaker and a threat to his regime,” Jonathan Eig, Chicago-based author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “King: A Life,” told the Tribune in 2023.

Throughout this year we’ll take a look back at King’s efforts in Chicago and his movements throughout the city. Here’s a look back at January 1966 — King’s first month here — as reported by the Tribune.

Jan. 7, 1966

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., third from left, speaks at a news conference at the Sahara Inn at O’Hare International Airport on Jan. 7, 1966. Sitting at the table with King are the Rev. James Bevel of Chicago, from left, Al Raby of Chicago, the Rev. Andrew Young, of Atlanta, and the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, of Washington, D.C. (Jack Mulcahy/Chicago Tribune)

“I want to announce the first significant northern freedom movement ever attempted by major civil right forces,” King told reporters at the Sahara Inn in Schiller Park near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

King told reporters he was working on a three-phase plan to mobilize the city’s roughly 1 million Blacks.

King planned to target public and private institutions “which have created infamous slum conditions directly responsible for the involuntary enslavement of millions of Black men, women and children.”

Jan. 22, 1966

A crowd gathers outside the Chicago apartment rented by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta, at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave. in Chicago on Jan. 26, 1966. (Tom Kinahan/Chicago Tribune)

After spending time at hotels during his Chicago stays, it was revealed to the Tribune that King would live in a four-room, third-floor walk-up apartment at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave. in the North Lawndale neighborhood. Rent was $90 per month (about $917 in today’s dollars).

Jan. 26, 1966

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta, wave to a crowd after moving into an apartment on the city’s West Side at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave. on Jan. 26, 1966, at the start of his Chicago campaign against segregated housing. With him is Andrew Young, far left, who later became mayor of Atlanta. (William Vendetta/Chicago Tribune)

King and wife, Coretta, moved into their Chicago apartment.

The records of Alvin Shavin, the building’s landlord, were subpoenaed by the Illinois Legislative Commission on Low Income Housing. Shavin was accused of keeping his properties in a state of disrepair.

Jan. 27, 1966

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., left, and O.W. Wilson, superintendent of police, have a coffee break during their conference at police headquarters, 1121 S. State St., on Jan. 27, 1966, in Chicago. (Joe Mastruzzo/Chicago Tribune)

In a meeting at Chicago police headquarters at 11th and State streets with Superintendent O.W. Wilson, King laid out his three-phase plan — 1) educating people about slum conditions; 2) organizing slum dwellers into a union to force landlords to comply with demands at the risk of rent strikes; and 3) mobilizing tenants of rundown homes into an army of nonviolent demonstrations — and said he was willing to risk a jail sentence, but would aim to “persuade rather than to create bitterness.”

King said he chose Chicago for this effort because it was a “typical urban community in the sense that it has the same racial problems of many large cities.”

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