Thousands marched on Saturday, August 1, as part of a multi-faith, multicultural procession commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Chicago Freedom Movement. Led by the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), the event welcomed community members, socialist organizations and religious leaders for musical performances, speeches and a march from 63rd Street and Kedzie Avenue to Marquette Park.
Throughout the day, speakers renewed calls to confront segregation, redlining, attacks on immigrants, mass incarceration and growing economic inequality—many of the same issues Martin Luther King Jr. confronted 60 years ago when he lived on Chicago’s West Side.
In a press release, organizers said that “together, faith leaders, civic leaders, organizers, artists, young people and communities from across the country will march for free and fair elections, freedom for immigrant and marginalized communities, and a future rooted in dignity, justice and shared humanity.”
IMAN Executive Director Rami Nashashibi said the march was not only a historic commemoration, but also a response to the trauma, suffering and challenges facing cities like Chicago today. He sees the traces of redlining throughout the present-day U.S. “Those lines are being drawn across the country and they’re hurting and harming not only the fabric of communities but really the soul of the nation.”
Marquette Park was chosen intentionally. In 1966, King was famously struck by a brick while leading a march against housing segregation at the park. These and other efforts of the Chicago Freedom Movement helped pave the way for passage of the Fair Housing Act, a landmark law under the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that prohibited housing discrimination.
Since then, Marquette Park has remained a significant organizing space. Nashashibi described the surrounding neighborhood as a representation of what Chicago could become: a place where Black, Latino, Palestinian and Lithuanian families live alongside one another.
It is also home to the only memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Chicago Freedom Movement in the state of Illinois.
For many attendees, the march represented a continuation of struggles that began during the Civil Rights Movement but remain unresolved today. Eyob Villa-Moges, a McKinley Park resident, said that while the movement of the 1960s was one of the country’s most significant expansions of rights and opportunity, “the work did not finish.”
“The struggles that are happening today are connected to the struggles that happened then,” Villa-Moges said. He pointed to continued disparities in housing and quality of life between Black communities and other demographics across Chicago, arguing that the city still faces many of the inequities King fought against decades ago.
Villa-Moges also connected the march’s message to immigration enforcement, describing encounters with ICE agents near a Head Start center in his McKinley Park neighborhood. He said the presence of federal agents heightened fears among Latino families in his community, describing immigration raids, police brutality and historic systems of oppression as part of a broad pattern of state power being used to divide and target Black and brown communities.
Mayor Brandon Johnson addressed the crowd at Marquette Park, recognizing the courage of those who participated in the Civil Rights Movement.
“They marched into hatred without becoming hateful. Today we honor their courage by remembering it but also by continuing it,” Johnson said. “Every family deserves safety and dignity. That’s who we are, that’s Chicago. Every community deserves investment rather than abandonment.”
Dr. Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter and CEO of his legacy non-profit, the King Center, also attended the event, expressing support for IMAN’s call for “safety, dignity and the opportunity to flourish.”
King emphasized the importance of voting but argued that elections alone were not enough, urging participants to continue organizing and to embrace her father’s call for a “revolution of values”—a phrase Martin Luther King Jr. coined in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech to describe a fundamental transformation of the American ethos that rejects racism, poverty, militarism and materialism in favor of justice, human dignity and collective well-being.
She closed by urging participants to persevere: “Work together, children. Don’t get weary. We have seen the mountaintop. We shall overcome.”
Despite heavy rain throughout Saturday morning, people continued to gather in support of the movement. Nashashibi pointed to the weather as a symbol of their resilience.
“We’ve been resisting for a long time and we’ve been resisting in the rain. They marched while being beaten with clubs, while being spat in the face,” Nashashibi said. “They kept on marching. It’s still raining. It’s raining when voter protections are being torn apart, when immigrants are attacked. It’s our duty to fight for each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”