40 years after King's death: Progress, but not perfect

Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis.

Forty years ago yesterday, the last full day of his life, King delivered a soaring speech in which he seemed to predict -- and accept -- his own imminent death.

He concluded, "Like anybody, I would like to live a long life….But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

So where are we, as a people? How far, or near, is the promised land?

More Coverage Video Photographer reflects on following King march

On the 40th anniversary of his martyrdom, local activists reflect on how the suburbs reflect -- and refract -- King's mountaintop vision.

Blacks in Wheaton

Some dates are a little fuzzy, some memories a little muddled.

But the Audleys, now in their late 80s, can recall precisely where blacks were allowed to live in Wheaton in the early '60s.

Hill Avenue east to Wood Street, south to Avery Avenue, then west over to Crescent Street, by the Second Baptist Church and the train tracks. Everyone confined to a couple of square blocks, by city ordinance.

"It was so restrictive," Thelma Audley remembers. "We didn't investigate before we bought property. Riding through it just all seemed calm and peaceful. It was only after we got here that we learned we were all boxed in."

Priest spit on

Bernie Kleina was a Catholic priest at Immaculate Conception in Elmhurst when he first saw TV images from Selma, Ala., of police using billy-clubs and tear gas against civil rights marchers.

He flew immediately to Atlanta, then went on to Selma, where he was arrested for participating in a march and landed on the front page of the local paper.

"Going to Selma was an eye-opener," Kleina says. "I was pretty na#239;ve as to what life was like."

His eyes were opened again when King came to Chicago in 1965 and 1966 to advocate for open housing.

"I realized discrimination was not something that just happened in the South."

Along with King and other civil rights marchers, Kleina was spit on, jeered at, and pelted with rocks, bottles and cherry bombs.

"As we started marching, angry whites started spitting on me and the other marchers," writes Kleina, now executive director of HOPE Fair Housing Center in Wheaton. "I told someone in the mob, 'I wouldn't do that if I were you.' #8230; Then an older African-American man in front of me turned around and said, 'Remember why you're here, brother' and from that point on, I remained silent and walked in solemn procession."

When the marchers returned to their cars, they found the mob had set some on fire and pushed others into a lagoon.

All the while, Kleina snapped photos. One shows a dazed-looking King, just after he was hit by a rock.

Open housing push

In 1966, Claude Audley, then president of the DuPage County NAACP, appealed to the Wheaton City Council to end racial segregation in the community.

He told them they had a "magnificent opportunity" to "assist in not only making real estate available on a non-discriminatory basis" but also to "assist in influencing the course of American history."

When the city council failed to pass an ordinance with any teeth, the Audleys organized, out of their living room, the first civil rights march in DuPage County.

Many of their neighbors urged them not to rock the boat. "The black folks thought we were bringing a whole lot of problems for the people who lived here. Many worked for the people in power," Thelma Audley says.

A group of church leaders appeared at their door, urging them to reconsider. The mayor called in the national guard.

"There was a rumor we were going to burn down the city of Wheaton," Thelma Audley says.

In the end, the demonstration was peaceful, and the riot police weren't needed.

"We fought with Martin Luther King's philosophy," Thelma says. "We didn't want any kind of revolution. We did what we thought we had to do. Not with any animosity. We were just trying to make a difference."

Within a year of the march, Claude notes, Wheaton and 30 other communities in the Northwest suburbs passed open housing laws.

In later years, when large corporations with diverse work forces relocated to the Northwest suburbs, their employees were able to find housing, in part because of the Audleys' efforts.

"They were able to live in any housing they were able to buy," Thelma says. "We're not where we should be, but we've made progress."

Life in Schaumburg

Valerie Profit moved to Schaumburg 30 years ago and raised her sons in the suburbs. She acknowledges the gains of the civil rights movement but adds, "I just really question the other things that are happening. #8230; The proportion of African-Americans that are unemployed and #8230; incarcerated, that's a concern."

Profit says she's experienced subtle forms of racism in the suburbs. She felt compelled to start an annual production celebrating African-American history, after noticing that black students never landed the prime roles in school plays. And she says she recently felt discriminated against on the job, when her building was renovated and she was assigned the smallest, least desirable office.

"I know in my heart that they would have never ever put another person of another color in a closet," she says.

Looking back at her three decades in the suburbs, she says: "Although I have these concerns, the best decision I ever made was moving to Schaumburg. It was a great place to raise my sons.

"I have noticed a really large influx in Hispanic and Indian populations in Schaumburg, and I think it's wonderful. I think what would really be a great idea, if all the races had some type of venue to sit down and talk, because we see things so differently."

Naperville diversity

Antonia Harlan's kids were 2 and 4 when she and her husband decided to move to Naperville 21 years ago. Her husband had grown up in the segregated South, where he'd gone in the back door of the movie theater. She'd grown up in a melting-pot neighborhood in Detroit, where people of various colors and creeds lived side-by-side.

Harlan wanted her son and daughter to know their heritage, but also to feel comfortable around people of diverse cultures and backgrounds.

In the beginning, it sometimes seemed, her family provided the community's only source of diversity.

"When we first moved, we had some major issues. There were not many minorities," Harlan says. Black people were being stopped by police simply because they were black, she said, and the school curriculum didn't make much mention of people who weren't white.

Then, at the behest of residents, a new police chief clamped down on officers who resorted to racial profiling. More families from other ethnic groups began trickling in. And Harlan began lecturing about diversity at the Naperville schools. She created a traveling exhibit of 200 items from 25 cultures: African drums, Mexican dolls, Dutch clothing. Recently, she published a book called "Hello, My Name is Josie Mae Bricker," a children's book about a young slave growing up on a cotton plantation.

"I was a minority; my children were minorities. I wanted them to feel comfortable, and I wanted them and other kids to be open to other cultures.

"I love Naperville. #8230; We have the Chinese New Year's festival and the international celebration and the Indian Diwali celebration. The schools are great. And I'm so proud of my kids. Their friends are like the United Nations, and that's what we wanted for them."

Better in Rochester

Henry Allen, a professor of sociology at Wheaton College, moved to the area in 1998 from Rochester, N.Y. He says he was disappointed to find the vibrant network of black professionals he had enjoyed in Rochester simply didn't exist here.

"I was shocked there was no directory of African-American professionals," he says. "I thought the state of race relations was a lot healthier in Rochester."

In Rochester, leaders in business, politics, education and religion all came together to tackle pressing social problems, Allen says. He set about creating a similar partnership in the suburbs, founding a local African-American Leadership Roundtable.

"The biggest problem in the suburbs is a lack of role models," Allen says. "I'm not talking about the Black History speaker. I'm talking about the everyday person. Children need to see that adults can model effective, equal status.

"A classic example: It would be nice every now and again to see an African-American doctor.

"My kids have friends here, but they like Rochester better, because the climate there was much more open to diversity. Here they find people can be very unsophisticated. If they have lived somewhere else, it's usually in a homogeneous enclave, so sometimes (my kids) are extremely bored."

Still working

Kleina, no longer a priest, continues to fight for fair housing. This month, he notes, also marks the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental or financing of homes.

It also is the 40th anniversary of Hope Fair Housing. The agency, Kleina says, still investigates more than 1,500 complaints of housing discrimination in the area each year.

"What is discouraging is we're still doing many of the same things Dr. King talked about in '65 and '66, and that's open and fair housing."

Blacks pushed out

The Audleys, meanwhile, are gearing up for another civil rights battle, this time with a developer who wants to replace the homes in their once all-black neighborhood with homes that are too pricey for most of the block's old guard.

"When we moved here, no white person wanted to live here," Thelma Audley says. "Now the areas that were restricted to us, developers are buying them up and building houses older people can't afford to have. We're getting pushed out again -- economically. All the neighbors are going to the zoning board. It's like we're starting all over again."