Archival footage in AGAINST ALL ODDS: The Fight for a Black Middle Class depicts Martin Luther King Jr.’s reaction to white rioters in Chicago. Beryl Satter explains how black middle-class property owners during the Civil Rights Era were punished for attempting to follow the same path as their white middle-class peers. AGAINST ALL ODDS: The Fight for a Black Middle Class premieres on Monday, March 6th at 10PM on THIRTEEN.
TRANSCRIPT
CROWD (ARCHIVAL): [Commotion and shouting]
POLICE (ARCHIVAL): Get out of here.
RIOTER (ARCHIVAL): I live here-those f#*##*##*# n#*##*##*# don't live here.
REPORTER (ARCHIVAL): How do you feel about this reception today?
DR. KING (ARCHIVAL): Well this is a terrible thing.
I've been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I have never seen,
even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hate filled as I've seen here in Chicago.
[MUSIC PLAYS IN BACKGROUND]
"MAKE IT RAIN" (ARCHIVAL SONG in BACKGROUND): You find your pleasure in someone else's pain
not a cloud in the sky
you will still find a way to make it rain.
BERYL SATTER: One of the heartbreaking things about the whole situation was that basically
black people and white people were pursuing the same middle class values.
They wanted to save money, they wanted to invest in a property that they could take care of and call their own.
But when white people did that, they were rewarded as you would expect with property,
usually property appreciation and a sense of stability.
But when black people followed the same, identical path of attempting to save and invest
they were punished.
It becomes a method of luring them into a trap that will
end up draining them of wealth instead of helping them to build wealth.
