Randall B. Woods, Prisoners of Hope: Lydon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the Limits of Liberalism (New York: Basic Books, 2016) ("In August [1966], Martin Luther King's lieutenants in Chicago sent racially mixed teams into two all-white residential sections, Gage Park-Chicago lawn, a mostly Lithuanian, Polish, and German area on the Southwest Side, and Belmont Cragin, a Northwest-Side colony of Poles and Italians. In both 'tests,' real estate agents offered to sell to whites, but not to blacks. Thereupon, King personally led protest marches into the two neighborhoods. In Belmont Cragin, a howling mob that eventually reached fifty-four thousand, waved rebel flags, sported Nazi insignia, and pelted the marchers with rocks and beer bottles. In Gage Park, a white mob taunted and assaulted marchers to the time of a ditty entitled 'Alabama Trooper':
I wish I were an Alabama trooper,
That is what I would truly like to be;
I wish I were an Alabama trooper
'Cause then I could kill the niggers legally.
Bruised and battered, King commented, 'I think on the whole, I've never seen as much hate and hostility before, and I've been on a lot of marches." By october, Congress had made a it clear that it would not pass a civil rights bill with a fair housing section in it. LBJ and his advisers decided that it was better to have no bill at all than one without housing. The White House let it be known that it was giving up--but only for the moment. It would be back again after the midterm elections, however they might turn out. Meanwhile, Congress busied itself with the white backlash. The House Un-American Activities Committee announced plans to investigate 'subversive elements' that were no doubt responsible for the riots. The Judiciary Committee began hearing on a stack of eighty separate antiriot bills." Id. at 277. Please note, those "subversive elements" were mainly civil rights groups, not the white anti-civil rights groups. And Congress began pursuing a law and order agenda, ignoring a fair housing issue. Fifty years later, in 2016, residential housing remains highly segregated Donald Trump, the Republican Party's presidential candidate, claims himself to be "the law and order candidate." The more things change, the more things remain the same.).
