68 actas del ix congreso católicos y vida pública dogs and firehoses, and gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in which he envisioned a day when his children would be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, and called out in particular the states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. So what happened between 1964 and 1966? King shifted his gaze to northern cities. He moved to Chicago and launched his first civil rights campaign outside the deep south. I grew up hearing quite a bit about the civil rights struggle in Selma, Birmingham, Montgomery, and other southern cities. I was an adult before I learned about the marches King led in Chicago, where he encountered what he described as the most hostile crowds of his life. Rather than target a southern society that advertised its segregation policies for all to see, he now protested deeply embedded real estate practices, such as steering and redlining, that kept blacks locked in northern ghettos. In 1965, he predicted, “If we can break the system in Chicago, it can be broken any place in the country.” He didn’t break the system, and we still haven’t broken the system. It’s easier to like King when he helps me feel morally righteous and confident in my place on the right side of history. I would never refuse service to someone based on the color of their skin. I would never turn the dogs loose on peaceful protesters. We’re less comfortable with King —I’m less comfortable with King— when he starts asking what I’m doing about the inequality in my own community. We are called to bear witness to truth. We are not called to win a popularity contest. We are called to faithfulness, not to success. My city rejoiced when the jury convicted Derek Chauvin of George Floyd’s death because the evidence was overwhelming that officer Chauvin had failed to treat him as a fellow human being of value and dignity, worthy of respect and care. But if the jury had acquitted officer Chauvin, or if the prosecutor had refused even to bring charges against him, it would have been no less important to speak the truth about what happened that evening eleven months ago on the corner of 38th and Chicago in Minneapolis. We recently observed the 100th anniversary of the lynching of three black men in Duluth, Minnesota
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