The North Shore Summer Project, 1965

Sunday August 29, 1965, hundreds of north shore residents and civil rights activists marched from Kenilworth to Evanston down Greenbay Road in protest to housing discrimination in North Shore.

The march led a crowd of around 500 to a rally in Bent Park and an all-night vigil at the offices of the Evanston North Shore Board of Realtors. The three mile march saw delegations from most of the North Shore suburbs including Kenilworth, Wilmette, Winnetka, and Evanston. The march and rally was sponsored by the North Shore Summer Project (NSSP) which organized earlier that year to survey Chicago’s northern suburb communities to determine attitudes towards open housing in private transactions and a campaign to promote non-discriminatory property listings. The NSSP gained more than 10,000 residents’ signatures on their petition calling for equal housing opportunities across the northern suburbs.

That same summer, Martin Luther King Jr planned a three day trip to Chicago. Upon hearing about his visit, the NSSP invited him to the North Shore to give a speech on discrimination in housing. On July 25, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr gave a speech to a crowd of around 9,000 people at Winnetka’s Village Green. While the North Shore Summer Project disbanded shortly after that summer their efforts continued, branching into the For Real Estate Equality (FREE) and Buyer Recruitment programs. Eventually, organizations like Open Communities and The Justice Project formed in the wake of NSSP to continue the work for making the North Shore more inclusive and diverse.