and their four children into a rundown building near 16th Street and Hamlin Avenue.

It was his first attempt to bring the non-violent struggle for civil rights to the North.

- King moved over there.

It was so cool.

I had a chance to shake his hand, talk to him for a minute.

But he just wanted to show people that he could stay in the ghetto too.

You know, like that.

- [Narrator] He preached at the nearby Stone Temple Baptist Church.

- There were thousands of people there, including those who were standing outside just waiting to hear and see him.

- And I could see in my mind the excitement that people had about seeing somebody here with the status of Dr. King that they had heard about from Atlanta, they had heard about from the south, but now he was here in the north.

- [Narrator] And he befriended local merchants.

- My dad would always talk about how Dr. King would come in the store and buy newspapers.

Then Dr. King would travel down 16th Street.

He would go to Ms. Collins Barbecue, he would go to Mr. Woods pool hall.

- [Narrator] He even sat down with the leaders of a powerful local street gang, the Vice Lords, hoping to enlist them in his peaceful campaign to break the stranglehold of segregation.

- I became the youngest chief of the Vice Lord Nation at 13 years old.

The Vice Lords had a program called Tenants Rights Action Group, where they were challenging slumlords that were illegally evicting Blacks out of their apartments.

And so King met with the street gangs.

- The Vice Lords, they knew where he was.

King is here, okay, so they watched him.

Ain't nothing gonna happen to you, you in the neighborhood, we take care of this.

- [Narrator] King chose an apartment on the top floor of the dilapidated building to highlight the terrible housing conditions Blacks endured on the west side.

- The door didn't fully close so people were coming in and urinating in the stairwell.

The bathroom was leaky and rusted.

- [Narrator] But King wanted to dismantle something even harder to see: Chicago's racist real estate practices.

Black people were routinely denied mortgages.

Many mortgages had language barring Blacks from owning homes in white communities.

They were forced to buy at inflated prices, in contracts designed to leave them no equity if they missed a payment.

Many Black families lost everything.

- [Balto] What they are oftentimes faced with is white mobs who are throwing rocks through their windows, who are attacking their property, who are threatening their lives.

The big picture of rioting in the city of Chicago is of white folks rioting against Black people trying to live their lives.

- If that is any doubt in anybody's mind concerning whether we have a movement here in Chicago, you ought to be in this church tonight.