Chicago Celebrates Life And Legacy Of Martin Luther King
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A day full of tributes to slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in full swing in Chicago on Monday.
The Hyatt Regency Chicago hosted the 25th Annual PUSH Excel Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Breakfast, to raise money for students so they can further their education through college, and live the dreams of Dr. King.
Last year, more than 70 students received scholarships from PUSH Excel, most of them worth $1,000 a year, and renewable for up to four years of college.
Hundreds gathered Monday morning in the Grand Ballroom at the Hyatt, including PUSH Excel founder Rev. Jesse Jackson, Gov. Bruce Rauner, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Mayoral candidates Ald. Bob FIoretti and Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia also attended the breakfast.
Jackson said he believes King would be disappointed to see today's African-American community facing challenges such as school closings, insufficient public housing, food deserts, guns, and drugs.
"There must be some plan to revive what we once lived as a part of his dream," Jackson said.
Garcia said he remembers hearing King's sermons on the radio when he was 12 years old.
"That's what moved me and guided me in life," he said.
Emanuel noted this year is the 50th anniversary of the start of King's "Chicago Freedom Movement," an ambitious campaign to improve housing, employment, and education for the city's black residents.
WBBM's John Cody reports at the Brookfield Zoo, kids got to hear speakers who heard Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech in person.
Activist Lauren Cress Love said she went to Washington really to protest the way things were in the U.S. in 1963, along with 3,000 others she organized from Chicago.
"So I didn't go just to hear Dr. King, we didn't even know that he was going to do that marvelous speech," she said.
She said Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" has been realized, to a certain extent.
"We certainly have a lot of work to do, but the nation has changed," she said. "We have an African-American as a president in the White House. We have forty-some-off people in the Congress."