A new play highlights MLK’s activism in Chicago

In January 1966 Martin Luther King Jr. moved his family into a run-down apartment on the West Side of Chicago. King spent a year living in North Lawndale advocating for fair housing, education and jobs.

This chapter of King’s incredible journey as a Civil Rights leader, one who posthumously became an icon, often goes untold. A new play, "Lawndale King,” dramatizes the story of King’s time in Chicago. A staged reading of the script, presented by the theater group Collaboraction, will be performed at the Chicago History Museum on Monday at 1 p.m.

Written by North Lawndale native Willie Round, the play came close to never happening.

Standing on the corner of 16th and Hamlin, the site of the apartments where Dr. King lived, Round said he initially left North Lawndale for college in Ohio intending to never return to Chicago.

“It's too much violence,” said Round. “I lost a lot of friends. It's nothing really there for me. I'm so glad I made it out. I never want to really go back to that place.”

The history that inspired the play brought him back to the neighborhood. Round attended the now shuttered Matthew Henson Elementary on S. Avers Ave., a few blocks from where King’s apartment’s stood. “I never knew Martin Luther King had been two blocks away,” said Round, standing in front of his former elementary school, which closed in 2013.

The boarded-up building still bears a mural displaying a picture of King along with one of his quotes. “He was two blocks away,” Round said. “It was never in our history books. It was never part of any African American history program that we had. It was never part of anything. It took me to go to Ohio and open up a book.”

Once he did open such a book in college, Round saw pictures of King’s time in Chicago. He immediately recognized the building where King had lived so close to his school and his childhood home.

“I think about how I could have still missed it had I not gone to class,” he said. “I just think about how my life, how inspired I could have been, if I learned it here earlier on. But it took for me to go outside of my community, outside of my state, to learn that Martin Luther King stayed right here, amongst my people and amongst our community. It's just disheartening.”

Round returned to Chicago in 2014, after graduation. Originally, he was interested in music, inspired by his uncles who are members of the rap group Do or Die. But after college, he pivoted toward acting, landing a role in “Her Honor Jane Byrne” at Lookingglass Theatre in 2021.

“It was about Jane Byrne moving to Cabrini Green, somewhat like what Dr. King did,” he said, referring to the infamous 1981 stunt by the female mayor to decamp from her tiny Gold Coast apartment for a few weeks and move into the Chicago housing project. “But this was in the ‘80s. So she took a page out of Martin Luther King's book and moved into Cabrini Green to bring awareness to what was going on with the violence.”

In “Lawndale King,” Round explores King’s work with the Chicago Freedom Movement and his attempts to fight for employment, fair housing, and fair education on the West Side.

To help him bring this story to life, Round leaned on a mentor, a theater and film vet from Chicago’s South Side: author, director, and film producer Pemon Rami, who has a long history in film and theater in Chicago. He’s the inaugural inductee in the Chicago Black Arts Hall of Fame and mentored many artists including Robert Townsend (“The Bear”). Rami, who was 15 when King spoke at Stateway Gardens in 1966, brings a keen perspective to this production because he’s on the opposite end of the timeline as Round and witnessed King speak in person.

“He was so eloquent,” Rami recalled. “When they told me that the King was speaking, I thought they were talking about the King of England. But then I hear this man, and he's so eloquent, I mean he's Dr. King. But at the end of his speech, he said, ‘We're going to march to Gates Park, Marquette Park, and Cicero. And I went home, and I said, ‘This man is crazy,’ because we knew the danger that that represented.”

The play uses both historical figures, like King, Civil Rights activist Andrew Young, and Mayor Richard J. Daley, as well as fictional characters that are composites of residents from the time.
And even with the turmoil in the backdrop, “Lawndale King” attempts to depict King in a light that many people have not seen the iconic figure be presented in. As a human being. A father. A man living on the West Side with his family.

“There's moments where he’s [King] in his pajamas, just hanging around talking about his favorite drink that he loves to drink, which is Bristol Cream Sherry,” said Round. “There's a scene where he's smoking cigarettes, because when he was assassinated, that's exactly what he was doing. We like to put him on this pedestal, which he deserves, but we also have to humanize him, because that makes his work even greater.”

A big part of putting the play together was research. Round spent over three years studying books, reading transcripts from residents and activists and talking to people in the community about King’s time in North Lawndale. Some community members from the era are still around today.

“Momma Lou, who served Martin Luther King at [the diner] Pine Valleys just up the street on 16th and Pulaski, gave me a lot of great insight on what he ordered and how often he came there,” said Round, speaking of the historic restaurant once owned by Louise “Momma Lou” Harper, who retired in 2020. “She said he would always have a newspaper, he would always order coffee, and always order peach cobbler. These are the things that he loves. So those things are in the play. And because of that research, it makes the play that much more authentic.”

Mike Davis is a theater reporter who covers stages across Chicago.