Jacob Blake was shot in the back eight times at point blank range by Kenosha Police on Sunday evening. His father now says Jacob may be paralyzed for the rest of his life.
When Jacob Blake’s father talked with his son Sunday morning, the younger Blake was gearing up for a day of celebrating his son’s eighth birthday.
That evening, the father got word that his son had been shot eight times by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Eighteen minutes later, he saw the now-viral video, he said.
“What justified all those shots?” his father said. “What justified doing that in front of my grandsons? What are we doing?”
Some witnesses say Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who attended middle and high school in Evanston, was simply trying to break up a fight Sunday evening. The cellphone video of the incident shows Blake walking around and opening up his car door before appearing to be shot in the back by police.
His father said there are now “eight holes” in his son’s body, and he’s paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors don’t yet know if the injury is permanent.
The elder Blake is now making the drive from Charlotte, North Carolina, to be with his son in the hospital Tuesday.
“I want to put my hand on my son’s cheek and kiss him on his forehead, and then I’ll be OK,” his father said. “I’ll kiss him with my mask. The first thing I want to do is touch my son.”
Jacob Blake's grandfather, the late Rev. Jacob Blake, was an active member of the civil rights community in Evanston, Illinois.
On April 7, 1968, an estimated three thousand Evanston residents took part in a march that combined a tribute to King with a stand for fair housing. The march began at Emerson Street and McCormick Boulevard, proceeded through the downtown area, and ended in Raymond Park at Chicago Avenue and Grove Street, where a memorial was held.
“The fittest tribute the city of Evanston can pay to Martin Luther King,” the Reverend Jacob Blake, pastor of Evanston’s Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, told the crowd, “is the immediate passage of an effective and comprehensive housing law.” Blake had been a principal organizer of the march and a staunch advocate of fair housing legislation.
Blake asked the gathered crowd to take a “voice vote” on a new fair housing resolution that had recently been drafted. After it was “approved,” he handed it to Mayor John Emery. The mayor had also joined the march and addressed the crowd in tribute to King.
Soon, fair housing advocates formed a “strategy committee” and issued a pledge that the marches would continue until an ordinance was passed. A “Statement of Intent” was also issued that stated “emphatically and unequivocally that if [an] ordinance was not passed on or before April 29, 1968,” the movement would “move . . . from non-violent protest. . . to nonviolent resistance,” involving an “economic boycott of all Evanston businesses, transportation systems, and profit making operations within the city limit of Evanston.”
On April 11, 1968, the Fair Housing Act (Title XIII of the Civil Rights Act) was signed into law by President Johnson, expanding existing laws and prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin. King’s assassination, it was noted, was a “decisive factor” in the bill’s passage.
Still, in Evanston, no comprehensive fair housing law existed, and so the marches continued – daily reminders that “freedom of residence” in Evanston had not yet been realized.
Each day, people marched from Ebenezer AME Church on Emerson Street to the First Methodist Church on Hinman Avenue in an effort to bring about a city council vote on a comprehensive ordinance. Petitions were circulated, with signatories demanding the “immediate passage” of a fair housing ordinance.
On April 15, 1968, the city council finally agreed to take a vote on a new, comprehensive fair housing ordinance. On Monday, April 29, 1968, just over 3 weeks after King’s death, two hundred people packed into the city hall chamber; outside, a crowd of 600 gathered to await the outcome of the vote.
The marches and hard work finally brought success: Fifteen to one, Evanston city council members voted to pass the ordinance, forbidding discrimination on the basis of race in the sale or rental of housing, and this time including steep fines and penalties for property owners, brokers, realtors, bankers, and others who practiced discrimination.
Evanston’s Mayor, John D. Emery, refused to sign the bill, arguing that the city had no “authority to pass such an all-encompassing law.” However, he stated, “the ordinance becomes effective without my signature.”
After the vote, the Reverend Jacob Blake, who was in the city council chamber, walked to the window and announced the result to the crowd outside. A loud cheer erupted. “I am overwhelmed,” Blake said.
The fight has gone on for centuries before I was born, and I believe the fight will continue for a long time after I am gone. But while I am on this Earth, I want to see that fight through.
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