The year was 1966 and Roberta Cooper (Ramo) had completed her second year at the University of Chicago Law School. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was speaking in a tenement on the south side of Chicago to the city’s poor – explaining that the law would take care of their problems if they learned how to use it.

“The reason I was there was that the old Mayor Daley was a terrible racist. Martin Luther King understood how important voting was in a profound way,” Ramo said. “So he brought young men up from Atlanta to help get young people in Chicago to vote. Many of these young men wore overalls … they were educated and not farmers … the overalls made them more visible in the community.”

Five of these young men were arrested, Ramo said, and she was sent from the Civil Liberties Union to secure their release from jail. (She laughed recalling how as a young student she had to borrow $5 from the men to travel to court to plead their case – adding that she made sure to pay them back.)

Ramo described that fateful day she went to visit with her clients in that south side tenement.

“I elbowed my way up to their 3rd floor apartment and heard that voice … the one that all of us would recognize,” Ramo said. “Martin Luther King was sitting in the kitchen. I somehow skooched my way around and for an hour watched. The thing that I would never have known had I not been in that apartment was that Dr. King was as brilliant a listener as he was a speaker.”

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