Message from our President and CEO, Gloria Castillo
1968.
It was the watershed year of the 20th Century; a year fraught with protests, tragedies and advancements. More than half of Americans alive today weren't even born then, yet they live in the shadow of its legacy.
In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive signified the beginning of the end of U.S. involvement in the war; at the Summer Olympics, two black medalists raised their fists in silent protest against racial discrimination in the United States; Star Trek aired American television's first interracial kiss; Boeing introduced the first 747, and a manned spacecraft orbited the moon for the first time. It also was a year in which war protesters at the Democratic National Convention clashed with police in the streets of Chicago and Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
But it was the devastation caused by the 1968 riots in Chicago that followed the tragic death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis that prompted top business leaders to discuss solutions to local economic instability and racial unrest in the city. Chicago United was the result.
For 50 years, Chicago United has maintained the dialogue among multiracial senior leadership driving corporate and minority-owned businesses, civic and non-profit leadership in the common goal of creating a stronger social and economic climate for all races. Read entire message.
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