Congressman Bennie Thompson urges Chicago to remember Martin Luther King and ‘beware of charlatans’

Congressman Bennie Thompson, during his keynote address at the city’s interfaith breakfast Friday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., recalled with a laugh a valuable lesson he learned in Chicago.

Thompson, the Democratic lawmaker from Mississippi who recently chaired the Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol, said that in the 1960s, he lived with a relative and worked at Ford Motor Company’s South Side manufacturing plant to save money for college.

Once he met a street salesman peddling watches.

Thompson bought one. But later it went kaput.

Thompson learned a lesson: “Be careful when people tell you that there are things there that are so good,” he said to the audience Friday in a not-quite-full ballroom at the Marriott Marquis Chicago near McCormick Place.

“Beware of the people who are trying to convince you that the grass is greener on the other side of the street — those false prophets are carrying a message for people who don’t want things to change,” he said. “Beware of the charlatans in the spirit of Martin.”

Thompson also said that he frequently hears from people who thank him for his work on the Jan. 6 Committee.

“People I run into all over the place say, ‘I appreciate what you did because your work on that committee put us on a trajectory to save America,’” he said.

Thompson spoke at the city’s 37th annual Interfaith Breakfast celebrating King’s life and legacy.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot posthumously presented the Champion of Freedom award to Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, the Chicago teen whose lynching in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman in 1955 galvanized the civil rights movement.

Till-Mobley’s decision to leave her son’s casket open at his funeral showed the brutality of her son’s death and drew worldwide attention.

“She commanded that we dare not look away,” Lightfoot said.

Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., Till’s cousin who was in the room the night he was abducted and killed, accepted the award on Till-Mobley’s behalf.

“He did not die in vain,” he said.

Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) were among a large group of activists and politicians who attended the event, which concluded with a rendition of the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.”