In February 1966, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other representatives of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the West Side Federation, and the Chicago Coaliton of Community Organizations took over the management of this six-flat "slum building." The eighty-one-year-old building owner John Bender told the Chicago Tribune that of the six buildings he owned, the one King had taken over was, a "white elephant," and that he would be "more than happy to give it to [King] if he would take over the mortgage." King argued that the legality of their actions paled in comparison to the "moral question" of helping to clean up "slum" housing. (emphasis mine)