[2] He attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and was present at Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Naftalin declined to seek reelection in 1969, becoming the only mayor of Minneapolis in the period 1913–1979 who never resigned or lost an election.
Naftalin was succeeded by Charlie Stenvig, a police officer with no previous political experience who promised a "law and order" approach to any future civil unrest.
From 1976 to 1987, he produced and hosted 500 installments of Minnesota Issues, a weekly public-affairs program on local public television station KTCA.
On the morning of May 16, 2005, Naftalin struck his head in a fall, went into a coma, and died later in the day at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.