by Wornie Reed, Ph.D.
Director, Race and Social Policy, Professor, Sociology & Africana Studies, Virginia Tech
Many people are preparing to observe the 50th anniversary of the assassination of MLK.
As we do so, let us remember his actions and his words in 1968, “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out…This is the way I’m going.”
While most know that MLK was assassinated in Memphis while participating in the Memphis garbage workers’ strike, too few know about King’s major activity during this time—the Poor People’s Campaign.
The Memphis garbage workers strike was an important but side issue for King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The Poor People’s Campaign was one of his most important projects.
Complaining that poverty was too high in this the richest nation in the world, Dr. King announced on December 4, 1967, “The Southern Christian Leadership Conference will lead waves of the nation’s poor and disinherited to Washington, D. C., next spring to demand redress of their grievances by the United States government and to secure at least jobs or income for all.”
King continued, “Consider, for example, the spectacle of cities burning while the national government speaks of repression instead of rehabilitation. Or think of children starving in Mississippi while prosperous farmers are rewarded for not producing food. Or Negro mothers leaving children in tenements to work in neighborhoods where people of color cannot live. Or the awesome bombardment, already greater than the munitions we exploded in World War II, against a small Asian land [Viet Nam], while political brokers de-escalate and very nearly disarm a timid action against poverty. Or a nation gorged on money while millions of its citizens are denied a good education, adequate health services, decent housing, meaningful employment, and even respect, and are then told to be responsible.”
“We will go there, we will demand to be heard, and we will stay until America responds. If this means forcible repression of our movement, we will confront it, for we have done this before. If this means scorn or ridicule, we embrace it, for that is what America’s poor now receive. If it means jail, we accept it willingly, for the millions of poor already are imprisoned by exploitation and discrimination…In short, we will be petitioning our government for specific reforms, and we intend to build militant nonviolent actions until that government moves against poverty.”
“This will be no mere one-day march in Washington, but a trek to the nation’s capital by suffering and outraged citizens who will go to stay until some definite and positive action is taken to provide jobs and income for the poor.”
An important aspect of the Campaign was to petition the government to pass an Economic Bill of Rights as a step to ease the poverty burden. This petition included:
• $30 billion annual appropriation for a real war on poverty
• Congressional passage of full employment and guaranteed income legislation
• Construction of 500,000 low-cost housing units per year until slums are eliminated
The Campaign was organized into three phases. The first was to construct a shantytown, to become known as Resurrection City, on the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Resurrection City was to house up to 3,000 Campaign participants. The next phase was to begin public demonstrations, mass nonviolent civil disobedience, and mass arrests to protest the plight of poverty in this country. These demonstrations would become so massive as to disrupt the daily business of Washington DC. The third and final phase of the Campaign was to launch a nationwide boycott of major industries and shopping areas to prompt business leaders to pressure Congress into meeting the demands of the Campaign.
In March of 1968, over 50 multiracial organizations came together with the SCLC in Atlanta to join the Poor People’s Campaign. Then Dr. King was assassinated—it seems to thwart the tidal wave of this campaign.
Losing much of its steam, the Campaign continued under the leader of the new president of the SCLC, Ralph Abernathy, and many of us participated. It climaxed in the Solidarity Day Rally for “Jobs, Peace, and Freedom” on June 19, 1968, as 50,000 people joined the 3,000 participants living in Resurrection City.
The Poor People’s Campaign fell short of its goal to win significant antipoverty legislation. It did, however, mark a change of the civil rights movement from advocating a platform of only racial equality to one that incorporated interracial class issues and economic goals.
