The Poor People's Campaign, or Poor People's March on Washington, was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. It was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and carried out under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy in the wake of King's assassination in April 1968.
The campaign demanded economic and human rights for poor Americans of diverse backgrounds. After presenting an organized set of demands to Congress and executive agencies, participants set up a 3,000-person protest camp on the Washington Mall, where they stayed for six weeks in the spring of 1968.
The Poor People's Campaign was motivated by a desire for economic justice: the idea that all people should have what they need to live. King and the SCLC shifted their focus to these issues after observing that gains in civil rights had not improved the material conditions of life for many African Americans. The Poor People's Campaign was a multiracial effort—including African Americans, Non-Hispanic White Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans—aimed at alleviating poverty regardless of race..
According to political historians such as Barbara Cruikshank, "the poor" did not particularly conceive of themselves as a unified group until President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty (declared in 1964) identified them as such.: "Barbara Cruikshank argues that the government's war on poverty actually transformed those in poverty from a disparate group often in conflict with one another into 'the poor'—a multiracial, regionally diverse political interest group. During this era poor people joined forces to protest their condition and the government's failure to help them and at the same time fostered a sense of pride and dignity in being poor." Figures from the 1960 census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Commerce Department, and the Federal Reserve estimated anywhere from 40 to 60 million Americans—or 22 to 33 percent—lived below the poverty line. At the same time, the nature of poverty itself was changing as America's population increasingly lived in cities, not farms (and could not grow its own food)..
By 1968, the War on Poverty seemed like a failure, neglected by a Johnson administration (and Congress) that wanted to focus on the Vietnam War and increasingly saw anti-poverty programs as primarily helping African Americans.: "King's emergent radicalism was fostered by his mounting despair over the callous and reactionary political climate in Washington. The White House's earlier boastful assurances of 'guns and butter' was proving a cruel hoax. Johnson's 1966 civil rights bill containing the strong open housing title died in the Senate, largely because the White House, distracted by the Vietnam War, never bothered to lobby the leaders of the political opposition in the upper house. Before the year ended the Congress slashed the budget of the Office of Economic Opportunity, reducing the War on Poverty funds by half a billion dollars. The Poor People's Campaign sought to address poverty through income and housing. The campaign would help the poor by dramatizing their needs, uniting all races under the commonality of hardship and presenting a plan to start to a solution.Bishop, Jim. The Days of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1971. Under the "economic bill of rights," the Poor People's Campaign asked for the federal government to prioritize helping the poor with a $30 billion anti-poverty package that included, among other demands, a commitment to full employment, a guaranteed annual income measure and more low-income housing. The Poor People's Campaign was part of the second phase of the civil rights movement. King said, "We believe the highest patriotism demands the ending of the war and the opening of a bloodless war to final victory over racism and poverty".Burns, Stewart. To The Mountaintop. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc, 2004.
King wanted to bring poor people to Washington, D.C., forcing politicians to see them and think about their needs: "We ought to come in mule carts, in old trucks, any kind of transportation people can get their hands on. People ought to come to Washington, sit down if necessary in the middle of the street and say, 'We are here; we are poor; we don't have any money; you have made us this way ... and we've come to stay until you do something about it.'"
Development
Idea The Poor People's Campaign had complex origins. King considered bringing poor people to the nation's capital since at least October 1966, when welfare rights activists held a one-day march on the Mall.. In May 1967 during a SCLC retreat in Frogmore, South Carolina, King told his aides that the SCLC would have to raise nonviolence to a new level to pressure Congress into passing an Economic Bill of Rights for the nation's poor. The SCLC resolved to expand its civil rights struggle to include demands for economic justice and to challenge the Vietnam War.: "At a SCLC retreat at Frogmore held from May 21–22, 1967, the organization agreed to focus on an economic human rights agenda by attacking the slums of northern cities, particularly Cleveland and Chicago, and challenging the Vietnam War as the greatest impediment to combating poverty". In his concluding address to the conference, King announced a shift from "reform" to "revolution" and stated: "We have moved from the era of civil rights to an era of human rights.". Quoted in .
In response to the anger that led to riots in 1967 in Newark (July 12–17) and Detroit (July 23–28), King and his close confidante, Stanley Levison, wrote a report in August (titled "The Crisis in America's Cities") which called for disciplined urban disruption, particularly in Washington:..
Also in August, Senator Robert F. Kennedy asked Marian Wright Edelman "to tell Dr. King to bring the poor people to Washington to make hunger and poverty visible since the country's attention had turned to the Vietnam War and put poverty and hunger on the back burner." At another SCLC retreat in September, Edelman transmitted Kennedy's message to King and suggested that King and a handful of poor people hold a sit-in at the Department of Agriculture. Stanley Levison proposed an even more ambitious crusade that modeled itself on the Bonus Army of 1932.
Planning The SCLC's major planning before announcing the campaign took place during a five-day meeting (November 27 – December 1, 1967) in Frogmore, SC. With King's leadership, the group agreed to organize a civil disobedience campaign in Washington, D.C., focused on jobs and income. King wanted the demonstration to be "nonviolent, but militant, and as dramatic, as dislocative, as disruptive, as attention-getting as the riots without destroying property"..
Not all members of the SCLC agreed with the idea of occupying Washington. Bayard Rustin opposed civil disobedience. Other members of the group (like Jesse Jackson) wanted to pursue other priorities.: "William Rutherford, who had organized the Friends of SCLC in Europe in 1966 and was appointed executive director of SCLC during the summer of 1967, declared that, "basically almost no one on the staff thought that the next priority, the next major movement, should be focused on poor people or the question of poverty in America."48 at the time James Bevel wanted to remain focused on combating slums in northern cities, Hosea Williams promoted voter registration campaigns in the South, Jesse Jackson wanted to continue to develop Operation Breadbasket, and Andrew Young worried that SCLC's budget of under a million dollars necessitated smaller campaigns in the South." Dissent continued throughout the planning of the campaign.
King traveled to Washington in February 1968 in order to meet with local activists and prepare the resources necessary to support the campaign..
Marchers were scheduled to arrive in Washington on May 2.. Some planners wanted to target specific politicians; others wanted to avoid "begging" and focus on movement-building and mutual education..
Publicity The SCLC announced the campaign on December 4, 1967. King delivered a speech which identified "a kind of social insanity which could lead to national ruin.". In January 1968, the SCLC created and distributed an "Economic Fact Sheet" with statistics explaining why the campaign was necessary.. King avoided providing specific details about the campaign and attempted to redirect media attention to the values at stake.: "When reporters later pressed him about the campaign's tactics, King sidestepped specific details and focused on the moral dimensions of the crisis". The Poor People's Campaign held firm to the movement's commitment to non-violence. "We are custodians of the philosophy of non-violence," said King at a press conference. "And it has worked."
In February 1968, King announced specific demands: $30 billion for antipoverty, full employment, guaranteed income, and the annual construction of 500,000 affordable residences.
The media often discouraged those within the movement who were committed to non-violence. Instead of focusing on issues of urban inequality and the interracial efforts concerted to address them, the media concentrated on specific incidents of violence, leadership conflicts and protest tactics.Jackson, Thomas. From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Economic Justice. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
King toured a number of cities to raise support for the campaign. King's visits were carefully orchestrated and the media tightly controlled; meetings with militant Black leaders were held behind closed doors.. On March 18, 1968, he visited the town of Marks, Mississippi. He watched a teacher feeding schoolchildren their lunch, consisting only of a slice of apple and some crackers, and was moved to tears. A few days after the visit, he spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.: "We're coming to Washington in a poor people's campaign. I was in Marks, Miss., the other day, which is in Quitman County, the poorest county in the United States. And I tell you I saw hundreds of black boys and black girls walking the streets with no shoes to wear." He decided he wanted the Poor People's Campaign to start in Marks because of the intense and visible economic disparity he'd seen there.
Members and friends
Leaders Martin Luther King Jr. was the campaign's leader until his assassination on April 4, 1968. Rev. James Bevel was a key advisor and strategic partner to King who initiated and organized many SCLC campaigns, including the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. Ralph Abernathy succeeded to the SCLC presidency and led the campaign after King's assassination. Stanley Levison was a key advisor to King whose influence diminished after the assassination. Bernard Lafayette was the national coordinator of the campaign. Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, a prominent Chicano movement advocate, led a caravan from Colorado. Cornelius "Cornbread" Givens, New York coordinator and co-organizer of the Poor People's Embassy. Reies Tijerina, of New Mexico, was a leader of land grant rights efforts in the Chicano movement. Stoney Cooks did outreach and recruitment to college students.. Hosea Williams of the Georgia SCLC was the campaign's field director and became a director of logistics at Resurrection City. Rev. Fred C. Bennette was a liaison to the clergy. SCLC Vice President Andrew Young was a major leader and spokesperson. Walter Fauntroy was the Washington coordinator for the SCLC, and became director of what remained of the campaign in 1969. Rev. Dr. David Carter was the Assistant Director for Mobilization. Rev. Jesse Jackson would be "elected" mayor of the Resurrection City encampment on the Washington Mall.
Recruitment