Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 95

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), under the leadership of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., shifted its strategies in 1967 and embarked on a campaign for poor people. It expanded its operational base in the South to a national focus. Economic inequities became the movement’s target. The Poor People’s Campaign was in response to the rioting that occurred in more than 180 cities during the summer of 1968. Based upon a survey conducted by the NAACP in Mississippi, it was noted that African Americans suffered from hunger, malnutrition, and starvation. In Chicago, the SCLC found an urban crisis of poverty embedded in racist economic structures. Even the Kerner Commission Report, released on February 29, 1968, called for jobs, housing, and economic development programs.

Because institutionalized racism did not capitulate to the strategies of resistance used against racial apartheid in the South, King and the SCLC began planning a new attack to focus the nation’s attention on poverty in America. On June 19, 1968, more than 50,000 people assembled at the nation’s capital to voice their support for the Poor People’s Campaign for economic justice. King announced the Poor People’s Campaign at an SCLC staff retreat in November 1967. Suggested to King by Marion Wright (now Marion Wright Edelman), director of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund in Jackson, Mississippi, that the Poor People’s Campaign be staged in Washington, it was seen by King as the next chapter in the struggle for equality. Through non-violent direct action, King and the SCLC wanted to zoom the nation’s lens on economic injustice and poverty.

The Poor People’s Campaign was to be a movement for a wide range of people, including Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Appalachian whites.

During an early planning meeting in March 1968, King informed the gathering that this was an opportunity for poor people of all colors and backgrounds to gain their entitlement to a decent life. Contrasting his earlier campaigns for African American equality, the Poor People’s Campaign was to be a movement for a wide range of people, including Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Appalachian whites. Many leaders of these communities pledged themselves to the Poor People’s Campaign. King believed that economic deprivation caused the outbreak of urban riots throughout America and that capitalism was to blame for poverty. Some in the SCLC considered King’s campaign too ambitious and his demands too nebulous. Others, such as civil rights activists Bayard Rustin and Roy Wilkins, questioned the advisability of a poor people’s march on Washington that might lead to violence. Government officials and organizations, ranging from the FBI to President Lyndon B. Johnson, instigated an out-and-out fight to disrupt the organizers.

In the midst of organizing, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, to support the city’s striking sanitation workers. When the March 28, 1968, march, led by King, turned violent, 16-year-old Larry Payne, the only fatality of the day’s mayhem, was killed by policeman L. D. Jones. Sixty others were injured. It seemed as though his nay-sayers were right. Determined to lead a peaceful demonstration, King returned to Memphis on April 2 and was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Because of King’s assassination, support for the Poor People’s Campaign gained momentum. The Reverend Ralph Abernathy, the new president of the SCLC, kept the movement going. On Mother’s Day, May 12, 1968, thousands of women, led by King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, formed the first wave of demonstrators. The next day, the first residents of Resurrection City, a temporary settlement, populated the National Mall in tents made from canvas and plywood. Each day the residents of Resurrection City marched to various agencies of the federal government and presented their economic bill of rights. Midway through the campaign, Senator Robert Kennedy, whose wife attended the Mother’s Day opening of Resurrection City, was assassinated on June 5, 1968. Five days after the Solidarity Day mass demonstration on June 19, 1968, the U.S. Department of the Interior closed down Resurrection City after its permit to use the park expired. While the Poor People’s March on Washington was only minimally successful, it did briefly focus the nation’s attention on the plight of the poor.

Linda T. Wynn