Poor People's Washington Campaign, a demonstration in Washington, D.C., organized in 1968 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to demand federal legislation ensuring employment, income and housing for the poor.

On June 19, 1968, over 50,000 people assembled in Washington, D.C., to voice their support for the Poor People's Campaign for economic justice in America. The day was the highlight of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) campaign, set in motion by Martin Luther King Jr., to secure federal legislation guaranteeing employment, income, and housing for the poor. Considered only minimally successful by most historians, the Poor People's Campaign has been called the last effort of the 1960s mass mobilizations of nonviolent resistance.

The Poor People's Campaign marked several important shifts in the orientation of SCLC as a whole, and in the thinking of Martin Luther King Jr., its leader. The SCLC had expanded its operations from a regional base in the South to a national operation by the mid-1960s. In the South, rural blacks had faced debilitating poverty and segregation: a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) survey in Mississippi found that blacks there suffered from hunger, malnutrition, and even starvation. In Northern cities such as Chicago, the SCLC found an urban crisis of poverty grounded in ingrained racist economic structures. Here, the organization found, the forces of institutionalized racism did not yield to the strategies of resistance used against segregation in the South.

Martin Luther King Jr. became increasingly critical of a federal government and capitalist system that left a large population of African Americans, urban and rural, in poverty. He said: "We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." King pointed directly at the "edifice" of the federal government, which he had formerly viewed as a benevolent force that needed only to understand the conditions under which blacks lived in order to join the fight for change. Poverty, King now claimed, was to blame for the urban riots which plagued the country, and capitalism was to blame for poverty: "When you begin to ask why are there 40 million poor people in America, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy."

King took up the suggestion of Marian Wright to have the poor demonstrate in Washington, D.C., and if necessary, disrupt the national government. He envisioned a "tent city," with protesters living out of temporary structures on the mall of Capitol Hill. Unlike King's earlier campaigns for African American equality, this movement was to be staged on behalf of a spectrum of peoples, including Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and Appalachian whites.

King began mobilizing the SCLC for a national campaign amidst fears of an increasingly violent turn in the struggle for rights. The campaign moved slowly, in part for this reason, and in part because of financial and organizational difficulties. Civil rights activists, such as Bayard Rustin and NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins, questioned the wisdom of a mass march on Washington which might lead to violence, while others, namely President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), waged an outright campaign to derail the organizing process. When a march led by King in Memphis, Tennessee to support striking sanitation workers turned violent, it seemed to be the end of the campaign to march on Washington.

King's assassination on April 4, 1968, turned the tide of support for the march, and within a month, over half a million dollars in donations poured in for King's movement. The new SCLC leader, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, kept the movement going, and former opponents of the march, such as Rustin, now joined in.
On May 13, the first residents of Resurrection City set up house, populating West Potomac Park in tents made from canvas and plywood. By late May, 2,500 people were living there, including groups from Tennessee, New Mexico, Chicago, and the Mississippi Delta. Each day, Resurrection City residents marched to various federal agencies to present demands. They joined over 50,000 others on Solidarity Day, June 19, for a mass demonstration organized by Sterling Tucker and led by Abernathy, and Coretta Scott King. Five days later, 1,500 police arrived, arresting hundreds and destroying Resurrection City.
For some who had been active in the early successes of the SCLC, the Poor People's Campaign was a failure. Many found the protest poorly organized, despite its lucrative funding, and some protesters were critical of SCLC leaders who slept at nights in a motel. For others, who remembered King's prophecy that organizing around the basic rights of jobs and income would prove even more difficult than opposing the Vietnam War, the Poor People's Campaign was a necessary turn from protests against segregation to a larger demand for economic justice.

Contributed By:
Marian Aguiar
 
 

"Poor People's Washington Campaign," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) Africana. (c)&(p) 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.