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Writer's pictureEmmanuel Mehr

May 12, 1968 (56 years ago today): Poor People's Campaign Reaches D.C., Sets Up Camp


A black-and-white photograph depicting a marching crowd of civil rights demonstrators. Many hold signs with an infinity symbol on them and the crowd also includes numerous signs written in Spanish.
Warren K. Leffler, “Poor People's March at Lafayette Park and on Connecticut Avenue,” June 18, 1968

May 12, 1968: The Poor People’s Campaign reached Washington, D.C. and set up its encampment known as Resurrection City, beginning a six-week occupation of the national capital. This brought national attention to the inseparability of economic inequality from civil rights struggle in the turbulent aftermath of Dr. King’s assassination. Historian Sylvie Laurent argues that the Poor People’s Campaign was the perfect “living memorial” to Dr. King because it represented “the culmination of King’s lifelong thinking on the nature of justice.” Indeed, Dr. King increasingly emphasized inherent economic features of the African American freedom struggle towards the end of his life. As Laurent writes, “The [Poor People’s] campaign’s radical egalitarianism formulated a class framework in which exploitative socioeconomic relations were instrumental to the racial subordination of black Americans.” This thinking foreshadowed and is now at the center of twenty-first century conversations about reparations owed to African Americans.


Recommended reading to learn more:


 

Citations: Sylvie Laurent, King and the Other America: The Poor People’s Campaign and the Quest for Economic Equality (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), 1, 3-4, 6, 11, 15, Kindle edition; Warren K. Leffler, “Poor People's March at Lafayette Park and on Connecticut Avenue,” photograph (Washington, D.C., June 18, 1968), https://lccn.loc.gov/2003688169.

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