The Poor People’s Campaign is deeply rooted in the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century, when it was announced by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at a staff retreat of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in November of 1967, just five months before his assassination. Its first action would come just weeks after his death.
Civil rights and voting rights laws had passed, and now it was time to start working on the persistent economic inequality. People of color still lagged behind whites in education and job opportunities, and poor whites were led to believe it was people of color who were keeping them down.
The Poor People’s Campaign would help educate and advocate for living wages, safe housing, educational opportunities, health care and more through direct action that included marches, rallies and peaceful protests to bring attention to the plight of people in poverty.
After King’s death, the SCLC leadership decided to continue the campaign under the leadership of Rev. Ralph Abernathy.
On Mother’s Day in 1968, thousands of women, led by Coretta Scott King, formed the first wave of demonstrators. The next day, participants built Resurrection City, a temporary settlement of tents and shacks, on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Despite rain, mud, and summer heat, protesters stayed for more than a month, as they made daily pilgrimages to federal agencies to protest and demand economic justice. The Department of the Interior forced Resurrection City to close on June 24, 1968, after the permit to use park land expired.
The campaign forced some small improvements to public policies, but vast economic inequalities persist to this day, affecting every aspect of life and making poverty the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States today. Nearly half of Americans are poor or low-wealth, with more than 40 percent saying they would have to borrow money to cover a $400 emergency expense.
In 2018, former NC NAACP president Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice, announced the resurrection of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Today, we are organized in more than 40 states and the District of Columbia, building a diverse coalition of advocates for public policies that will eradicate poverty once and for all.
We work toward a living wage, truly affordable health care, a solid education that begins in early childhood, an end to the war economy and real solutions to the climate crisis. We fight for voting rights and reformation of the justice system that incarcerates poor people while allowing the wealthy to buy their way out of trouble.
We are here to speak truth to power, to give voice to the oppressed and to empower those who currently are powerless.
We are here to move FORWARD TOGETHER, NOT ONE STEP BACK!
-Leslie Boyd, North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign, Western Circle
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