The Poor People’s Campaign: The Little-Known Protest MLK Was Planning When He Died
The SCLC brochure advertising the campaign said it would call for a “decent life for all poor people so that they will control their own destiny,” and made no attempt to minimize the expense, saying, “This will cost billions of dollars, but the richest nation of all time can afford to spend this money if America is to avoid social disaster.”
Specifically, they demanded an “Economic Bill of Rights” with the following components:
People were to have a meaningful job with a livable wage.
People were to get a secure and efficient income.
People were to be able to access land for economic reasons.
Less well-off people were to have access to capital to promote business.
The middle class were to have a large role in government.
It was bold. And, according to Jeffries, it was exactly in line with how King had always seen the world, and his longstanding fixation on the radical redistribution of economic power. King had grown up during the Great Depression and escaped most of its harshest consequences because of his well-off family’s relative privilege, but “all he had to do was sit on his front porch and he could see the ravages,” said Jeffries. As a result, “Questions of economic justice were always on his mind. He wrote about it, he talked about it, he preached about it.”
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