Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 PDF Author: Robert Hamilton
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820358290
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
This book introduces new audiences to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final initiative, the multiracial Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) of 1968. Robert Hamilton depicts the experience of poor people who traveled to Washington in May 1968 to dramatize the issue of poverty by building a temporary city, Resurrection City. His narrative allows us to hear their voices and understand the strategies, objectives, and organization of the campaign. In addition, he highlights the campaign's educational aspect, showing that significant social movements are a means by which societies learn about themselves and framing the PPC as an initiative whose example can teach and inspire current and future generations. The study thus situates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and teachings in relation to current events and further solidifies Dr. King’s cultural and sociopolitical relevance. In the decades since 1968, we have seen increasing global inequality leading to greater social polarization, including in the United States. Hamilton offers the insight that the radical politics of Dr. King—as represented in the civil rights and human rights agendas of the PPC—can help us understand and address the challenges of this polarization. Hamilton highlights Dr. King’s commitment to ending poverty and explains why Dr. King’s ideas on this and related issues should be brought to the attention of a wider public who often view him almost exclusively as a civil rights, but not a human rights, leader.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 PDF Author: Robert Hamilton
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820358290
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
This book introduces new audiences to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final initiative, the multiracial Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) of 1968. Robert Hamilton depicts the experience of poor people who traveled to Washington in May 1968 to dramatize the issue of poverty by building a temporary city, Resurrection City. His narrative allows us to hear their voices and understand the strategies, objectives, and organization of the campaign. In addition, he highlights the campaign's educational aspect, showing that significant social movements are a means by which societies learn about themselves and framing the PPC as an initiative whose example can teach and inspire current and future generations. The study thus situates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and teachings in relation to current events and further solidifies Dr. King’s cultural and sociopolitical relevance. In the decades since 1968, we have seen increasing global inequality leading to greater social polarization, including in the United States. Hamilton offers the insight that the radical politics of Dr. King—as represented in the civil rights and human rights agendas of the PPC—can help us understand and address the challenges of this polarization. Hamilton highlights Dr. King’s commitment to ending poverty and explains why Dr. King’s ideas on this and related issues should be brought to the attention of a wider public who often view him almost exclusively as a civil rights, but not a human rights, leader.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Invites You to Join Us in the Poor People's Campaign, Washington D.C., Spring 1968

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Invites You to Join Us in the Poor People's Campaign, Washington D.C., Spring 1968 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages :

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"All Labor Has Dignity"

Author: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807086029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
An unprecedented and timely collection of Dr. King’s speeches on labor rights and economic justice Covering all the civil rights movement highlights--Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham, Selma, Chicago, and Memphis--award-winning historian Michael K. Honey introduces and traces Dr. King's dream of economic equality. Gathered in one volume for the first time, the majority of these speeches will be new to most readers. The collection begins with King's lectures to unions in the 1960s and includes his addresses made during his Poor People's Campaign, culminating with his momentous "Mountaintop" speech, delivered in support of striking black sanitation workers in Memphis. Unprecedented and timely, "All Labor Has Dignity" will more fully restore our understanding of King's lasting vision of economic justice, bringing his demand for equality right into the present.

Power to the Poor

Power to the Poor PDF Author: Gordon K. Mantler
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469608065
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
The Poor People's Campaign of 1968 has long been overshadowed by the assassination of its architect, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the political turmoil of that year. In a major reinterpretation of civil rights and Chicano movement history, Gordon K. Mantler demonstrates how King's unfinished crusade became the era's most high-profile attempt at multiracial collaboration and sheds light on the interdependent relationship between racial identity and political coalition among African Americans and Mexican Americans. Mantler argues that while the fight against poverty held great potential for black-brown cooperation, such efforts also exposed the complex dynamics between the nation's two largest minority groups. Drawing on oral histories, archives, periodicals, and FBI surveillance files, Mantler paints a rich portrait of the campaign and the larger antipoverty work from which it emerged, including the labor activism of Cesar Chavez, opposition of Black and Chicano Power to state violence in Chicago and Denver, and advocacy for Mexican American land-grant rights in New Mexico. Ultimately, Mantler challenges readers to rethink the multiracial history of the long civil rights movement and the difficulty of sustaining political coalitions.

Marks, Martin and the Mule Train

Marks, Martin and the Mule Train PDF Author: Hilliard Lawrence Lackey
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1493114972
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Marks, Martin and the Mule Train is a third person chronicle of Marks, Mississippi as the origin of the Mule Train component of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign. The book begins with the backdrop of living conditions in Marks, a small town in the Mississippi Delta, mired in abject poverty during the transition period when farm implements displaced field hands. More than half of area residents had left the cotton fields to work in factories up north. But those that stayed home were devoid of jobs and many were hungry. It was this pervasive sense of hopelessness and widespread hunger that struck Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his two visits to Marks in 1966. His first visit was made to preach the funeral of a marcher who had suffered a heart attack while engaged in the James Meredith March Against Fear from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MS. Allegedly, Dr. King asked some black junior youth what they were going to be when they grew up. Their responses drew tears from the Civil Rights leader when summarily they acknowledged no future because of their skin color. The second visit also aroused tears empathy when Dr. King and Dr. Ralph David Abernathy watched a teacher feed her students four apples and a box of crackers for lunch. Southern public schools declined to accept federal aid for free and reduced meals to sidestep integration. These observations in Marks convinced Dr. King to follow the suggestion of Marian Wright Edelman to lead a Poor Peoples Campaign for jobs and justice. Dr. Abernathy writes in his book And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, that Dr. King wanted the Poor Peoples Campaign to begin at the end of the world, in Marks, Mississippi. And so it did. Even though Dr. King was assassinated on April 14, 1968, his inspired Mule Train left Marks on May 14, 1968. The 1, 000 mile journey took a month to complete but 28 wagons pulled by 56 mules paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue on Juneteenth (June 19)1968 as the centerpiece of the Poor Peoples Campaign. The Mule Train fulfilled one of Dr. Kings dreams.

Resurrection City, 1968

Resurrection City, 1968 PDF Author: Jill Freedman
Publisher: Damiani Limited
ISBN: 9788862085830
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
In May of 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. announced the Poor People's Campaign to demanded economic and human rights for poor Americans of diverse backgrounds. The Campaign was organized by King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and carried out under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy in the wake of Dr. King's assassination. After presenting an organized set of demands to Congress and executive agencies, participants set up a 3,000-person protest camp called Resurrection City on the Washington Mall, where they stayed for six weeks in the spring of 1968. Published in 1970, Old News: Resurrection City was photographer Jill Freedman's first book. The book documents the encampment in all its complexity Freedman lived in the encampment for its entire six weeks, photographing the residents, their daily lives, their protests, and their eventual eviction. The new 50th anniversary edition of the book, titled Resurrection City, 1968 will reprint most of the 185 pictures from the original publication, presenting them in a more vivid printing and design. Freedman's hard-hitting original text will be included as well. Two introductory essays will be included, by John Edwin Mason, historian of African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia, and by Aaron Bryant, Curator of Photography, Visual Culture, and Contemporary Political History at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Old News

Old News PDF Author: Jill Freedman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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The Souls of Poor Folk

The Souls of Poor Folk PDF Author: Charles Lattimore Howard
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761838562
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
The Souls of Poor Folk is a collection of essays in the tradition of W.E.B. Du Bois's classic The Souls of Black Folk. The essays move between the scholarly, the narrative, and the testimonial just as they do in Du Bois's book. This text is meant to be a contribution to the critical dialogue around ways to alleviate poverty in our world. The contributors are diverse in their experience, origin, perspectives, and beliefs about the appropriate means to alleviate poverty and its many causes. This book is an essential companion to a multimedia initiative featuring a documentary and original music compilation available on compact disc that invites readers, listeners, and viewers to journey beyond the veil that hides the scars and blemishes of social problems, such as homelessness and poverty, especially in America. To learn more about the successful non-profit "Greater Love Project" initiative or to purchase other companion items including the CD, please visit: www.thesoulsofpoorfolk.org.

The Drum Major Instinct

The Drum Major Instinct PDF Author: Justin Rose
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820355534
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Though there are several studies devoted to aspects of Martin Luther King Jr.’s intellectual thought, there has been no comprehensive study of his overarching theory of political service. In The Drum Major Instinct, Justin Rose draws on Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons, political speeches, and writings to construct and conceptualize King’s politics as a unified theory. Rose argues that King’s theoretical framework—as seen throughout his wide body of writings—has three central components. First, King posited that all of humanity is tied to an “inescapable network of mutuality” such that no member of society can fully flourish if there are structural barriers preventing others from flourishing. Second, King’s theory required that Americans cultivate a sense of love and concern for their fellow members of society, which would motivate them to work collectively toward transforming others and structures of injustice. Finally, King contended that all members of society have the responsibility to participate in collective forms of resistance. This meant that even the oppressed were obligated to engage in political service. Therefore, marginalized people’s struggles against injustice were considered an essential aspect of service. Taken together, King’s theory of political service calls on all Americans, but especially black Americans, to engage in other-centered, collective action aimed at transforming themselves, others, and structures of injustice. By fully exploring King’s thoughts on service, The Drum Major Instinct is an invaluable resource toward understanding how King wanted us all to work to create a more just, democratic society and how his thoughts continue to resonate in contemporary struggles.

Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign

Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign PDF Author: Michael K. Honey
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393078329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
The definitive history of the epic struggle for economic justice that became Martin Luther King Jr.'s last crusade. Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic "plantation mentality" embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers were chewed up like garbage in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a public employee strike that brought to a boil long-simmering issues of racial injustice. With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, Michael Honey brings to life the magnetic characters who clashed on the Memphis battlefield: stalwart black workers; fiery black ministers; volatile, young, black-power advocates; idealistic organizers and tough-talking unionists; the first black members of the Memphis city council; the white upper crust who sought to prevent change or conflagration; and, finally, the magisterial Martin Luther King Jr., undertaking a Poor People's Campaign at the crossroads of his life, vilified as a subversive, hounded by the FBI, and seeing in the working poor of Memphis his hopes for a better America.