H O N O R I N G D R . M A RT I N L U T H E R K I N G , J R .
King’s Final Message: Poverty is a Civil Rights Battle
By Stephanie Siek,
CNN
O
n Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, some will vol-
unteer, some will attend celebrations of his life and
legacy, some will do nothing at all. “I have a
dream,” the title of King’s best known speech, will be
repeated countless times, along with well-known stories
about his commitment to nonviolence, his letters from a
Birmingham jail, his marches against segregation and the
bullet that ended his life on April 4, 1968.
But few will remember how King lived his last birthday,
as he turned 39 on Jan. 15, 1968.
According to accounts of the day retold by Jesse Jackson
and Martin Luther King III, King spent the day working on
a campaign that he hoped would force Washing-
ton and the American public to acknowledge
and resolve the problem of poverty for people of
all races, religions and backgrounds in the Unit-
ed States. The Poor People’s Campaign was the
agenda for the day, with a short break for birth-
day cake.
While King’s dream, the march on Washing-
ton and fight against segregation are well-
known to children and adults now, fewer are
aware that King spent the last months of his life
fighting poverty.
When he died in Memphis, he was there to
support fair wages and union representation for
Memphis sanitation workers.
Rebecca Burns, who wrote about King’s last
days, death, and burial in “Burial for a King,”
said King’s antiwar and anti-poverty legacy are overshad-
owed in part because their solutions are more elusive.
“It’s a much more complex issue – it’s not, pardon my
choice of words, as black and white as voting rights or
where you sit on a bus,” Burns said. “It’s harder to talk
about that in sound bites.”
Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr.
Research and Education Institute at Stanford University,
said that King’s dreams of economic justice remain unreal-
ized, but not because they are impossible to achieve.
“It is easier to celebrate King as a civil rights leader,
because that was the easier part of his vision to realize,”
Carson said. “The southern Jim Crow system was a region-
al anachronism rather than a national problem - the gulf
between rich and poor - that we still prefer to ignore.”
The Poor People’s Campaign reached out to poor whites,
many of whom felt most threatened by the civil rights
movement’s successes in black equality, as well as impov-
erished migrant farm workers who harvested the nation’s
food and Native Americans who languished on reserva-
tions. Injustice anywhere, King said, was a threat to justice
everywhere.
In a speech in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, less than a month
before his assassination, King spoke of unemployment sta-
tistics that belied the long-term unemployment in the black
community. But he made clear that employment was not
turning out to be a ticket out of poverty. He made the same
point in a number of similar speeches in the months before
and after.
“The problem of unemployment is not the only problem,”
King said. “There is a problem of underemployment, and
there are thousands and thousands, I would say millions of
people in the Negro community who are poverty-stricken –
might be considered among his most radical: Not only
should poverty be eradicated, he argued, but everyone
should be guaranteed an income that would prevent them
from falling into poverty.
Recently released statistics indicate that decades later, the
underemployment and poverty King fought might be just as
entrenched.
According to a November 2011 report by the nonprofit
Feeding America, which includes a nationwide network of
some 200 food banks, one in five of America’s children are
at risk of not having enough nutritious food to eat. For His-
panic and African-American children, the statistic is one in
three.
The prevalence of poverty is higher for minorities –
27.4% of African Americans were living in poverty in 2010,
according to Census data. For Latinos, the figure
was 26.6%, and for Asians it was 12.1 percent.
Nearly 10% of whites lived beneath the poverty
line.
Poverty is generally defined as earning $22,314
per year for a family of four. A person working 40
hours per week at the federal minimum wage of
$7.25 per hour earns $15,080 per year, gross.
According to the National Association of Child
Care Resource and Referral Agencies, childcare
alone can cost anywhere from $3,582 to $18,773
per year.
An Indiana University white paper released last
Wednesday and prepared at the request of Dr. Cor-
nel West and public television host Tavis Smiley,
examined the impact of the recession on poverty
and near-poverty in America. “At Risk: America’s
Poor During and After the Great Recession,” concluded that
the number of long-term unemployed between December
2007 and June 2009 was the highest since the government
began recording such figures in 1948. “By the third quarter
of 2011, 4.4 million people (32% of the 14 million people
out of work) informed surveyors that they had been without
work for more than a year,” the report said.
Using the official federal definition, 15.1% of the popula-
tion is living in poverty – 46.2 million people. Using a sup-
plemental measure that takes into account the geographical
differences in cost of living, the number rises to 16%.
What would King have to say about it?
“Like racism, the problems associated with poverty are
like weeds that will spread when left ignored,” said Carson,
who has spent most of his professional life studying King’s
writings and speeches. “He would remind us that poverty
and economic inequities threaten the future of American
democracy.”
Any religion which professes to be
concerned with the souls of
men and is not concerned with
the slums that damn them, the
economic conditions that
strangle them, and the social
conditions that cripple them, is
a dry-as-dust religion.
not because they are not working, but because they receive
wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the main
stream of the economic life of our nation. Most of the
poverty-stricken people of America are persons who are
working every day, and they end up getting part-time wages
for full-time work.”
King died before the Poor People’s Campaign could form
a list of specific goals. But he planned for a march of 2,000
people from across the country to convene in Washington,
D.C., meet with officials and demand jobs, fair wages, bet-
ter education and unemployment benefits.
In May 1968, organizers built a tent city in D.C. and won
some minor concessions from the federal government, such
as promises that poor people would be allowed leadership
roles in the programs aimed at helping them. Although the
campaign carried on with help from King’s deputies, it fal-
tered without his leadership.
At the time of his death, King was pushing an idea that
C ELEBRATION E VENTS
How To Petition the President
at “We The People…”
First Amendment gives all Americans the right to “petition the Govern-
T So he ment
for a redress of grievances.”
in the age of the Internet, the Obama White House has created a peti-
tion website to make it easy to exercise that right. The “We the People…”
website:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/
offers a place to post petitions and/or sign them if you agree. Any petition
that gets enough support, currently set at 100,000 signatures, will automati-
cally receive a an official response. Petitions must be short to meet the web-
site guidelines.
The Skanner News decided to post the following petition:
“Create a Marshall Plan for Black America”
African Americans as a group remain enormously disadvantaged in the
United States of America.
The 2010 census showed that the median wealth owned by White families
was $110,000, yet an average Black family owns less than $5,000.
Black unemployment is generally twice that of Whites. In fact, racial dis-
parities, rooted in America’s shameful history of slavery and discrimination,
affect every major economic indicator, as well as health and education out-
comes.
America has failed to live up to its promise of equal opportunities for all.
This wrong must be put right.
After WWII, the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe. We call on President Obama
to create “Create a Marshall Plan for Black America.”
We ask the president to fund a grassroots economic development plan that
will create true equality for all.
Pacific Science Center
To Host Annual
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Math & Science
Celebration
WHAT: Pacific Science Center, Seattle
Public Schools, and the University of Wash-
ington present the Annual Martin Luther
King, Jr. Math & Science Celebration for
Children. Volunteer mentors from UW’s
student and professional mentor programs
are matched up with approximately 300 stu-
dents from local fourth and fifth grade
classes, providing an opportunity for chil-
dren from lower-income families to visit the
Science Center and talk with college stu-
dents pursuing degrees in the fields of math
and science.
The school children will also hear motiva-
tional presentations from local profession-
als who will speak about the importance of
education, overcoming barriers as well as
an array of opportunities that exist in math,
science, technology and engineering.
The tribute is intended to inspire students
by reminding them of Dr. King’s own excel-
lence in math and science.
WHO: Fourth and fifth grade students
from Seattle public and private schools will
participate in the program.
WHEN: Wednesday, January 16, 2012
WHERE: Pacific Science Center is locat-
ed under the arches near the Space Needle.
WHY: As an independent, not-for-profit
educational institution, Pacific Science
Center inspires a love of science among
people of all ages and backgrounds. This
event plays an important role in Pacific Sci-
ence Center’s mission by providing multi-
ple entry points into the world of science for
everyone – children, teens and adults.
The event, held each January, honors the
work and achievements of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. National observance of
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is Monday, Jan.
21.
HOW: The Annual Martin Luther King,
Jr. Math & Science Celebration for Children
is co-sponsored by Pacific Science Center,
Seattle Public Schools, the University of
Washington’s College of Engineering, and
the University of Washington’s Office of
Minority Affairs.
The Seattle Public
Library Celebrates
Black History Month
With Carver Gayton
Feb. 9
Carver Gayton will read from a new fac-
simile edition of his great grandfather Lewis
George Clarke’s slave narrative, “Narrative
See CELEBRATION on page 7
January 16, 2013 The Seattle Skanner Page 5