Opinion
Marching Orders for the Future
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
B ERNIE F OSTER
Founder/Publisher
B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER
Executive Editor
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Reporter
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The Skanner Newspaper, established
in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
tion, published each Wednesday by
IMM Publications Inc.,
415 N. Killingsworth St.,
N
ow that we’ve had two
events at the Lincoln
Memorial to commemo-
rate the 50th anniversary of the
1963 March on Washington, it is
important to remember a few
things about Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. beyond his “I Have a
Dream” speech.
The question is always asked:
What happens after the marches
are over? Demonstrators left
Washington, D.C. in 1963 deter-
mined to change the American
landscape. Consequently, we had
passage of the 1965 Civil Rights
Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act
and the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
Those laws were passed not
because of a speech in the nation’s
capital, but because of the hard
work and dedication of people at
the local, state and national level
to bring about change.
While the “I Have a Dream”
speech might have been Dr. King’s
most popular oration, it was not
his most substantive one. In 1963,
Dr. King etched a prosaic picture
of what America should look like
in the future. But a far more
important one was his “Mountain-
top” speech, delivered in Memphis
the night before he was assassinat-
ed.
In that speech, Dr. King outlined
a plan for economic empowerment
and told us how to strengthen our
institutions to accomplish that
goal. He reminded us, “Always
anchor our external direct action
with the power of economic with-
drawal.”
Dr. King explained, “We don’t
have to argue with anybody. We
don’t have to curse and go around
T HE C URRY
R EPORT
George E.
Curry
acting bad with our words. We
don’t need any bricks and bottles,
we don’t need any Molotov cock-
tails. We just need to go around to
these stores, and to these massive
industries in our country, and say,
‘God sent us by here, to say to you
that you’re not treating his chil-
He wasn’t trying to create a spe-
cial
commission
or
hold
conferences on how to strengthen
the middle class. He was organiz-
ing a Poor Peoples Campaign, a
trek to Washington, D.C. to dram-
atize the urgent need to help the
least among us.
After President Lyndon B. John-
son shifted his focus from the War
on Poverty to the war in Vietnam,
Dr. King and the Southern Chris-
tian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) launched an effort in 1968
to seek economic justice for poor
Blacks, Whites, Latinos and
Native Americans. The idea was to
have another March on Washing-
ton that would force political
Instead of placing so much emphasis
on what Dr. King said in 1963, we
should look at what he was doing at
the time of his death
dren right. And we’ve come by
here to ask you to make the first
item on your agenda—fair treat-
ment, where God’s children are
concerned. Now, if you are not
prepared to do that, we do have an
agenda that we must follow. And
our agenda calls for withdrawing
economic support from you.”
He urged us to “strengthen our
Black institutions” by patronizing
them.
Instead of placing so much
emphasis on what Dr. King said in
1963, we should look at what he
was doing at the time of his death.
leaders to address the issue of
poverty.
“We ought to come in mule
carts, in old trucks, any kind of
transportation people can get their
hands on,” King said. “People
ought to come to Washington, sit
down if necessary in the middle of
the street and say, ‘We are here;
we are poor; we don’t have any
money; you have made us this
way… and we’ve come to stay
until you do something about it.”
SCLC continued the Poor Peo-
ple’s March after King’s death,
erecting a tent city on the Mall.
After six weeks, demonstrators
were evicted.
Today, the poor are still suffer-
ing. Poverty is defined as a family
of four being able to live off of
$23,021 a year. Today, a record
46.2 million people –15 percent of
the U.S. population – are living in
poverty.
One of the goals of the 1963
March on Washington was a mini-
mum wage that could lift a family
of four out of poverty. They
demanded that the minimum wage
of $1.15 an hour be increased to
$2 an hour. As a report by the
Economic Policy Institute titled,
“The Unfinished March: An
Overview,” noted, “The inflation-
adjusted value of the minimum
wage today is about $2.00 less
than it was at its peak value in
1968.”
Worse than living on below-
poverty wages is to have no job at
all.
“Even when the national unem-
ployment rate has been low, the
African American unemployment
rate has been high,” the EPI report
stated.
When he was assassinated, Dr.
King was helping organize
garbage workers in Memphis. He
was not dreaming because he was
not asleep. We honor him by con-
tinuing his work, not by merely
continuing to recite his “I Have a
Dream” speech.
George E. Curry, former editor-
in-chief of Emerge magazine, is
editor-in-chief of the National
Newspaper Publishers Associa-
tion News Service
P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228.
Telephone (503) 285-5555.
E-mail: info@theskanner.com
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Fax: (503) 285-2900
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National Newspaper Pub lishers Associ-
ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers
Association.
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After the Commemorations — What’s Next?
T
he 1963 March on Washing-
ton was a pivotal moment
for African Americans, a
day when people joined to fight
for jobs, peace and justice. More
than 250,000 people traveled to
Washington, coming by busses,
trains,
and
occasionally
planes. They came despite the
scourge of segregation, which
meant that many who were driving
had to carefully select the places
they could stop and eat (actually
most brought goodies from home)
or relieve themselves. Despite
obstacles, a quarter of a million
people showed up in Washington,
gathering peacefully and with dig-
nity. As a result of the March, the
Civil Rights Act was passed in
1964, and the Voting Rights Act in
1965 was passed with more than
three-quarters of the House and
Senate supporting both Acts.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. con-
tinued his activity for jobs, peace
and justice helping to organize the
march from Selma to Montgomery
in 1965, which was interrupted by
Bloody Sunday. He spoke, in
1965, to Playboy magazine, sug-
gesting that “compensation” (he
didn’t use the word reparations)
would be the only way to close the
economic gap between African
Americans and Whites. He began
connecting poverty with war in his
1967 speech “Beyond Viet-
nam.” When he died, he was
organizing the Poor People’s Cam-
paign, envisioned as a way to
B ENNETT
C OLLEGE
Julianne
Malveaux
bring tens of thousands of people
to Washington, D.C. to demand
that each department of the feder-
al government recognize and
ameliorate poverty issues in hous-
ing, education, health, and other
areas. The Poor People’s cam-
million African Americans. Pro-
portionately, the 1963 march drew
5 times as many African Ameri-
cans as the 2013 March.
What does this mean when we
look at the status of African Amer-
icans then and now?
In 1963, the movement had clear
goals. African Americans had
been denied employment rights,
civil rights, civil liberties, and vot-
ing rights. The hundreds of
thousands of African Americans
who came to Washington were
protesting, not only the restoration
of these rights, but also a stop to
the police brutality that had killed
Fifty years after the March on
Washington, we have yet to achieve
the metrics that Dr. King offered
paign was more muted than
expected in the wake of Dr. King’s
1968 assassination, but some of
the people came anyway.
Even before the 2013 commem-
orative march was organized,
estimates were that 100,000 would
join that March. In 1963, about
1.3 percent of our nation’s 18.9
million
African
Americans
marched. Before the 2013 march
(numbers may change as t) the
100,000 estimate represents just .2
oof one percent of our nation’s 44
or crippled supporters. People
were so focused that change was
made, and when Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. accepted the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1964, he articulated his
vision for our nation. He said:
“I have the audacity to believe
that peoples everywhere can have
three meals a day for their bodies,
education and culture for their
minds, and dignity, equality and
freedom for their spirits.” He set
out an agenda that was economic,
social and political. Fifty years
after the March on Washington,
we have yet to achieve the metrics
that Dr. King offered. Millions
experience “food insecurity”, or
have nothing to eat several times a
month. The education gap has not
been closed, and African Ameri-
can students are differently treated
than others in the K-12 education
system.
Where
is
the
equality? Paraphrasing Dr. King,
African Americans have twice the
negatives and half to positives in
terms of equity. Little freedom
has been achieved, especially
when trillions are spent on sense-
less wars, while our national
unemployment rate exceeds 7 per-
cent and the unofficial black
unemployment rate is 25 percent.
In the five years after the 1963
March on Washington, there were
setbacks, but also the achievement
of far-reaching goals. After the
commemoration, the several
events in Washington, DC, parallel
events in other cities, and the
NAACP’s online march, what will
be the results? Will this genera-
tion be as effective as Dr. King and
his generation was? Will we
mobilize around Voting Rights
after the setback of a Supreme
Court decision? Will we push to
close the employment gap
between African Americans and
others?