Cold Open

It’s June 24th, 1968 on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.

In the shadow of the Peace Monument, Reverend Ralph Abernathy leads a large crowd in protest.

Abernathy is a revered Black activist and Baptist minister from Alabama. He and his fellow protesters are members of a radical new anti-poverty movement called the Poor People’s Campaign. By bringing together poor Americans and shining a light on their suffering, the Campaign hopes to spur the government into addressing the nation’s economic inequality.

Marching with determination, Abernathy hurls his fist into the air, his face burning with passion. But beneath his resolute demeanor is a growing sense of dread that today might mark the end of their fledgling movement.

At the nearby National Mall, over a thousand police officers are encircling and dismantling a 16-acre encampment of tents and wooden shacks called Resurrection City. For the past 6 weeks, Abernathy and nearly 3,000 members of the Poor People’s Campaign have made Resurrection City their home, living and demonstrating out of the shantytown. But their requests to extend their camping permit have been denied, and today that permit expires.

As Abernathy watches Resurrection City get evicted, vans from the Metropolitan Police Department pull up alongside the protesters. A line of officers in riot helmets and face shields jump out, and Abernathy and his fellow protestors are apprehended and herded onto a police bus.

Through it all, Abernathy remains unfazed. He’s used to getting arrested for his activism, and he never lets it end his fights. So as he climbs into the police bus, he scans the crowd of demonstrators lingering outside and raises his right hand in a peace sign.

As Abernathy drops down into a seat on the bus, reporters flock to his open window. They ask him how he feels about being arrested. Abernathy just shrugs. The only thing he wishes is that the original architect of the campaign and his perennial jail mate, the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., could be sitting by his side.

As the bus pulls away from the Capital, Ralph hears a disappointing commotion as police officers and bulldozers tear down their encampment, razing what was once a vibrant community, to the ground. He mourns its loss, but as the bus carries them away, and Resurrection City becomes just a memory, Abernathy holds onto the hope that their cause will endure.

At the end of the 1960s, after years of fighting for the rights of Black Americans, several civil rights leaders turned their attention to a related issue: poverty. Through a multiracial coalition coined the Poor People’s Campaign, they sought to shine a light on the hundreds of thousands of Americans suffering in the nation's shadows. And in the summer of 1968, they brought their protest to the front door of the federal government. In the heart of the nation’s capital, they staged a six-week-long demonstration they hoped would force legislators to look poverty in the eye, bringing their campaign to its zenith just five days before Resurrection City’s eviction, when 50,000 Americans descended on the National Mall for a rally called Solidarity Day on June 19th, 1968.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is June 19th, 1968: 'Solidarity Day' Caps an American Protest Against Poverty.

Act One

It’s November 27th, 1967 in Frogmore, South Carolina.

Beneath the canopy of oak trees, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. bounds toward a white, single-story building – the site of an ongoing staff retreat for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, also known as the SCLC.

This group is one of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations, founded by King and several other activists ten years ago. Over its first decade, the SCLC registered thousands of voters, connected hundreds of organizations, and played a major role in the nation’s biggest protests.

But, despite all their achievements, the organization still suffers from discord. Normally, they can find enough common ground to bring them back together. But King worries that unity will soon be even harder to achieve because the SCLC is about to head in a bold new direction. Today, King intends to announce the start of what will be called the Poor People’s Campaign.

The seeds of this new enterprise were sown over a year ago, when King visited Marks, Mississippi, with his friend and closest associate, Reverend Ralph Abernathy. Marks is a tiny town of 2,600 people in the heart of the poorest county in the United States. The residents’ living conditions deeply upset King. In the streets, children played barefoot, many of them never having had shoes in their entire lives. At a local elementary school, King watched the teacher give a single apple slice and a few stale crackers to each malnourished student. The sight was enough to bring King to tears.

He left the town of Marks determined to make America’s leaders witness its poverty and deprivation. So over the coming summer, several senators were brought to Marks, including Robert F. Kennedy, brother to the late President John F. Kennedy.

The experience made Robert Kennedy and his progressive peers desperate to bring bills to Congress, which would address the country’s hunger, housing, and unemployment crises. But the nation’s attention was focused halfway across the world, on the Vietnam War. In order to lure them back to domestic struggles, Senator Kennedy urged King to demand the government’s attention by bringing a mass assembly of poor Americans to Washington.

Now, inside one of Frogmore’s public halls, King introduces his idea to the SCLC staff:

"KING: The emergency we now face is economic, and it is a desperate and worsening situation for the 35 million poor people in America… In our society, it's murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist."

To combat this emergency, King proposes that the SCLC start a multiracial coalition focused on highlighting the plight of America’s poor and calling for legislative action. He calls it the Poor People’s Campaign. And By the summer of 1968, King envisions bringing thousands of Americans from across the country to Washington, D.C. where they will illegally occupy the National Mall until their demands are met. King expects this will bring mass arrests, but he hopes the photos of those arrests will spread through the news like wildfire, bringing the face of poverty into the homes of millions of Americans and stirring the public’s sympathy.

But many of his colleagues balk at the plan. Some advocate fiercely against openly courting mass arrests. Others dismiss King’s vision and argue that the SCLC has a moral obligation to maintain their focus on civil rights for Black Americans, where they still have so far to go.

But King’s determination and persuasiveness triumph. A week later, he holds a press conference to publicly announce the Poor People’s Campaign and their non-negotiable demands, which include anti-poverty funds, full employment, and the annual construction of 500,000 affordable residences.

By March 31st, plans for the occupation of the National Mall are in full swing. In the towering National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., King announces that the mass pilgrimage to the nation’s capital will begin in Marks, Mississippi, the same small town where he had been so moved, witnessing people live with so little.

But just days later, tragedy strikes. On April 4th, 1968, while supporting a workers’ strike in Memphis, Tennessee, King is shot and killed.

The assassination of Martin Luther King will be a brutal blow to the Poor People’s Campaign and the fight for civil rights. With the nation in mourning, riots flooding the streets, and the SCLC’s leadership in disarray, it will be up to one of King’s contemporaries to pave a new path forward.

Act Two

It’s April 29th, 1968, at the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.

From his seat at a conference table, Reverend Ralph Abernathy leans into a microphone and reads out a five-page statement of demands from the Poor People’s Campaign to the U.S. Government.

After the murder of Martin Luther King a few short weeks ago, Abernathy called together a hundred leaders from poor black, Indigenous, Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, and white communities. He requested them to join him here in Washington, to confront the federal government with facts from their personal struggles with poverty.

And over the next few days, Abernathy and the other leaders from the Campaign, plan to visit various government agencies to read the demands curated by their so-called “Committee of 100.”  These demands are as diverse as their coalition and include affordable housing, land rights for indigenous communities, and – inspired by King and Abernathy’s trip to Marks, Mississippi – free school lunches for poor children.

Now, Abernathy recounts these requests to a crowd that includes journalists, government officials, dozens of poor farmers, and the man in charge of enacting federal laws on food, farming, and rural economic development, the Secretary of Agriculture.

After Abernathy reads the final words of his statement, imploring the department to stop ignoring the poor, he retreats to a corner of the room, while the poor farmers head to the microphone. As the first farmer begins to speak, Abernathy watches the crowd with a keen eye. He wants to make sure everything goes perfectly because today is an important step toward their larger goal: fulfilling Dr. King’s vision to build Resurrection City, an encampment along the National Mall where thousands of poor Americans can come to galvanize the nation against poverty.

But Abernathy has made some notable changes to his predecessor’s plans. After King’s murder, riots exploded in over 200 cities, and, within a week of his death, dozens of protestors died, thousands were injured, and tens of thousands were arrested. In order to reassert their movement’s devotion to nonviolence and distance themselves from the fury of these riots, Abernathy has decided to make a fundamental alteration to King’s original strategy. While his friend and mentor, envisioned an illegal occupation, Abernathy has opted to go through proper channels and obtain all necessary permits. But to pull this off, he needs to get some of the government on his side.

Abernathy shifts his gaze toward the Secretary of Agriculture, whose support he hopes will re-establish the legitimacy of the Poor People’s Campaign and ease the administrative hurdles for Resurrection City.

As the last farmer leaves the microphone, the Secretary rises and offers Abernathy his hand, deeply moved by the farmer’s words. A camera bulb flashes and the two men shake hands, giving Abernathy the front-page endorsement he needs.

Two weeks later, Abernathy and a small group of activists gather at the National Mall where Abernathy symbolically drives a stake into the earth and Resurrection City is born. Construction begins immediately. A-frame plywood shacks are erected to house protestors, as well as several large tents for services such as child care, dining, medical care, and schooling.

Within days, the encampment teems with hundreds of residents. During the day, groups of activists organize demonstrations and meetings with government agencies. At night, sounds of music and poetry emanate from the camp. Yet life at Resurrection City is anything but easy. Relentless heavy rain thrashes the encampment for days at a time, and a flood of muddy swamp water stands inches deep within the makeshift homes.

Agitated by the camp’s brutal conditions, a small group of young men begin drunkenly harassing, assaulting, and stealing from their neighbors. Eventually, Abernathy and the leaders of Resurrection City evict the troublemakers and send them back to their home states, but not before their behavior has made headlines and scared away many potential new arrivals.

An additional setback comes just days later when yet another assassination shocks the country. On June 5th, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a key ally in their fights against poverty and discrimination, is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. His death hangs heavily over Resurrection City, the second prominent advocate for their movement to be murdered in just a handful of weeks.

Three days later, Abernathy will stand at the edge of the camp, watching Kennedy’s funeral procession pass en route to Arlington National Cemetery. As his coffin passes and a voice behind him breaks out into song, Abernathy will commit himself to transforming his grief into resolve once again. And soon after, he will begin planning the campaign’s biggest demonstration yet — an event that will bring over 50,000 Americans to Washington, and amplify their demands for radical action against poverty.

Act Three

It’s June 19th, 1968, two weeks after Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Reverend Ralph Abernathy walks among a crowd of thousands gathered at the foot of the Washington Monument. In the morning heat, a group of young men from an auto workers union pass out handmade protest signs. Next to them, a catholic nun waves a flag honoring the late Martin Luther King Jr. and a Native American man in feathered headdress holds his own sign advocating for Indigenous rights.

Today is Solidarity Day. And true to its name, the rally has drawn a remarkably diverse crowd of over 50,000 Americans to Washington D.C. They are the epitome of Abernathy and Martin Luther King’s vision of a unified force, with Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs raising their voices together to fight inequality.

As they march toward the Lincoln Memorial, sounds of Native American drums, African-American spirituals, and protest chants mingle together. The day’s speakers include civil rights luminaries and political leaders such as Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

It’s a blisteringly hot day, but the crowd remains steadfast. Thousands of protestors slip into the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, defying its “no swimming” signs to cool off. And as the rally comes to an end, the crowd links arms in the water and raises their voices in song. From the stage, Abernathy watches on with a smile, moved to see King’s vision embodied by so many diverse communities demonstrating together.

But the success of Solidarity Day does not last. Four days later, a group of young people at the edge of Resurrection City, begin to pelt police with rocks. The officers respond by firing tear gas, and news of the violence is all the ammunition the National Park Service needs to deny the Poor People’s Campaign a permit extension.

The next day, Resurrection City’s 2,500 residents move out of their makeshift shelters and disperse back across the nation. Abernathy leads a group of stragglers in protest at Capitol Hill, seeking mass arrest as one final high-profile act by the people of Resurrection City. But as the encampment falls, without any significant legislative change to show for it, many are already calling the movement a failure.

Despite its disappointing final chapter, the causes of the Poor People’s Campaign will endure. Within a year, the seeds are sown at the Department of Agriculture for federal programs which, by the 1990s, will provide food and nutritional resources to nearly 8 million infants, children, and pregnant women. In 1970, Congress will also approve a $243 million program to expand and revamp school lunches, going some way to addressing the heartbreakingly meager meal in Marks, Mississippi that sparked Abernathy and King’s campaign.

But as the years pass, tens of millions of Americans will continue to live in poverty, and decades on, the Poor People’s Campaign will be revived by another generation. Under new leadership, the movement will be resurrected in 2018, calling once again for greater equality and continuing the fight against poverty that brought thousands of Americans together in protest fifty years earlier on June 19th, 1968.

Outro

Next on History Daily. June 20th, 1975. Steven Spielberg's thriller Jaws is released in theaters and becomes the highest-grossing movie in history.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and researched by Montgomery Sutton.

Executive Producers are Alexandra Currie-Buckner for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.