2. .
Robert Kennedy Visits the Mississippi Delta
Despite the War on Poverty, during Congressional
subcommittee hearings about the pervasiveness of hunger
nationwide, civil rights lawyer Marian Wright (at top left), the
first Black woman admitted to the State Bar of Mississippi,
testified in March 1967 about widespread unemployment and
starvation in the Mississippi Delta: “They’re starving, and
those who can get the bus fare to go north are trying to go
north... I wish that [the senators] would have a chance to go
and just look at the empty cupboards in the Delta and the
number of people who are going around and begging just to
feed their children.” At Wright’s request, Senator Robert
Kennedy (D-NY) and three others visited the children of poor
Mississippi sharecroppers in April 1967. The visit became a
media event and put hunger on the national political agenda
for the first time in decades. Kennedy subsequently became
one of the most visible and passionate politicians advocating
for racial and economic justice in the late-1960s. At an SCLC
meeting that September, Wright convinced King of the need to
launch a campaign against racialized poverty in hopes of
“uplifting the invisible poor.”
3. On Dec 4, King announced the SCLC’s
plan to launch a “Poor People’s Campaign”
to pressure Congress to pass an economic
bill of rights and address widespread issues
of food insecurity, joblessness, and
inadequate housing. The SCLC planned a
mule-train march from Marks, Mississippi,
to Washington, D.C., where protesters
would camp in tents on the National Mall
to dramatize the plight of the poor and the
failings of Johnson’s War on Poverty to
meaningfully address them. King believed
this would be the culmination of SCLC’s
work, fusing its demands for racial justice
and economic justice.
The Poor People’s Campaign
4. Goals of the Poor People’s March
• $30 billion annual appropriation to fight poverty [~$268 billion in
2024 dollars].
• Congressional legislation guaranteeing full employment.
• A guaranteed annual income.
• Construction of 500,000 low-cost housing units to eliminate “slums.”
• Passage of an Economic Bill of Rights.
5. Preaching at the National
Cathedral in Washington on
March 31, King said, “We read
one day, ‘We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are
endowed by their creator with
certain inalienable rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty,
and the pursuit of Happiness.
But if a man doesn’t have a job
or an income, he has neither life
nor liberty nor the possibility for
the pursuit of happiness. He
merely exists.”
6. Amidst work on the Poor People’s Campaign, King insisted
over his aides’ objections on marching in support of
Memphis sanitation workers striking for higher wages and
better working conditions after two workers were crushed to
death in the back of a malfunctioning garbage truck. After a
protest several days earlier turned violent, King returned to
Memphis on April 3 with aides (from left), Andrew Young,
Ralph Abernathy and Bernard Lee. King’s flight had been
delayed in Atlanta because of a bomb threat.
7. “And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the
threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
…Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it
really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t
mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not
concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to
the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get
there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the
promised land. And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not
fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
The “Mountaintop” Speech
In what would become known as “the
Mountaintop Speech,” made at the Mason
Temple in Memphis the night before his
death, King spoke these prophetic words:
8. Assassination of
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(4 Apr 1968)
Crowding around their slain leader on
the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in
Memphis, King’s aides indicated for
police the direction from which the
fatal shots were fired.
9. Members of the SCLC gathered in stunned silence in King’s hotel room
after his death.
10.
11.
12. Stokely Carmichael, both a critic and friend of King,
greeted his widow at the funeral (9 Apr 1968). After
learning of King’s assassination, Carmichael
proclaimed, “When white America killed Dr. King
last night, she declared war on us. It would have
been better if she had killed [Black Panther] Rap
Brown…or Stokely Carmichael. But when she killed
Dr. King, she lost it…He was the one man in our
race who was trying to teach our people to have
love, compassion and mercy for white people.”
Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, herself
widowed by political violence, offered
condolences to Coretta Scott King after her
husband’s murder.
13. (Chicago, 6-8 Apr 1968)
Holy Week Uprisings
Following King’s assassination, violence broke out in cities across the
country, including Chicago, Washington, and Baltimore.
14. 350 people were arrested for looting in
Chicago in the days after King’s
murder. According to published reports,
nine to eleven people died during the
violence.
At left, Chicago police, shown
here with rifles at the ready,
crouched behind a patrol car
to take cover from reported
sniper fire.
Below, Chicago burned.
15. Many political commentators and historians credit
James Brown’s concert at Boston Garden the night
after King’s death with sparing the city of Boston
the turbulent rebellions that engulfed other major
urban centers in April 1968. The city paid Brown
for the right to broadcast the show live,
encouraging most residents to stay home.
17. “I have always believed that the government was part of a conspiracy, either
directly or indirectly, to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”
--Rev. Jesse Jackson, a close King aide,
Leader of Operation PUSH, and 1988 Presidential Candidate
“I’ve always thought the FBI might be involved in some way…You have to
remember this was a time when the politics of assassination was acceptable in this
country…I think it’s naïve to assume these institutions were not capable of doing
the same thing at home [as they were willing to do abroad] or to say each of these
deaths [King and the two Kennedys] was an isolated incident by ‘a single assassin.’
It was government policy.”
--Rev. Andrew Young, a close King aide,
UN Ambassador (1977-79), and Mayor of Atlanta (1982-90)
In 1997, Dr. King’s younger son Dexter met with James Earl Ray, then serving a
100-year prison sentence, and afterward concluded that Ray was not the shooter.
18. “Resurrection City”
(May-June 1968)
Perhaps the most moving and innovative part of the Poor
People’s Campaign was the decision for demonstrators
to camp out on the National Mall, making visible the
presence and plight of impoverished Americans of all
races and ethnicities. As opposed to more localized
demonstrations against poverty, this campaign, carried
on in King’s memory, brought the issue to the nation’s
power center, lobbying specific government agencies
like the Department of Agriculture, which played a role
in their suffering and had the power to alleviate it. A
potent symbol of the movement, Resurrection City was
plagued by poor weather and sanitation issues, as well as
other logistical problems. It was forced to close in June
when its permit expired. King’s last campaign had
enormous moral and symbolic significance but won few
tangible victories.
19. Reflection: Remembering King
• King is often celebrated as the central or defining figure of the civil
rights movement, particularly in terms of the “master narrative.” What
political purpose is served by positioning King’s vision of obtaining
Black freedom and racial justice through nonviolence as the only
legitimate vision?
• In what ways is King misremembered? How is his legacy misread,
misused, or abused?
• How should he be remembered? What aspects of his life and work
should be amplified or uplifted in teaching about him?
20. Following Johnson’s announcement that he would not seek reelection, made less than a
week before King’s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy campaigned for the Democratic
nomination on an antiwar, antipoverty platform. He made a strong showing during the
California Democratic primary in June, defeating opponent Eugene McCarthy.
21. Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
(5 Jun 1968)
Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian national opposed to American support of Israel,
shot and killed Kennedy as he walked through the kitchen of the
Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles immediately following his victory speech
in the California primary.
23. Johnson established a commission to investigate the violence at the
DNC. The subsequent Walker Report found, “[O]n the part of the police
there was enough wild club swinging, enough cries of hatred, enough
gratuitous beating to make the conclusion inescapable that individual
policemen, and lots of them, committed violent acts far in excess of the
requisite force for crowd dispersal or arrest. To read dispassionately the
hundreds of statements describing at firsthand the events of Sunday and
Monday nights is to become convinced of the presence of what can only
be called a police riot.”
24. Black Panther Bobby Seale was charged
along with other activists, members of
the so-called “Chicago 8,” with
conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968
Democratic National Convention.
During the trial, Seale was bound to his
chair and gagged for refusing to be quiet
while serving as his own attorney,
vividly illustrating the racism embedded
in the criminal justice system. Seale’s
case was eventually severed from the
other seven defendants, all of whom
were white. All eight were eventually
acquitted.
Bobby Seale and
the Trial of the Chicago Eight
29. (15 Nov 1968)
The election of Republican
Richard Nixon, longtime foe
of the liberal Kennedy
dynasty, signified the end of
1960s liberalism and marked
a conservative realignment of
American politics more
broadly.
Editor's Notes
Stunned, silent members of the SCLC in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s room, after his death. Andrew Young (far left, under table lamp) and King's colleague, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, seated in middle on far bed
![.
Robert Kennedy Visits the Mississippi Delta
Despite the War on Poverty, during Congressional
subcommittee hearings about the pervasiveness of hunger
nationwide, civil rights lawyer Marian Wright (at top left), the
first Black woman admitted to the State Bar of Mississippi,
testified in March 1967 about widespread unemployment and
starvation in the Mississippi Delta: “They’re starving, and
those who can get the bus fare to go north are trying to go
north... I wish that [the senators] would have a chance to go
and just look at the empty cupboards in the Delta and the
number of people who are going around and begging just to
feed their children.” At Wright’s request, Senator Robert
Kennedy (D-NY) and three others visited the children of poor
Mississippi sharecroppers in April 1967. The visit became a
media event and put hunger on the national political agenda
for the first time in decades. Kennedy subsequently became
one of the most visible and passionate politicians advocating
for racial and economic justice in the late-1960s. At an SCLC
meeting that September, Wright convinced King of the need to
launch a campaign against racialized poverty in hopes of
“uplifting the invisible poor.”](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)