Fifty in Five: Will We Be Marching in Place?

This year’s 50^th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington and the accompanying “I have a Dream” speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been inspiring, but also reminds us of the next 50^th anniversary that the nation will mark in five years: King’s assassination in April 1968 and the assassination two months later, in June, of Robert F. Kennedy, who was running for president that year.

What these approaching anniversaries tell us is that some of the contentious issues of ‘68 continue to haunt us today: gun violence and economic inequality.

Both King and Kennedy were shot to death, King by sniper rifle in Memphis, Tenn. An escaped convict from Missouri, James Earl Ray, was convicted of the killing. Kennedy was killed at a campaign event in a California hotel by a handgun, a .22 caliber revolver fired by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian.  

Gun violence today is pervasive. In the last month alone there has been several mass shootings including 12 dead at the Washington Naval Yard, 13 injured including a 3-year-old in Chicago, followed by four gun deaths in that city a couple of nights later. In fact, hardly a month goes by when there isn’t some level of gun violence and mass death somewhere in the United States. No one seems to know of a solution other than to sell more guns.

Economically, the middle class, based on economic data including lagging wage growth and rising health care and food costs, is declining while the ranks of the very wealthy and the poor are increasing, creating, as many economists believe, an inequality of opportunity and outcome that could lead to a destructive divide in our society. Already, even discussion of this seeming imbalance draws cries of class warfare.

To address economic disparity in ’68, the Poor People’s Campaign, a march on Washington to essentially petition the government, was being organized by King before he was gunned down on April 4. Despite his death and the wrenching sorrow it caused, the campaign went on as planned, which is how King had wanted.

Resurrection City, 1968

 

In June, more than 3,000 marchersdescended on the nation’s capital, demanding “economic justice” for America’s poor, which included blacks, whites, Native Americans and Hispanics. They set up a tent encampment, which they named Resurrection City, on the Mall and endured heat, rain and mud for six weeks as campaign organizers sent out groups to various federal agencies to lobby for economic equality and jobs.

Kennedy’s wife, Ethel, attended the Mother’s Day opening of Resurrection City. Less than three weeks later, her husband, who had urged King to have the poor march on Washington, was assassinated, on June 5. His funeral procession traveled through Resurrection City on its way to Arlington Cemetery.   

The campaign was not as successful as the organizers had hoped, marred by lack of coordination, leadership conflicts and racial tension. The most it achieved was free surplus food distribution in about 200 counties, but it never reached its goals of giving low-income wage earners access to land and capital, unemployment assistance, and meaningful jobs at strong wages.

By late June, the federal Department of Interior closed down Resurrection City because the organizers’ National Park Service permit had expired. Some violence and arrests occurred, but the six-week campaign was largely peaceful. It continued in small groups meeting outside that year’s political conventions in Miami and Chicago.

The contemporary reflection of the Poor People’s Campaign of ’68 is the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, which advocated for the same issues of social and economic equality, but also protested against perceived corporate influence, particularly by the finance industry, on government. They set up tents in Zuccotti Park in New York City’s financial district and after two months were forced to leave.

Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park, 2011

 

 

Occupy Wall Street spawned Occupy movements in cities, college campuses and outside corporate headquarters across the country. But like the Poor People’s Campaign, Occupy Wall Street had little effect on public policy other than to raise political awareness of the issues, the importance of which now registers in polls.

Let’s hope that five years from now we’re celebrating progress on the issues of gun violence and economic inequality instead of noting how little has changed in 50 years.