The Poor People's Campaign

June is not Black History month here in the U.S.A. No stamps, no "I have a dream" audio/photo clip montage. We are in June. White history is in full swing now. And now, the blackwashing of a previously whitewashed minister from Alabama.

Despite the absence of any significant documentation regarding the years between the 1965 march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama and his slaying in 1968, King remained not only committed to the struggle for Black Americans but engaged in what would be the most militant and controversial endeavor of his life: organizing America's poor. He maintaned that civil rights were baseless without "human rights" - including economic rights.

Now even once sympathetic allies to King's cause sought to abandon ship. Funny how quick the 'liberals' become de-liberalized when you talk about radically altering the economic structure of the nation. Remember, the majority of those living in conditions of poverty were white. King traveled the country to assemble what he deemed "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington engagin in nonviolent direct action with the hopes of contructing a poor people's bill of rights. He vociferously denounced America's militarism in Vietnam, Africa and Latin America, claimined the U.S. to be "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

King was no longer a Southern Baptist minister with a racial perspective or platform who could be accommodated and appeased. He was now perceived a class conscious radical whose rhetoric could incite insurrection amongst America's disaffected, multiracial poor.

It is 2005 in America. King is dead. The nation is as economically affluent as ever yet poverty and global warfare are perpetuated. Seems to me that the world we live in is strikingly similar to the world King lived in. And therefore there is still one surefire way in provoking the wrath of a nation. There is an easy path to historical anonymity/castration. There is an easy way to be ousted by the camps of conservatives and liberals alike. Care about and mobilize the poor.

Thanks to Jeff Cohen and Mornam Solomon for their article entitled, "The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV", appearing in You Are Being Lied To, edited by Russ Kick.