Today in Labor History May 13, 1968: The Poor People’s Campaign raised Resurrection City, in Washington, D.C. The tent shanty town, part of the campaign to gain economic justice for poor people, existed for six weeks. The Poor People’s Campaign was originally organized by Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). However, Ralph Abernathy took over leadership after King’s assassination. It developed from the realization that civil rights gains had not improved material conditions for African Americans. However, the Poor People’s Campaign was a multiracial movement that included white, Asian Hispanic and Indigenous Americans. Some of the Campaign’s leaders included Chicano leaders Corky Gonzales and Reies Tijerina. Other participants included Appalachian miners. The FBI and military intelligence spied on the camp and wiretapped the campaign. Some of the spies posed as journalists, or as black militants.
April 4, 1968, #CivilRights leader Reverend #MartinLutherKing Jr., was shot & killed while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in #Memphis, #Tennessee. Considered one of the greatest Americans to ever live, he was assassinated 56 years ago today.
Today, the family of #CivilRights leader Rev #MartinLutherKing Jr. made a rare visit to #Memphis — where he was assassinated — to mark the 56th anniversary of his murder.
The King family members went to draw attention to what they see as a rising #threat of #PoliticalViolence today.
Rising numbers of people, particularly #Republicans, say such #violence may be necessary to "save our country” & coincides w/ #Trump stepping up his violent rhetoric.
#MLK’s son, #MartinLutherKing III, said the family feels it's important to be there in an #election yr, "This is the first yr that we actually are going back as a family to #Memphis, & we felt that it was extraordinarily important…," said King III's wife, Arndrea Waters King.
She said the King family sees little difference between the #violent rhetoric coming from some #ChristianNationalists today & the violent rhetoric from the #KKK 60 yrs ago.
King III says #civility in #politics is diminishing, & he worries that more lives will be lost unless the nation recommits itself to #nonviolence, as his father preached.
"We believe we have to go into difficult areas, to use our platform, to use our voice to lift up what we believe is #good, #just & #right. And so we're willing to make a sacrifice" to visit #Memphis despite the painful memories it brings, he said.
Today In Labor History April 4, 1968: James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King at the Lorraine Hotel, Memphis, Tennessee. King was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers’ strike that had started in February, 1968, for better working conditions and higher pay. The strike began 2 weeks after 2 workers were crushed to death when their truck malfunctioned, intensifying the already high level of frustration and anger over working conditions and safety. King led a protest march on March 28 . Over 20,000 kids cut class to join the demonstration. Some members of the march began smashing downtown windows and looting. The cops intervened with mace, tear gas, clubs and live gunfire, killing 16-year-old Larry Paine, who had his hands in the air when he was shot. On April 3, one day before his assassination, King gave his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
Today in Labor History: March 28, 1968: Martin Luther King led a march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Police attacked the workers with mace and sticks. A 16-year old boy was shot. 280 workers were arrested. He was assassinated a few days later after speaking to the striking workers. The sanitation workers were mostly black. They worked for starvation wages under plantation like conditions, generally under racist white bosses. Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for talking back, and they got no breaks. Organizing escalated in the early 1960s and reached its peak in February, 1968, when two workers were crushed to death in the back of a garbage truck.
Today in Labor History March 21, 1965: 3,200 people began the third march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest racial violence. Earlier efforts to hold the march had failed when police attacked demonstrators and a minister was fatally beaten by a group of Selma whites. The five-day walk ended March 26, when 20,000 people joined the marchers in front of the Alabama state Capitol in Montgomery. This time they were defended by national guards and FBI agents. Soon after, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
"The day before he was assassinated in 1968, Dr. King told an audience that 'the nation is sick, trouble is in the land.'
And it sure feels that way today."
It remains this way, all these years later, because, despite repeated opportunities to confront the deep systemic racism that is at the root of so much of our sickness, large numbers of us refuse. We vote as we do because racism strongly lures us.
"In hindsight, it is clear that a central function of the theology taught in my Southern Baptist church was to heighten my sense of personal sin while dulling my moral sensibilities about the systemic racism swirling just outside the church windows. This was, I now understand, an unacknowledged prerequisite for any theology that could survive our self-perceptions and the status quo of our lives."