Resurrection City; The Poor People's Campaign

They began arriving by the busloads on May 12, 1968 to demand economic justice. The Poor People’s Campaign, the brainchild of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), drew a diverse coalition of white, Latino, Indigenous and Black Americans to Washington, D.C., from across the country. They came from big cities, both coasts, Appalachia, the Deep South, the Midwest and the Southwest, then all settled in to become residents of “Resurrection City.” The makeshift tent city spread across 15 acres near the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument in an encampment designed as a multi-day protest against government inaction on poverty. This is a pho...View all