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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Wright, Amy Nathan. "Civil Rights’ “Unfinished Business”: Poverty, Race, and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign," University of Texas at Austin, July 2007. Advisor: Janet M. Davis
In May 1968, a racially, geographically, and politically diverse coalition of poor people joined forces to protest the unseen poverty they suffered from on a daily basis. Under the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) approximately 3,000 African American, Mexican American, American Indian, Puerto Rican, and white Appalachian poor people caravanned to Washington, D.C., and built a temporary city—Resurrection City—on the symbolic space of the National Mall, where they remained for over six weeks as part of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign (PPC). The caravans and temporary shantytown brought poverty into the national spotlight, exposing the bleak conditions impoverished people experienced on a daily basis. In Resurrection City volunteers provided social services and basic necessities, while participants conducted daily protests at nearby government agencies, demanding assistance for the basic needs of housing, food, and jobs. The ultimate goal of the PPC was to produce a radical redistribution of wealth, but most involved hoped to at least expose the pervasiveness of poverty and persuade Congress to fund new and existing social programs. This radical social experiment was the first national, multiracial anti-poverty movement of the era, yet it has received scant scholarly attention. This dissertation provides a comprehensive narrative of this significant yet neglected movement reveals the complexity of national, grassroots, multiracial, class-based activism that challenged the nation to face the problem of poverty during the most tumultuous year of the era. Civil rights scholars tend to dismissively characterize the PPC as the last gasp of the civil rights movement—a failed campaign with no substantial lasting consequences. However, this dissertation argues that rather than simply being Martin Luther King Jr.‘s “last crusade,” the PPC represents civil rights’ “unfinished business.” The problems this campaign tried to address—hunger, joblessness, homelessness, inadequate health care, a failed welfare system—still persist, and people of color, particularly women and children, continue to experience poverty and its effects disproportionately.
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