CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

UNIT 10

RISE OF CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN 1950’s

§The events of World War II set the stage for the civil rights movement. The demand for
soldiers in the early 1940s created a shortage of white male laborers. That labor shortage
opened up new job opportunities for African Americans, Latinos, and white women.

§Nearly one million African Americans served in the armed forces, which needed so many
fighting men that they had to end their discriminatory policies. Such policies had previously
kept African Americans from serving in fighting units.

§Many African-American soldiers returned from the war determined to fight for their own
freedom now that they had helped defeat fascist regimes overseas.

§During the war, civil rights organizations actively campaigned for African-American voting
rights and challenged Jim Crow laws.

§In response to protests, President Roosevelt issued a presidential directive prohibiting racial
dis crimination by federal agencies and all companies that were engaged in war work.

§The groundwork was laid for more organized campaigns to end segregation throughout the
United States.

WHAT WERE THE JIM CROW LAWS?

§Jim Crow segregation was a way of life that combined a system of anti-black laws and race-
prejudiced cultural practices. The term "Jim Crow" is often used as a synonym for racial
segregation, particularly in the American South.

§The Jim Crow South was the era during which local and state laws enforced the legal
segregation of white and black citizens from the 1870s into the 1960s. In the Jim Crow South,
it was illegal for black Americans to ride in the front of public buses, eat at a “whites only”
restaurant, or attend a “white” public school.
§It required that African Americans demonstrate subservience and inferiority to whites at all
times. A black man who succeeded in business might find his shop burned to the ground by
jealous whites. A black woman who failed to step off of the sidewalk to make way for a white
man might be fired by her employer the following day.

§A black man who had a relationship with a white woman might be hanged in the middle of
town. Most Southern whites interpreted any claim to pride or equality by African Americans
as an affront.

§The term Jim Crow originated from the name of a black character from early- and mid-
nineteenth century American theater. Crows are black birds, and Crow was the last name of a
stock fictional black character, who was almost always played onstage by a white man in
wearing blackface makeup.

§Due to the prevalence of this character, "Jim Crow" became a derogatory term for people of
African descent.

§From the late 1800s, the name Jim Crow came to signify the social and legal segregation of
black Americans from white.

§After the Civil War and Reconstruction, whites disenfranchised black men (by means of the
poll tax, literacy test, and more), frequently relegated black workers to low-paying jobs, and
poorly funded public schools for black children.

§In this way, whites in the Jim Crow South crafted a bitter web of political, economic, and
social barriers to full and equal citizenship for their fellow black citizens.

PLESSY V. FERGUSON

§An African American man from New Orleans named Homer Plessy challenged segregated
train cars. In 1892, Plessy boarded a "whites-only" compartment on a train, and was arrested
when he refused to move to a "colored" compartment when called upon to do so.

§Plessy planned to be arrested, by arguing that segregation laws violated the Fourteenth
Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law for all citizens

§Plessy's case against segregation found its way through the court system, finally arriving in
the Supreme Court in 1896. In a majority decision, the Court ruled that Segregation law did
not violate the Fourteenth Amendment so long as separate accommodations for whites and
blacks were equal.

§Summarizing the majority ruling, Justice Henry Brown wrote, "We consider the underlying
fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of
the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by
reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that
construction upon it."

§The Plessy ruling rendered racial segregation legal throughout the United States. Although
Jim Crow segregation was practiced most fiercely in the Deep South, some segregationist
practices, especially housing and job discrimination, existed elsewhere in the United States as
well.

JIM CROW LAWS COME UNDER ATTACK

§Jim Crow segregation came under increasing attack following the Second World War.

§In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color-line in baseball when he joined the Brooklyn
Dodgers.

§In 1948, President Truman issued an executive order officially desegregating the US armed
forces.

§But it was not until 1954 that the Plessy decision was overturned in the case of Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka, when the Supreme Court ruled that segregated facilities were
"inherently unequal."

§Throughout the 1960s, thanks to the work of the Civil Rights Movement, Jim Crow was
dismantled piece by piece, through legislation that made it illegal to segregate public
facilities, suppress voting, discriminate in housing, or prohibit interracial marriage.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE

ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE

(NAACP)
§The desegregation campaign was led largely by the NAACP, which had fought since 1909
to end segregation.

§One influential figure in this campaign was Charles Hamilton Houston, a brilliant Howard
University law professor who also served as chief legal counsel for the NAACP. Houston
focused on the inequality between the separate schools that many states provided. At that
time, the nation spent ten times as much money educating a white child as an African-
American child.

§In 1938, he placed a team of his best law students under the direction of Thurgood Marshall.
Over the next 23 years, Marshall and his NAACP lawyers would win 29 out of 32 cases
argued before the Supreme Court.

§Several of the cases became legal milestones, each chipping away at the segregation
platform of Plessy v. Ferguson.

§In the 1946 case Morgan v. Virginia, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional those
state laws mandating segregated seating on interstate buses.

§In 1950, the high court ruled in Sweatt v. Painter that state law schools must admit black
applicants, even if separate black schools exist.

§Marshall’s most stunning victory came on May 17, 1954, in the case known as Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka.

BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA (1954)

§ORIGINS OF THE CASE- In the early 1950s, the school system of Topeka, Kansas, like all
Southern elementary school systems, operated separate schools for “the two races”—blacks
and whites.

§Reverend Oliver Brown protested that this was unfair to his eight-year-old daughter Linda.
Although the Browns lived near a “white” school, Linda was forced to take a long bus ride to
her “black” school across town.

§In this case, the father of eight-year-old Linda Brown had charged the board of education of
Topeka, Kansas, with violating Linda’s rights by denying her admission to an all white
elementary school four blocks from her house. The nearest all-black elementary school was
21 blocks away.

§THE RULING- The Court ruled that segregated public schools were “inherently” unequal
and therefore unconstitutional. In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court unanimously struck
down segregation in schooling as an unconstitutional violation of the Fourteenth
Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

§LEGAL REASONING-Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP lawyer who argued the Brown
CASE, spent years laying the groundwork to chip away at Jim Crow—the local laws that
required segregated facilities. Marshall had recently won two Supreme Court decisions in
1950 (Mclaurin and Sweatt) that challenged segregation at graduate schools. Then in 1952,
the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Browns’ case.

§The Court deliberated for two years deciding how to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment.
In the end, Chief Justice Earl Warren carefully side stepped Plessy, claiming that segregated
schools were not and never could be equal.

IMPORTANCE OF THE COURT DECISION IN BROWN CASE

§The Court’s decision in Brown had an immediate impact on pending rulings. In a series of
cases after Brown, the Supreme Court prohibited segregation in housing, at public beaches, at
recreation facilities, and in restaurants.

§Later decisions extended equal access to other groups, including women and resident aliens.

§The decision encountered fierce resistance, however. It awakened the old battle cry of states’
rights.

§Directly following Brown, some Congress members circulated the “Southern Manifesto,”
claiming the right of the states to ignore the ruling.

§In taking a stand on a social issue, they said, the Court had taken a step away from simply
interpreting legal precedents. Critics charged that the Warren Court had acted as legislators
and even as sociologists.

§The Brown case strengthened the Civil Rights movement, however, and paved the way for
the end of Jim Crow.
§ The NAACP had fought and won the legal battle and had gained prestige and momentum.
§Americans got the strong message that the federal government now took civil rights
seriously.

REACTION TO THE BROWN DECISION

§Official reaction to the ruling was mixed. In Kansas and Oklahoma, state officials said they
expected segregation to end with little trouble. In Texas the governor promised to comply but
warned that plans might “take years” to work out.

§In Mississippi and Georgia, officials vowed total resistance. Governor Herman Talmadge of
Georgia said “The people of Georgia will not comply with the decision of the court. . . .
We’re going to do whatever is necessary in Georgia to keep white children in white schools
and colored children in colored schools.”

§Within a year, more than 500 school districts had desegregated their classrooms. In
Baltimore, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C., black and white students sat side by side for the
first time in history.

§However, in many areas where African Americans were a majority, whites resisted
desegregation.

§In some places, the Ku Klux Klan reappeared and White Citizens Councils boycotted
businesses that supported desegregation.

IMPACT OF THE COURT DECISION IN BROWN CASE

§Three of the parties involved in Brown—Delaware, Kansas, and the District of Columbia—
began to integrate schools in 1954.

§Topeka County informed the Court that 123 black students were already attending formerly
all-white schools.

§Even so, the Supreme Court was well aware that its decision would be difficult to enforce.
In a follow- up ruling, Brown II (1955), the Court required that integration take place with
“all deliberate speed.” To some this meant quickly. Others interpreted deliberate to mean
slowly.

§Only two Southern states even began to integrate classrooms in 1954: Texas and Arkansas
opened one and two districts, respectively.
§By 1960, less than one percent of the South’s students attended integrated schools. Many
school districts were ordered to use aggressive means to achieve racial balance.

§Courts spent decades supervising forced busing, a practice that often pitted community
against community.

§Still, despite the resistance and the practical difficulties of implementation, Brown stands
today as a watershed, the single point at which breaking the “color barrier” officially became
a federal priority.

CRISIS IN LITTLE ROCK

§In 1948, Arkansas had become the first Southern state to admit African Americans to state
universities without being required by a court order

§Governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to turn away the nine African-American
students who were joining Little Rock’s Central High School. A federal judge ordered Faubus
to let the students into school.

§NAACP members called eight of the students and arranged to drive them to school. They
could not reach the ninth student, Elizabeth Eckford, who did not have a phone, and she set
out alone. Outside Central High, Eckford faced an abusive crowd. Terrified, the 15-year-old
made it to a bus stop where two friendly whites stayed with her.

§The crisis in Little Rock forced Eisenhower to act. He placed the Arkansas National Guard
under federal control and ordered a thousand paratroopers into Little Rock.

§The nation watched the televised coverage of the event. Under the watch of soldiers, the
nine African-American teenagers attended class. But even these soldiers could not protect the
students from troublemakers who confronted them in stairways, in the halls, and in the
cafeteria.

§Throughout the year African-American students were regularly harassed by other students.
At the end of the year, Faubus shut down the school only.

§On September 9, 1957, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights.
Passed by Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, the law gave the attorney general greater
power over school desegregation.
§ It also gave the federal government jurisdiction—or authority—over violations of African-
American voting rights.

THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT

§Impatient with the slow pace of change in the courts, African-American activists had begun
taking direct action to win the rights promised to them by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments to the Constitution. Among those on the frontline of change was Jo Ann
Robinson.

§Four days after the Brown decision in May 1954, Robinson wrote a letter to the mayor of
Montgomery, Alabama, asking that bus drivers no longer be allowed to force riders in the
“colored” section to yield their seats to whites. The mayor refused.

§Little did he know that in less than a year another African-American woman from Alabama
would be at the center of this controversy, and that her name and her words would far outlast
segregation.

§On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and an NAACP officer, took a seat in the
front row of the “colored” section of a Montgomery bus.

§As the bus filled up, the driver ordered Parks and three other African-American passengers
to empty the row they were occupying so that a white man could sit down without having to
sit next to any African Americans.

§“It was time for someone to stand up— or in my case, sit down,” recalled Parks. “I refused
to move.” As Parks stared out the window, the bus driver said, “If you don’t stand up, I’m
going to call the police and have you arrested.” The soft-spoken Parks replied, “You may do
that.”

§News of Parks’s arrest spread rapidly. Jo Ann Robinson and NAACP leader E. D. Nixon
suggested a bus boycott. The leaders of the African-American community, including many
ministers, formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize the boycott.

§They elected the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 26-year-old Martin Luther
King, Jr., to lead the group.
§ On the night of December 5, 1955, Dr. King made the following declaration to an estimated
crowd of between 5,000 and 15,000 people.

“There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of
oppression. . . . I want it to be known—that we’re going to work with grim and bold
determination—to gain justice on buses in this city. And we are not wrong. . . . If we are
wrong—the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong—God Almighty is
wrong. . . . If we are wrong—justice is a lie.”

§ King’s passionate and eloquent speech brought people to their feet and filled the audience
with a sense of mission. African Americans filed a lawsuit and for 381 days refused to ride
the buses in Montgomery.

§ In most cases they had to find other means of transportation by organizing car pools or
walking long distances. Support came from within the black community-—workers donated
one-fifth of their weekly salaries—as well as from outside groups like the NAACP, the
United Auto Workers, Montgomery’s Jewish community, and sympathetic white southerners.

§ The boycott lasted for 385 days, and the situation became so tense that King's house was
bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States District
Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public
buses. Finally, in 1956, the Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation.

§ The Montgomery bus boycott proved to the world that the African-American community
could unite and organize a successful protest movement.

§ It also proved the power of nonviolent resistance, the peaceful refusal to obey unjust laws.
Despite threats to his life and family, King urged his followers, “Don’t ever let anyone pull
you so low as to hate them.

RISE OF MARTIN LUTHER KING

MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr (Jan 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

§Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the
African-American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil
rights in the United States.

§He has become a human rights icon: King is recognized as a martyr by two Christian
churches. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the
1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference in 1957, serving as its first president.

§King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a
Dream" speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and
became one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.

§Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his
experience as a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a
"passionate" statement of his crusade for justice.

§In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to
end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-
violent means.

§By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and
opposing the Vietnam War, both from a religious perspective.

§King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.

§He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and
Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. §Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S.
national holiday in 1986.

HIS EARLY LIFE

§Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son
of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King.

§King's father was born "Michael King," and Martin Luther King, Jr., was originally named
"Michael King, Jr.," until the family traveled to Europe in 1934 and visited Germany. His
father soon changed both of their names to Martin Luther in honor of the German Protestant
leader Martin Luther.

§Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. He skipped ninth
and twelfth grade, and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating
from high school.
§In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, and
enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated
with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951.

§King then began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received
his Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955.

§King married Coretta Scott, on June 18, 1953. King and Scott had four children; Yolanda
King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King.

§King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama when
he was twenty-five years old in 1954.

INFLUENCES ON HIM

1. Populist Tradition And Black Populism –He was a populist. He believe that blacks and
poor whites should join to do something about the big shots who kept them divided.

2. Civil rights leader, theologian, and educator Howard Thurman was an early influence on
King. A classmate of King's father at Morehouse College, Thurman mentored the young King
and his friends. Thurman's missionary work had taken him abroad where he had met and
conferred with Mahatma Gandhi. When he was a student at Boston University, King often
visited Thurman, who was the dean of Marsh Chapel.

3. Mahatma Gandhi-Inspired by Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, King visited the
Gandhi family in India in 1959, with assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends
Service Committee. The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his
understanding of non- violent resistance and his commitment to America's struggle for civil
rights.

4. Rustin- African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied Gandhi's
teachings counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence, served as
King's main advisor and mentor throughout his early activism and was the main organizer of
the 1963 March on Washington.

SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE (SCLC)

§After the Montgomery Bus Boycott planned by King that ended racial segregation on all
Montgomery public buses, he moved ahead with more campaigns under his leadership.
§In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy and other civil rights activists founded the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral
authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the
service of civil rights reform.

§King applied non-violent philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC. In 1959, he
wrote “The Measure of A Man”. It was an attempt to sketch the optimal political, social, and
economic structure of society.

§His SCLC secretary and personal assistant in this period was Dora McDonald. The FBI,
under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, began telephone tapping
King in 1963. King at been accused of joining the communists in the SCLC

§Concerned that allegations (of Communists in the SCLC), if made public, would derail the
Administration's civil rights initiatives, Kennedy warned King to discontinue the suspect
associations, and later felt compelled to issue the written directive authorizing the FBI to
wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

§The government feared Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement,
but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape
over the next five years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.

KING AND CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS

§King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation
known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black
equality and voting rights.

§Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered
by southern blacks and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and
marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of
Americans that the Civil Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politics
in the early 1960s.

§King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and
other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into the law of the
United States with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights
Act.
§King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by
strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out.

THE ALBANY MOVEMENT

§The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia in

§The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every
aspect of segregation within the city and attracted nationwide attention.

§Martin Luther King was arrested and was ordered to be sentenced to forty-five days in jail
or else pay a $178 fine. He chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Chief Pritchett discreetly
arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release.

§After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to
deteriorate.

§King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote non violence
and maintain the moral high ground.

§Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government
defeated efforts.

§ However, it was credited as a key lesson in tactics for the national civil rights movement.

BIRMINGHAM CAMPAIGN

§The Birmingham campaign was a strategic effort by the SCLC to promote civil rights for
African Americans. Its goal was to end the city's segregated civil and discriminatory
economic policies.

§The campaign lasted for more than two months in the spring of 1963. To provoke the police
into filling the city's jails to overflowing, King and black citizens of Birmingham employed
nonviolent tactics to flout laws they considered unfair.

§Protests in Birmingham began with a boycott to pressure businesses to sales jobs and other
employment to people of all races, as well as to end segregated facilities in the stores.

§When business leaders resisted the boycott, King and the SCLC began what they termed
Project C, a series of sit-ins and marches intended to provoke arrest.
§After the campaign ran low on adult volunteers, it recruited children for what became
known as the "Children's Crusade".

§During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used
high- pressure water jets and police dogs to control protesters, including children.

By the end of the campaign, King's reputation improved immensely, Connor lost his job, the
"Jim Crow" signs in Birmingham came down, and public places became more open to blacks.

MARCH ON WASHINGTON, 1963

§King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights
organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs
and Freedom in 1963.

§The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of
blacks in the southern United States and a very public opportunity to place organizers'
concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital.

§Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to
safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in
the South.

§King is perhaps most famous for his "I Have a Dream" speech, given in front of the Lincoln
Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

§The march did made specific demands:- An end to racial segregation in public school;
Meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in
employment; Protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; A $2 minimum wage for
all workers; and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional
committee.

§Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter million people of
diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto
the National Mall and around the reflecting pool.

§At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington's history. King's "I Have
a Dream" speech electrified the crowd.
STANCE ON COMPENSATION

§Martin Luther King Jr. expressed a view that black Americans, as well as other
disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs.

§In an interview in 1965, he said that granting black Americans only equality could not
realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. King said that he did not seek
a full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a
government compensatory program of US$50 billion over ten years to all disadvantaged
groups.

§He posited that "the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that
would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups,
crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils".

§ He presented this idea as an application of the common law regarding settlement of unpaid
labor but clarified that he felt that the money should not be spent exclusively on blacks. He
stated, "It should benefit the disadvantaged of all races".

BLOODY SUNDAY

§King and SCLC again attempted to organize a march from Selma to the state capital of
Montgomery, on March 7, 1965. But it was aborted because of mob and police violence
against the demonstrators.

§This day has since become known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was a major turning
point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights Movement, the clearest
demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King's nonviolence strategy.

§After meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson, he decided not to endorse the march, but it
was carried out against his wishes and without his presence on March 7 by local civil rights
leaders.

§Footage of police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused
national public outrage. §King next attempted to organize a march for March 9 which was
denied by the court and the judge issued an

order blocking the march until after a hearing.

§The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and anger of many within
the local movement.. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25.

§At the conclusion of the march and on the steps of the state capitol, King delivered a speech
that has become known as "How Long, Not Long"

POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN, 1968

§In 1968, King organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic
justice. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid
to the poorest communities of the United States.

§King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on
Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created a
bill of rights for poor Americans.

§However, the campaign was not unanimously supported by other leaders of the Civil Rights
Movement. Rustin resigned from the march stating that the goals of the campaign were too
broad, the demands unrealizable, and thought these campaigns would accelerate the backlash
and repression on the poor and the black.

§ Throughout his participation in the civil rights movement, King was criticized by many
groups.

§This included opposition by more militant blacks and such prominent critics as Nation of
Islam member Malcolm X.

§Stokely Carmichael was a separatist and disagreed with King's plea for racial integration
because he considered it an insult to a uniquely African-American culture.

§Omali Yeshitela urged Africans to remember the history of violent European colonization
and how power was not secured by Europeans through integration, but by violence and force.
§King called on the government to invest in rebuilding America's cities. He felt that Congress
had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity".
He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had
merely provided "poverty funds with miserliness".

§His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform. He cited
systematic flaws of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism", and argued that
"reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced"