50 Years Later, Continuing Dr. King’s Dream Fifty years after his assassination, civil rights leaders are resurrecting Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign.
FIFTY YEARS AGO , on April 4, the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. Just a year earlier, King had announced it was time for the next phase of the justice movement: the Poor People’s Campaign. According to a 2017 study from the Urban Institute, the wealth of the average white family in 1963 was $121,000 greater than the wealth of families of color (adjusted for inflation). It was becoming apparent to civil rights leaders that their initial goal of integration would do little to address the systemic economic legacy of racism. “Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality,” King said just days before his murder. “For we know now that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit
[THE
N U M B ER S]
THEN & NOW
UNEMPLOYMENT Unemployment among black workers has fallen by about 3 percent in the last 50 years.
1963
2013
68%
65%
TOTAL UNEMPLOYMENT
MAR-APR
032
2018
