Everybody’s Got a Right to Live
The Poor People's Campaign of 1968 was a major occupation of the National Mall to protest poverty, racism, and war. It is a major focus of a new exhibit at the MLK Library.
Reverend F.D. Kirkpatrick and James Collier sang “Everybody’s Got a Right to Live,” which became the theme of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Solidarity Day demonstrators wade in the Reflecting Pool (1968-06-19) by Darrell C. Crain, Jr. Photograph CollectionDC Public Library
Solidarity Day protest at the Reflecting Pool, 1968
Thousands gathered for six weeks in May and June 1968 to realize Dr. King's last project, the Poor People’s Campaign.
Map showing caravan routes to the Poor People’s Campaign (1968) by UPI Photo, Washington Star CollectionDC Public Library
Map showing caravan routes to the Poor People’s Campaign
Caravans of Black sharecroppers from the South, Puerto Rican organizers from New York, Chicano farm workers from the Southwest, poor white Appalachians, and Native Americans from the West poured into D.C.
People with luggage next to Greyhound buses (1968) by Washington Star Collection © Washington PostDC Public Library
People with luggage boarding Greyhound bus
King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized this uniquely powerful protest.
Solidarity Day protesters with Signs (1968) by Washington Star Collection © Washington Post The People's ArchiveDC Public Library
Solidarity Day Protesters with Signs, 1968
The campaign protested the “triple evils” of poverty, racism, and war. Its ambitious goal was to occupy the National Mall until the government agreed to an Economic Bill of Rights, guaranteeing jobs and housing for all.
View of wooden structures, some yet to be built, at Resurrection City (1968) by Washington Star Collection © Washington Post The People's Archive at DC Public LibraryDC Public Library
View of Resurrection City structures
The camp where protesters lived, Resurrection City, was a functioning base for direct action. Each day participants lobbied Congress and presented demands to government agencies.
Crowd of protestors during a Native American rally at the United States Department of the Interior (1968) by Photograph by Bernie BostonDC Public Library
Native American rally at the Bureau of Indian Affairs
King had envisioned a multi-racial, multi-ethnic "nonviolent army of the poor" that would force government officials to listen. Native activists, for example, led protests at the Bureau of Indian Affairs to call attention to alarming poverty within Indigenous communities.
Woman in Car with Poor People's Campaign Poster (1968) by Washington Star Collection © Washington Post The People's ArchiveDC Public Library
Dig Deeper: The Washington Star Collection
Hundreds of photos from the Washington Star newspaper documenting the Poor People's Campaign have been digitized and made accessible online at Dig DC.
Audio excerpts courtesy of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.
“We were always plotting, how could we keep trying to get the country to respond to the poor children and to the growing hunger problem, which was a national problem."
—Marian Wright Edelman, Interviewed by Blackside, Inc., 1988
Marian Wright: "Bring the poor to Washington"
While a young attorney from Mississippi, Wright (later known as Marian Wright Edelman) worked closely with Senator Robert Kennedy, and gave Dr. King the idea to bring poor people to Washington.
Campaign literature featured a logo of a mother and child, showing that the movement valued women’s leadership and women’s issues.
“When you are poor, down and out, no food, nowhere to turn, you are still an American citizen, with a right to live.”
— Etta Horn, interviewed by The Washington Post, 1970
Etta Horn: Welfare not Warfare
Etta Horn was one of D.C’s most recognizable and controversial activists. A tenant organizer from Barry Farm Dwellings in Anacostia, she helped found the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), which supported the Campaign and shaped its demands.
The NWRO organized a march and a rally at Cardozo High School with Coretta Scott King to kick off the Poor People’s Campaign.
Life and Protest in Resurrection City
Resurrection City residents had everything needed to live, work, protest, pray, and play. The camp had a "People's University," a city hall, a newspaper, plumbing, and even its own post office and zip code.
Aerial view of Resurrection City (1968) by What is NCRODC Public Library
Building Resurrection City
Building and sustaining a camp for more than 3,000 people to live in for a month took skilled coordination and creative city planning.
Reverend Robert Meyer, Jan Naymark, and Helen and Charles Schaubel assemble prefabricated structures (Washington Star Collection © Washington Post) by Washington Star Collection © Washington PostDC Public Library
The Radical Architect behind Resurrection City
John Wiebenson, a founding faculty member of the University of Maryland School of Architecture, was tapped to lead the design committee for Resurrection City. He proposed using simple materials that could be assembled easily by volunteers.
Volunteers Moses Jackson and Estelle Washington prepare potatoes (1968) by Washington Star Collection © Washington Post The People's Archive at DC Public LibraryDC Public Library
Volunteers prepare potatoes to be sent to Resurrection City
As with Dr. King’s earlier protests, volunteer from D.C. churches, unions, and civil rights groups stepped up and made the six-week demonstration possible.
Volunteers supply clothing and other basics (1968) by Washington Star Collection © Washington PostDC Public Library
Volunteers supply clothing and other basics
Residents had access to three meals a day, health care, clothing, religious services, and barbers.
The Poor People's Campaign brought together Black Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, American Indians, and poor whites in an interracial, multi-ethnic protest.
Rally in Resurrection City’s “Soul Tent” (1968) by Rally in Resurrection City’s “Soul Tent,” 1968DC Public Library
Rally in Resurrection City’s “Soul Tent”
At the camp’s cultural center, known as the Many Races Soul Center, or the “Soul Tent,” artists and leaders such as Muddy Waters, Dorothy Height, Jesse Jackson, and Bernice Johnson Reagon performed and spoke.
Dig Deeper: The Poor People’s Campaign Collection. Access this collection online with Dig DC.
Installation View of Poor People's Campaign (2021) by Photograph by Olivia WeiseDC Public Library
Explore Further
The Poor People's Campaign exhibit is located in the West Gallery, on the fourth floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.
Learn more about the the local activists and the issues that Dr. King cared about in the Library's new permanent exhibit, Up from the People: Protest and Change in D.C., on view at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.
You can also learn more in these online exhibits:
A Revolution of Values
A Library Named for Dr. King
D.C. Wins Home Rule
Marion Barry: Mayor for Life
D.C. & King: The Story Behind the Films
This exhibition was made possible by the generous support of the DC Public Library Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this exhibit do not represent the views of any funding organizations.
