The year is 1968. 

Summertime. 

Washington DC.

And covering the National Mall are endless rows of shacks built by hundreds of poor families from across the United States. It’s called Resurrection City. And they have come to Washington to demand an end to poverty and a new economic bill of rights.

This was Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. The Poor People’s Campaign is what he’d been working for in the months before he was killed in April 1968. 

“The emergency we now face is economic. And it is a desperate and worsening situation for the 35 million poor people in America. Not even to mention just yet the poor in the other nations, there is a kind of strangulation in the air.”

For King, poverty was a great evil. Something to be overcome. And which could be tackled by uniting across communities. Uniting across color lines. Despite his death, people carried on. They would organize in poor communities across the US. 

Longtime radio host Marc Steiner was deeply involved. 

“And when the Poor People’s Campaign started, we knew we had to build a coalition to join Resurrection City and started in Chicago… we traveled around the industrial north and down through Appalachia to organize communities to come to Resurrection City.”

And come they did. Thousands of people came from across the country in mid-May. 

“I mean, there were thousands of people there… And people moved in, well, first of all, they came into DC from all over the country. And there were people from reservations in New York in North and South Dakota and Southwest United States all coming in, you know, to, to there. There were Mexicans coming from all across Southwestern United States and California. That and the Puerto Ricans coming in from Chicago and New York and in the Appalachian group. It was, it was really unbelievable. I mean, it was hard to fathom the power and beauty of this multiracial poor people’s coalition that actually came and they built these shacks, you know, and communal eating centers for cooking tents. And the mud, because it rained and rained and rained. And people stayed. It was, it was horrendous, but powerful.”

At its height, roughly 3,000 people lived in the makeshift wooden shacks of Resurrection City, right in the middle of the National Mall, in Washington, DC. It was a full-blown town. There was a day care center. A city hall. A barber shop. It had its own ZIP code. The goal was to pressure lawmakers to pass legislation to tackle the inequality in the country.

“I got nine children going to school now. And I had been to the welfare agency to see if I can get help and they wouldn’t help. And I really need help.”

This is from old footage and interviews from Resurrection City.

“A lot of people knew the condition of some of these places and when they see and know the condition will be interested enough to try to make things better.”

They demanded that the country spend $35 billion a year to end poverty in the United States. They called for half a million homes to be built per year until every poor neighborhood was transformed. They demanded full employment in the country, with a living wage for everyone.

“What we’re saying is that our economic order is evil… It’s been our experience that Congress and this nation doesn’t really move until their own self-interest is threatened. And until they, in fact, they begin to share some of the problems of the poor. Or some of the effects of poverty.”

They held marches and rallies, the biggest on Juneteenth, with 100,000 people in the streets. 

Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King, spoke to the crowd.

“We are here because we feel a frightful sense of urgency to rectify the long standing evils and injustices in our society, racism, poverty and war. The Poor People’s Campaign was conceived by my late husband, Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, as America’s last chance to solve these problems nonviolently. The sickness of racism. The despair of poverty and the hopelessness of war have served to deepen the hatred, heightened the bitterness, increase the frustration, and further alienate the poor in our society.”

Residents of Resurrection City spoke to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“We’re building our old house over there and I’m gonna tell you something. It’s better than anything that we have in Brownsville. We got our house better than anything in Flatbush, which is middle class. 

“It is working down in Resurrection City. And please listen to that. That beautiful thing down there is just the top of a movement that stretches from coast to coast. 

“This is the last chance I think for this country to sort of respond to the quiet and peaceful petitions of people who are asking for very very just solutions to very very real problems.”

Resurrection City lasted for more than 40 days. 

“Yeah, it was a, it was an amazing experience. America could use that again now.”

It was inspiring. It was powerful. Maybe too powerful. 

After six weeks, on June 24, a thousand police officers rolled in to crush Resurrection City. 

“It was like chaos. I mean, they came in just destroying places where people lived, throwing people out. Some people got arrested and, you know, it was a, it was a really miserable, anticlimactic end to a very powerful movement.”

But its legacy would last until today. Marc Steiner…

“It was critical. I mean, it was a game changer in many ways for a number of levels. It radicalized people inside of poor communities that were involved in the Poor People’s Campaign to help them build movements locally. One of the hidden gems of the Poor People’s Campaign for me is that what happened after it was destroyed and people went back to their communities and continued to build and organize because of that experience. And that’s that story that’s really hidden and not talked about very much.

“All over the country that happened, and some of us stayed in touch. Like when I went back to Baltimore in 1970, Baltimore had a series of collectives in working-class communities. Organizing. And so we did a lot of great work in those first few years of the 1970s, and that was born out of that.

“And it happened all over the country like that. I mean, we started a People’s Free garage, we started a People’s Free grocery store, we started at People’s Free Medical Clinic. We organized, we started a Tenants Union group that fought against slumlords and brought Black and white communities together to fight, you know, these slumlords. And so, I mean, out of Resurrection City, a movement was created.”

And it didn’t stop there. On the 50th anniversary, a new Poor People’s Campaign was organized in communities across the US to once again pick up Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. Led by Rev. William Barber and Rev. Liz Theoharis, they, too, marched on Washington. 

Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream continues to inspire.