«An idea unleashed in history»: Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the campaign to end poverty in America

Autori

  • Robert Hamilton University of Glasgow. United Kingdom Autore

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14516/ete.188

Parole chiave:

civil rights, adult education, poverty, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

Abstract

As well as being a civil rights advocate, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr consistently called for human rights for all. He opposed poverty, racism, imperialism and political disfranchisement as part of an analysis, which viewed inequality not only in American but also in global terms. In order to address poverty and related human rights issues, King proposed a Poor People’s Campaign (PPC). In May 1968, only weeks after King’s assassination, the PPC saw thousands of poor people travel to Washington DC to protest against poverty. The demonstrators occupied sacred space in the nation’s capital by building a temporary community, known as Resurrection City. During preparations for the PPC and in Washington, the activists drew on a rich legacy of adult education from previous civil rights campaigns. The approaches adopted by PPC participants were innovative and represented alternatives to conventional educational practices. These included Freedom Schools, a Poor People’s University, workshops, marches and demonstrations, which assisted the protesters to come together in coalition to challenge dominant hegemonic narratives concerning the causes, nature and scope of poverty. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its aspiration to end economic injustice in America, the PPC undoubtedly laid the seeds for future anti-poverty activism. The article draws on primary source documents and oral testimonies from five archives.

Riferimenti bibliografici

Adams, F., & Horton, M. (1975). Unearthing seeds of fire: the idea of Highlander. Winston-Salem: NC.

Afield, W. B., & Gibson, A. B. (1970). The children of Resurrection City. Washington: Association for Childhood Education International.

Arsenault, R. (2013). Afterword. In Lafayette, B., & Johnson, K.L., In peace and freedom: my journey in Selma. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.

Ball, B. Gaventa, J., & Peters, J. (1990). We make the road by walking: conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Barber, L.G. (2002). Marching on Washington: the forging of a political tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bell, B. Gaventa, J., & Peters, J. (Eds.). (1990). We make the road by walking: conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Billings, G. (1968). Health care in Resurrection City. The American Journal of Nursing, 68(8), 1695-1698.

Branch, T. (1988). Parting the waters: America in the King years, 1954-63. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Branch, T. (2006). At Canaan’s edge: America in the King years 1965-68. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Bretz, B. (2010). The Poor People’s Campaign: an evolution of the civil rights movement. Sociological Viewpoints, (Spring), 19-25.

Brinkley, D. (2000). Mine eyes have seen the glory: the life of Rosa Parks. London: Phoenix.

Burns, S. (Ed.). (1997). Daybreak of freedom: the Montgomery bus boycott. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Charron, K.M. (2009). Freedom’s teacher: the life of Septima Clark. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Chase, R. T. (1998). Class resurrection: the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 and Resurrection City. Essays in History, 40. Virginia: University of Virginia.

Clarke, T. (2008). The last campaign: Robert Kennedy and 82 days that inspired America. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Cotton, D. F. (2012). If your back’s not bent: the role of the citizenship education programme in the civil rights movement. New York: Atria Books.

Crawford, V. L. Rouse, J. A., & Woods, B. (1990). Women in the civil rights movement: trailblazers and torchbearers 1941-65. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

D’Emalio, J. (2003). Lost prophet: the life and times of Bayard Rustin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Eaklor, V. L. (1997). Without visibility there is no history. http://las.alfred.edu/-hustud/eak-lorwithoutvisessay.html.

Fager, C. (1969). Uncertain resurrection: the Poor People’s Washington campaign. Michigan: William B Eerdmas Publishing Company.

Foley, G. (1999). Learning in social action: a contribution to understanding informal education. New York: Zed Books.

Freedman, J. (1970). Old news: Resurrection City. New York: Grossman Publishers.

Freeman, R.L. (1998). The Mule Train: a journey of hope remembered. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press.

Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Seabury.

Freire, P. (1978). Pedagogy in process: the letters to Guinea- Bissau. New York: Seabury Press.

Garrow, D. J. (1983). The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr. London: Penguin.

Garrow, D. J. (Ed.). 1987. The Montgomery bus boycott and the women who started it: the memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. Knoxville: the University of Tennessee Press.

Gollin, A. E. (August 5th, 1968). The demography of protest- a statistical profile of participants in the PPC, report to the SCLC. Atlanta: SCLC.

Gollin, A. E. (1969). The Poor People’s Campaign and the march on Washington: mobilization for collective protest. The 24th annual conference, American Association for Public Opinion Research, May 16th-19th, Lake George: New York.

Gouin, R. (2009). An antiracist feminist analysis for the study of learning in social struggle. Adult Education Quarterly, 59(2), 158-175.

Grace, A. P. Hill, R. J., & Wells, K. (2009). Art as anti-oppression adult education: creating pedagogy of presence and place. In Hill, R. J., Grace, A. P., & associates. Adult and higher education in queer contexts: power, politics and pedagogy (pp. 69-86). Chicago: Discovery Association Publishing House,

Green, L.B. (2011). Challenging the civil rights narrative: women, gender and the ‘politics of protection’. In Crosby, E. (Ed.), Civil rights history from the ground up: local struggles, a national movement (pp. 52-80). Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Halberstam, D. (1998). The Children. New York: Fawcett Books.

Hamilton, R. (2013). Did the dream end there? Adult education and Resurrection City 1968. Studies in the Education of Adults, 45(1), 4-26.

Hamilton, R. (2016). The Mule Train- adult learning and the Poor People’s Campaign 1968. Studies in the Education of Adults, 48(1), 38-64.

Harding.V. (2012). Introduction. In Cotton, D. F., If your back’s not bent: the role of the citizenship education programme in the civil rights movement. New York: Atria Books.

Harley, A. (2012). «We are poor, not stupid»: learning from autonomous grassroots social movements in South Africa. In Hall, B.L., Clover, D.E., Crowther, J., & Scandrett, E. (Eds.), Learning and education for a better world: the role of social movements (pp. 3-32). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Harrop, S. (1987). Oxford and working-class education. Nottingham: University of Nottingham.

Hill, R. J. (2004). Activism as practice: some queer considerations. In. St. Clair, R., & Sandlin, J. A. (Eds.), Promoting critical practice in adult education (pp. 85-94). Wiley periodicals: San Francisco.

Hodgson, G. (2009). Martin Luther King. London: Quercus.

Holst, J. (2002). Social movements, civil society, and radical adult education. Westport and London: Bergin and Garvey.

Holst, J. (2011). Frameworks for understanding the politics of social movements. Studies in the Education of Adults, 43(2), 117-126.

Honey, M. K. (2007). Going down Jericho road: the Memphis strike, Martin Luther King’s last campaign. New York: WW Norton and Company.

Houle, C.O. (1992). The history of adult education. In Houle, C.O., The literature of adult education (pp. 3-35). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Jackson, F. (2007). From civil rights to human rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the struggle for economic justice. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.

Jackson, J. (1968). Resurrection City. Ebony Magazine, October, 65-75.

Jackson, K. (1980). Introduction. In: Thompson, J. Adult education for a change. London: Hutchinson.

Jarvis, P. (1985). The sociology of adult and continuing education. London: Croom Helm.

Kotz, N. (2005). Judgement Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the laws that changed America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Lackey, H. L (2014). Marks, Martin and the Mule Train. LLC: Xlibris.

Le Blanc, P., & Yates, M. D. (2013). A freedom budget for all Americans: recapturing the promise of the civil rights movement in the struggle for economic justice today. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Lang, J. M. (2014). Notes towards a pedagogy of presence. Reflections on higher education.

Langdon, J. (2011). Democracy re-examined: Ghanaian social movement learning and the re-articulation of learning in struggle. Studies in the Education of Adults, 43(2), 147-162.

Larrabure. M. Vieta., M., & Schugurensky, D. (2011). The new co-operativism in Latin America: worker-recuperated enterprises and socialist production units. Studies in the Education of Adults, 43(2), 181-195.

Lampinen, L. G. (1968). The Poor People’s Campaign. International Socialism, 34, 8-10.

Lovett, T. (Ed). Radical approaches to adult education: a reader. London: Routledge.

Mantler, G. K. (2008). Black, brown and poor: MLK Jr. and the PPC and its legacies. Thesis (PhD). Duke University.

Meek, D. (2011). Propaganda, collective participation and the war of position in the Brazilian landless workers’ movement. Studies in the Education of Adults, 43(2), 164-180.

McKnight, G. D. (1998). The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI, and the Poor People’s Campaign. Boulder: Westview.

Muetz, G. K., & Frush, K. L. (2007). Connecting early American values in the current practice of Adult Education. MPAEA Journal of Adult Education, XXXV1(1), Spring, 36-43.

Newman, M. (2006). Teaching defiance: stories and strategies for activist educators: a book written in wartime. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Nipson, H. Sr. (1972). Resurrection City 11. Jet magazine, 27 July 1972, 14-16.

Rachal, J. R. (2000). We’ll never turn back: Adult education and the struggle for citizenship in Mississippi’s Freedom Summer. Adult Education Quarterly, 50(3), 166-195.

Robinson, J. A. (1989). The Montgomery bus boycott and the women who started it. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Robnett, R. (1997). How long? How long? New York: Oxford University Press.

Schmitt, E. R. (2010). President of the other America: Robert Kennedy and the politics of poverty. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Sidy, R. (2012). The Poor People’s Campaign. SNS Press.

Stubblefield, H.W. (1974). Adult civic education in the Post-World War 1 period. Adult Education Quarterly, 24(3), 227-237.

Stubblefield, H.W., & Rachal, J. R. (1992). On the origins of the term and meanings of ‘adult education’ in the United States. Adult Education Quarterly, 42(2), Winter, 106-116.

The Poverty Initiative. (2012). A new and unsettling force: Reigniting Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign. New York: Union Theological Seminary.

Thomas, J.E. (1982). Radical adult education: theory and practice. Nottingham: University of Nottingham.

Thomas, J.E. (1986). Review of Youngman, F. Adult education and socialist pedagogy. London: Croom Helm. Adult Education, 59(3), December.

Walter, P. (2007). Adult learning in new social movements: environmental protest and the struggle for the Clayaquot Sound rainforest. Adult Education Quarterly, 57(3), 248-263.

Wiebenson, J. (1969). Planning and using Resurrection City. Journal of American Planning Association, 35(6), 45-411.

Williams, J. (2007). Eyes on the Prize: America’s civil rights years 1954-1965. New York: Putnam.

Wright, A. N. (2007). Civil Rights «Unfinished business»: poverty, race, and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. Thesis (PhD). The University of Texas at Austin.

Wright, A. N. (2011). The 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, Marks, Mississippi and the Mule Train: fighting poverty locally, representing poverty nationally. In Crosby, E. (Ed.), Civil rights history from the ground up: local struggles, a national movement (pp. 109-143). Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Young, A. (1996). An easy burden: the civil rights movement and the transformation of America. New York: Harper Collins.

Pubblicato

2018-01-01