Washington History in the Classroom This article, © the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., is provided free of charge to educators, parents, and students engaged in remote learning activities. It has been chosen to complement the DC Public Schools curriculum during this time of sheltering at home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Washington History magazine is an essential teaching tool,” says Bill Stevens, a D.C. public charter school teacher. “In the 19 years I’ve been teaching D.C. history to high school students, my scholars have used Washington History to investigate their neighborhoods, compete in National History Day, and write plays based on historical characters. They’ve grappled with concepts such as compensated emancipation, the 1919 riots, school integration, and the evolution of the built environment of Washington, D.C. I could not teach courses on Washington, D.C. Bill Stevens engages with his SEED Public Charter School history without Washington History.” students in the Historical Society’s Kiplinger Research Library, 2016. Washington History is the only scholarly journal devoted exclusively to the history of our nation’s capital. It succeeds the Records of the Columbia Historical Society, first published in 1897. Washington History is filled with scholarly articles, reviews, and a rich array of images and is written and edited by distinguished historians and journalists. Washington History authors explore D.C. from the earliest days of the city to 20 years ago, covering neighborhoods, heroes and she-roes, businesses, health, arts and culture, architecture, immigration, city planning, and compelling issues that unite us and divide us. The full runs of Washington History (1989-present) and its predecessor publication the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1897-1988) are available through JSTOR, an online archive to which many institutions subscribe. It’s easy to set up a personal JSTOR account, which allows for free online reading of six articles per month in any of their journals, or join the Historical Society at the Membership Plus level for unlimited free access to our publications. More than a March The Poor People’s Campaign in the District BY LAUREN PEARLMAN ive years after the Reverend Dr. Martin the nation. Moreover, in building and living in Luther King, Jr., delivered his renowned Resurrection City, a shantytown on the National “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 Mall and in view of the Lincoln Memorial, SCLC March on Washington for Jobs and Free- pushed the imaginative boundaries of African Fdom, Reverend Ralph Abernathy walked to a lec- American protest. And yet the enduring impres- tern placed in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The sion of the Poor People’s Campaign is one of fail- new leader of the Southern Christian Leadership ure, part of the tumultuous decline of the national Conference had big shoes to fill. He had persuaded civil rights movement.1 the organization to proceed with its Poor People’s The complexities of the Poor People’s Cam- Campaign even though King’s assassination had paign are best understood within the local context occurred only two months earlier. Now, on June of Washington, D.C. As D.C. officials and business 19, 1968, more than 50,000 people listened as he groups became aware of SCLC’s plans for another gave a rousing speech on Solidarity Day, the cam- march on Washington in early 1968, they grew paign’s capstone event. anxious about the potential for violence. Leaders Originally scheduled for April 1968, the Poor of these groups, along with conservative national People’s Campaign was the first nationally ori- lawmakers, demanded that the federal govern- ented civil rights demonstration to take place in ment use its powers to contain the Poor People’s the nation’s capital since the 1963 March on Wash- Campaign. These calls grew deafening after the ington. It marked King’s desire to broaden the devastating civil disturbances triggered by King’s black freedom struggle into a larger human rights assassination on April 4th left 12 people dead and struggle. Inviting a wide cross-section of citizens to more than 1,000 injured in Washington alone, as participate—including American Indians, Puerto well as an estimated $15 million in property dam- Ricans, and people of Mexican descent—SCLC age, primarily in the city’s black neighborhoods. reached beyond the traditional civil rights coali- President Lyndon B. Johnson, roundly criticized tion to train the spotlight on conditions in Ameri- for his handling of the April riots, would waste lit- ca’s ghettos and the systemic poverty that plagued tle time in containing the Poor People’s Campaign, Organizers of the Poor People’s Campaign built Resurrection City parallel to the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. For six weeks, more than a thousand protesters lived in plywood-and-canvas shanties to bring national attention to the plight of the poor. At right are World War I-era “temporary” offices that remained until the early 1970s. Courtesy, Jack Rottier photograph collection, Special Collections, George Mason University Libraries. 25 including using federal troops, surveillance tac- King said in December 1967, bring “waves of the tics, and, on occasion, preemptive violence to nation’s poor and disinherited to Washington, manage lawlessness. The formidable reaction of D.C. to demand redress of their grievances by the White House, Department of Justice, and local the United States government and to secure at government officials shows how SCLC’s campaign least jobs or income for all.” King and his aides did not reflect the rapid decline of the civil rights envisioned placing on the National Mall a shanty- movement so much as the ascendance of law and town dubbed “Resurrection City,” much like the order measures intended to curb black activism in one constructed by World War I veterans during D.C. and around the country.2 the 1932 Bonus Army March. Located in the fed- The Poor People’s Campaign had a profound, eral government’s front yard, Resurrection City and largely negative, impact on the District of would showcase unity among a multi-ethnic coa- Columbia and its residents. In May, 3,000 partici- lition of poor people and would serve as a strategic pants arrived to set up temporary living quarters launch pad for protests, marches, and civil disobe- along the National Mall in a city still reeling from dience. In the capital, in front of the nation’s stark- the April riots. SCLC waged a campaign run pri- est symbols of power, the poor would demand to marily by white organizers who focused on be heard and would, King suggested, “stay until national concerns and ignored Washington’s radi- America responds.”3 cal voices, racial tensions, and local organizations. SCLC chose the capital for its campaign know- When participants left the city in June, just six ing that it had been the perfect stage for the 1963 weeks after they arrived, District residents were March on Washington. Washington had delivered left to handle the campaign’s remnants and reper- a national platform for King and his fellow civil cussions—including increased tensions with the rights leaders, visibility for racial justice issues, and local police department—in relative isolation. support for then-pending civil rights legislation. The interracial marchers had conducted them- The Poor People’s Campaign was conceived by selves peacefully and won widespread approval. SCLC, under the direction of Martin Luther King, Much to the consternation of some black activists, during a five-day retreat in November 1967. Orig- however, SCLC organizers had exercised tight inally called the Washington Spring Project, the control over the 1963 march in order to avoid event—part mass demonstration and part lobby- embarrassing the supportive Kennedy Adminis- ing program—was designed to draw attention to tration. Shortly before Student Nonviolent Coor- American poverty in all of its diversity. It would, dinating Committee (SNCC) leader John Lewis The Southern Christian Leadership Conference established a command post at 14th and U Streets, NW, to promote the Poor People’s Campaign. Organizers initially struggled to win local support. Courtesy, the Washington Post 26 took the stage, for example, the march’s chairmen Campaign to restore the credibility of nonviolent demanded that he excise “militant language” from action. However, they recognized that the crises of his speech. The Justice Department was prepared the late 1960s demanded a different kind of cam- to cut power to the microphone if Lewis did not paign. “Our cities are literally burning down, our comply. Lewis agreed to tone down his rhetoric. people are literally dying of hunger and jobless- The strict control over the closely scripted event, as ness and mental disorder,” said SCLC’s Reverend well as the coordination between civil rights lead- Andrew Young early in the planning process. “And ers and the Kennedy administration, helped it may be necessary for us to run through certain ensure a peaceful, non-militant march that little ‘traffic laws’ to dramatize the fact that there is cemented the National Mall as a symbolic—and an emergency.”6 even safe—site for civil rights activism.4 An affable, even-tempered Howard University Yet no one, especially not SCLC, wanted the graduate who would later become mayor of Poor People’s Campaign to be simply a sequel to Atlanta and U.S. representative from Georgia, the the March on Washington. This time the protest- 26-year-old Young spoke forcefully about occupy- ers were not going to D.C. to support proposed ing the District. “We decided that the poor, the legislation, they were not speaking for blacks ones who are now catching the hell, had to be alone but for all poor people, and they did not involved in a movement which we were sponsor- have the blessing of an approving presidential ing,” Young explained in March 1968, “and we administration.