In reading books and articles on the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968—a topic that has garnered more discussion this year due to its 50th anniversary as well as the new Poor People’s Campaign currently underway—I found myself looking at Ebony magazine from 50 years ago this month. It provides a snapshot of what African Americans were thinking about, in the aftermath of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Late in the fall presidential campaign, it seemed anything was possible in November. With the three-way fight between Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace intensifying, so much attention was focused on how politically fractured the nation was. Above all, however, Jesse Jackson tried, in the pages of Ebony, to keep alive the flame of the Poor People’s Campaign.
By this point, Jackson had already achieved national notoriety for his leadership in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Operation Breadbasket. He helped push for economic boycotts in various cities to grow the number of jobs available to inner-city African Americans. With his essay on the Poor People’s Campaign for Ebony, however, Jackson used it as an opportunity to both remember the campaign and to eulogize Martin Luther King, Jr. Jackson argued that the “single greatest cause” of King’s death was that he had begun to “redirect the race struggle into a class struggle.” Jackson also used the opportunity to criticize the Department of Agriculture for “subsidies to the rich farmers” instead of doing more to feed the poor in the United States. This mirrors Dr. King’s argument, made throughout 1967 and 1968, that the federal government had the responsibility to get more aggressive on tackling poverty precisely because of earlier government programs such as the Homestead Act of 1862.[1]
“Victory is the poor of all races coming together,” Jackson wrote later in his essay. He tried to make clear that the Poor People’s Campaign did gain some victories. But above all, Jackson lamented the specter of constant violence most Americans were concerned about in late 1968. “The disease is in the air,” he wrote, “it poisons the atmosphere and each person who breathes it is subjected to it.”[2] As I read this issue of Ebony, I was certainly aware of the violence of 1968—anyone who knows even a bit about the year thinks first of the assassinations and violence of the era. But it is difficult to escape thinking about the central link of intellectual history between 1968 and 2018 as being one of violence. Violence at home and abroad has plagued the American mind for generations. But it seems the generations living between the assassinations of King and Kennedy and the current spate of crises afflicting our world cannot avoid “the disease in the air.”
Solemnly reading Ebony, I quickly turned to the advertisements—hoping from a respite from the heavy thoughts plaguing my mind every day now.
[1] Jesse Jackson, “Resurrection City: The Dream…The Accomplishments,” Ebony, October, 1968, p. 68.
[2] Jackson, p. 74.
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