A New Sense of Direction

Worldview ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Luther King
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Urban Violence ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Sense Of Direction ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor People's Campaign ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference

A few months before his assassination in Memphis, April 4, 1968, Dr. King spoke to the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference meeting in retreat at Frogmore, South Carolina, He was preparing them for the Poor People's Campaign scheduled for the spring of 1968. This is Dr. King's last thorough evaluation of “the movement” its prospects and problems, in our possession.While the description of urban violence may seem dated, Dr. King's analysis of the causes and cures of urban injustice remains disturbingly relevant. His understanding of what was happening among youth as well as his understanding of American militarism is, for better or worse, equally pertinent. Especially important, in view of current claims that Dr. King was undergoing a fundamental change of political philosophy toward the end of his life, is his concluding affirmation of non-violence.

Organizing for Economic Justice in The Late 1960s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Poor People's Campaign ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Martin Luther King

Shortly before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched the Poor People’s Campaign that aimed to highlight the links between economic and racial injustice. Although t 1960s are usually characterized as a period in which race, gender and sexuality were the key identity issues for American protest, this chapter brings to the fore issues of class and poverty. From SCLC to labor unions to coalitions of African American single mothers, a range of activist organizations waged their own wars on poverty, putting into action the poverty tours that Robert Kennedy conducted in the mid-1960s and accounts such as socialist Michael Harrington’s influential 1962 book The Other America. These organizations worked at the intersections between economic and identity politics. Their successes and failures account for the new, often regressive contours of political action, discourse and policy around class and poverty in the following decades, and the re-emergence of a progressive vision in contemporary protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street.

FRAMING THE FIELD: THE CASE OF THE 1969 CHARLESTON HOSPITAL WORKERS' STRIKE*

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Danaher ◽  
Marc Dixon
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Hospital Workers ◽  
Medical College ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Multiple Actors

We investigate how union, employer and allied actors engage in framing contests and seek to gain the upper hand in a strike event by analyzing a historically significant labor and civil-rights struggle in the 1969 hospital workers' strike in Charleston, South Carolina against the Medical College of South Carolina (MCSC). Through an analysis of newspapers, interviews, and archival materials, we show how discursive tactics by multiple actors superseded worker messages over the 100-day event. Worker messages, dignity and union recognition, competed with their ally's, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), messages of poverty and civil rights as well as claims from MCSC. The workers' weakened position within this multi-actor field and limited salience of union claims served to gradually silence worker voices, shaping the protest campaign in important ways. Our findings underscore the importance of power and inequality in the framing of social conflict.

The Pauper

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-138
Author(s):  
Sylvie Laurent
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
Welfare Rights ◽  
New Class ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor People's Campaign

This chapter questions the implications of King’s new class-based coalition. It casts the Poor People’s Campaign as a crucial hinge in creating a possible link between the civil rights movement, the labor movement, black nationalists who endorsed Marxism, the Chicano movements, the Welfare Rights movements (in which women played a critical role), poor whites organizations and the peace movement.

Dreams and Shadows

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvester A. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Radical Activism ◽  
Martin Luther King

This chapter explains how the FBI targeted Martin Luther King, Jr. as an exceptional and uniquely dangerous threat to the nation’s internal security. The author demonstrates the numerous efforts by the bureau to oppose the influential activism of King and the organization he led, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The chapter explains the important shifts in American culture that pitted the more radical activism of civil rights leaders against an increasingly strident FBI that was determined to thwart law abiding activists who challenged the nation’s mainstream racial politics. The author argues that the pivotal issue behind the FBI’s repression of King was not personal antagonism between King and Hoover but the politics of race and repression.

Forcing the Better Argument

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-158
Author(s):  
Erin R. Pineda
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
The United States ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference

This chapter details the outward-facing dynamics of civil disobedience by examining the tactics employed in the 1963 Birmingham Campaign. Though Birmingham is often memorialized as the pinnacle of nonviolent and properly civil disobedience in the United States, the tactics that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) deployed there trouble the easy distinction between persuasion and coercion, nonviolence and force. Activists in Birmingham described and defended their actions as crisis-generating—what this chapter calls the tactics of disruption and the tactics of disclosure. In a society shaped by white supremacy, black activists knew that they would have to arrest the attention of white citizens—disrupt everyday routines, violate norms of comportment, and involve spectators in a dramatic conflict—in order to create the space for persuasion to do its work. They had to force the better argument.

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