The Dispossessed

“The dispossessed of this nation -- the poor, both white and Negro live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967 ~

In late 1967, five months before King was felled by an assassin's bullet, he and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) began planning and preparation for the Poor People's Campaign.

Jobs, income and housing were the main goals of the Poor People’s Campaign. The campaign would help the poor by dramatizing their needs, uniting all races under the commonality of hardship and presenting a plan to start to a solution.

Under the "economic bill of rights," the Poor People's Campaign asked for the federal government to prioritize helping the poor with a $30 billion anti-poverty package that included a commitment to full employment, a guaranteed annual income measure and more low-income housing. The Poor People’s Campaign was part of the second phase of the civil rights movement. While the first phase had exposed the problems of segregation, King hoped to address the "limitations to our achievements" with a second, broader phase.

The campaign and march did, in fact, take place after King's murder, yet with their charismatic leader gone, it received far less media coverage and failed to live up to the expectations of organizers. King's death served as a way to undermined severely the impact the campaign could have had.

There are some who do not believe that James Earl Ray was the lone assassin and a few who believe he wasn't the shooter at all. It has been pointed out by some historians that a King-led People's Campaign would have represented a clear challenge to the policies of the Nixon administration AND the ruling oligarchy. King's death defused the movement of its most vibrant energy and turned a would-be worldwide media spectacle into a barely covered one.

It is in this vein that some have suggested that King was marked for death, not by a lone escaped convict looking for fame, but by the ruling cabal of the day. Whether or not this is true, it sure worked out great for the powers-that-be.