This Weekend in 1968
This Weekend in 1968: The Legacy of Resurrection City
Ann Heppermann
Kara Oehler
MAY 10, 2008
- Resurrection City, June 1968
- (Ollie Atkins Photograph Collection, Special Collections & Archives, George Mason University Libraries)
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Forty years ago, on this weekend in 1968, men and women were arriving from all over the country to Washington, D.C., as part of the Poor People's Campaign. It was the last movement organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., just before his assassination.
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- Ollie Atkins Photograph Collection, Special Collections & Archives, George Mason University Libraries
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This Weekend in 1968
Rev. King had the vision to bring together poor people of all races to make visible the plight of poverty. It was not to be a sit-it, but a live-in. They built "Resurrection City" on the mall on Washington -- and the legacy of this city's rise and fall lives today.
This weekend in 1968 was the opening of Resurrection City. We start the story with Dr. Bernard Lafayette:
Dr. Bernard Lafayette: I got a call from Martin Luther King. This was in '67. He said, 'I need you to come down to Atlanta and to move here and work full time. This may be my last campaign and we're going for broke.' And when I got to Atlanta, he appointed me the national coordinator for the Poor People's Campaign. Now the idea originally came from Marion Wright Edelman.
Marion Wright Edelman: I was Marion Wright back in 1968. I had been working with Robert Kennedy on poverty in Mississippi, and he told me to tell Dr. King to bring the poor to Washington. To make them visible.
Lafayette: And the idea was that we would bring those people in front of the folk who make decisions and build this tent city and camp out until you get what you want. The two of us, we're talking, so I said to MLK, 'Well, you say this is a PPC. Well, black people aren't the only ones poor -- are you talking about getting Hispanics involved?' He said 'Yes!' 'What about Native Americans?' 'Yes!' So I was getting to the final question, and that was the poor whites from Appalachia... He said, 'Are they poor?' He said if they were poor then this was their campaign.
Edelman: And so the planning began. I was with MLK on April 4, 1968.
Lafayette: I was there at the Lorriane Hotel in his room, 306. That morning, we were talking about the details now of the Poor People's Campaign and the press conference we were going to have in Washington, D.C. So I got on a plane, and five hours later, he was assassinated.
Walter Fauntroy: My name is Walter Fauntroy.
Lafayette: Rev. Walter Fauntroy was the man who was operating between the government and the poor people.
Fauntroy: And it took all we had to say. They killed the dreamer... 'Come to Washington.' So they came with some hope.
Edelman: They came by bus, by train.
Rev. Ruby Reese Moone: I am the Rev. Dr. Moone Reese Moone.
Edelman: They came in a mule train from the South, and the mule trains were very slow and very hard.
Moone: Thousands and thousands of people... From all across America.
Edelman: I discovered a map of Resurrection City recently that I didn't know existed which is an aerial view. It looks like a refugee camp.
Stoney Cooks: A city of plywood, teepee-looking A-frames, houses. There were some people who really made their A-frame look like home. A little family would dig up flowers and put them around their A-frame.
Edelman: Between 2,000 and 5,000 people were crammed in there for May and June.
Cooks: I mean literally, every available spot was taken.
Lafayette: We had full facilities for a city. So we had to have a mayor.
Voice over loudspeaker: 'I would like to introduce to you Dr. Ralph David Abernathy -- the mayor of Resurrection City! Yeah!'
Fauntroy: There was adequate food, a City Hall.
Lafayette: Sewage.
Fauntroy: Health Care.
Lafayette: Schools.
Cooks: Every single day, we started with a demonstration at the Department of Agriculture. And then we'd branch out from there.
Fauntroy: People were organized in their areas of interest. If you were an Indian, you wanted to go to the Interior, to talk to people in Indian Affairs. Let them know that policy needs to change. If you were a farmer, you went to Agriculture. So it went -- well, early on. Some despair drifted in when the people they talked to... seemed nasty. 'I don't want to be bothered with you poor people. You are a problem. You are tax eaters.' That kind of foolishness. But we always picked them up when we got back. They have a good hot meal and some entertainment.
Lafayette: Musicians came in the evening.
Fauntroy: Oh my goodness!
Cooks: Jimmy Collier.
Fauntroy: Peter Paul and Mary.
Lafayette: I think Pete Seeger came...
Fauntroy: And we got to singing...
Lafayette: So, always visitors coming through. Even when there was mud and everything else.
Cooks: Every day. It would be nice and bright and all of a sudden clouds would come through -- and ha! The rain.
Moone: People got tired of living in the wet.
Cooks: There were even rumors that the government seeded the clouds.
Lafayette: Somebody counted and they said it rained for 40 days.
Fauntroy: Which sort of amplified the despair. And when you've got a muddy spirit and muddy eyes and a muddy future, you turn on one another instead of to one another.
Cooks: We had robbery, burglary.
Lafayette: Cooks probably didn't tell you this, but some guy came in to rob and Cooks gave the person the impression that he was going to give him the money, but instead, Cooks knocked the gun out of his hand and the barrel of the gun fell out.
Cooks: It was 4,000 or 5,000 people, and all of their problems.
Voice on radio: 'Sen. Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. today...'
Fauntroy: June the 5th, 1968.
Cooks: To hear the Robert Kennedy was assassinated, it was like 'My God, again.'
Fauntroy: It was hard, people just went crazy. They were cussing out nuns who were coming every day to feed because they were white. They were turning on one another -- 'You Hispanics are taking our jobs, you Indians should have beat the Cowboys.' There was just a pervasive angryness.
Moone: The leadership of the Poor People's Campaign were very disgusted. They were not getting Congress to listen. And they were saying, 'You're going to hear us before you leave.'
Fauntroy: And the Federal Government said, 'Look, if you could control the people, put them in the kind of discipline we had when it was beautiful, fine.' And as I said, all of a sudden. It just popped out!
Cooks: The bulldozers came in from the 17th St. entrance.
Edelman: I think it was June 24th.
Cooks: People were told move out or you're going to be crushed over.
Fauntroy: And I went down there and watched it. Helplessly.
Cooks: This was demolition. They bulldozed it.
Fauntroy: The people I had been talking to didn't have any prior knowledge of it.
Cooks: And in a very short period of time, there was no more Resurrection City.
Fauntroy: I think Resurrection City is remembered as a failure, but even its failure lifted us to higher ground. At least, that's how I view it.
Lafayette: Whether it ended poverty, the answer is 'No.'
Edelman: Change is a long, hard thing.
Fauntroy: Martin Luther King put it this way: 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it always bends towards justice.'
Edelman: And I think it's really important for people to know that, while they went back home in despair and depressed, a lot of follow-up occurred which did lead to major federal investment in nationwide nutrition programs, like food stamps and school lunches. So the Poor People's Campaign struggle was not in vain.
Fauntroy: So, I look back on the Poor People's Campaign and that decade, as painful as it was, as what was necessary to awaken enough people to change public policy. (singing) 'We shall overcome, deep in heart, I do believe we shall overcome' ...And that's that.
More stories from our This Weekend in 1968 series
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From houston, TX, 07/23/2009
great story
From Philadelphia, PA, 05/22/2009
I am happy to see that this storey is alive, I was involved from the start,for me it mostly began at 14Th and U st NW where SCLC office was ,where white folks would come and ask ,do you think the blacks will come into my neighborhood, at the same time were getting out their check book buy peace,people had been rioting after DR. kings murder a few weeks back.LINDA a young INDIAN woman was the person to break the ground for Resurrection city,INDIAN chief CLIFF HILL gave land rights,after that it was on ,charter BUSES were burned on the spot the Blackstone Rangers from Detroit and Meany others gangs arrived, it was something else,people did thing that you would not wont to believe both good and bad SAMMY DAVIS JR came in his ROSE ROSS,HARRY BELIFONTE,was there working with Trash clean-up. doing the day is one style of life and night oh my GOD it was another,the big shots and the PIT HOTEL, JESSIE JACKSON,MISS STAR,ANDREW YOUNG and personal aid SCOTT and friends ,if only the truth would come out that young KING daughter RUNNING around doing all sorts of things guys were at the chase she was about 16 or 17 at the time,Montgomery Alabama police jacket found hidden in one of the meeting room after a meeting at SCLC office 14Th-U st.RACism at that time and now.
From Cambridge, MA, 01/28/2009
As a former resident of Resurrection City, there from the construction of our plywood lean-tos until the bulldozers drove us out, it was absolutely so amazing to see Barack Obama inaugurated. I wish I could have been on the Mall again for the occasion, but it was still inspiring to watch it on television.
From Eden Prarie, MN, 01/24/2009
I have just returned from witnessing the inauguration of President Barak Obama. While standing on the Mall with one million other Americans something was tugging at me. When I got home i recalled Resurrection City from my youth. My father was a congressman from MN in the 60's. During the summer of 1968 walked down from the capital and offered Andrew Young to use his office 'on the Hill' for organizing. Later that week my mother took the five of us children to see the plywood city on the Mall. We walked through the muddy avenues and peered inside the A-frames. it was a sad situation.
Four days ago i took my wife and two of my children to DC to witness history. We stood almost on the same spot where 40 years ago another group of people gathered in Resurrection CIty. A resurrection happened on Tuesday!
Rev,. Joel Quie
From Oak Park, IL, 11/24/2008
As Brother Jean, CFX, (Xaverian Brothers -- Roman Catholic order of teaching brothers), I was responsible for coordinating the sourcing of lumber, volunteers, construction, and delivery to Resurrection City (located on southside of the Washington Mall Reflecting Pool). These "A-Frames" provided shelter and communal buildings for Poor People's Campaign participants. Soliciting donations and raising money to pay for building materials was a constant challenge. Security at the building site (athletic field of Xaverian College in Silver Spring) was a constant concern. At one point, it seemed we had more volunteers from the ranks of FBI and military intelligence agents. Memories: (1) standing guard at night to protect construction area from sabotage; (2)renting 18-wheeler with 40 ft trailer from Hertz and personally driving loads of A-frame components to the site for further assembly; (3) meeting with Rev. Abernathy and his leadership team pleading for payment of outstanding bills; and 4)visiting Resurrection City during downpour, seeing flooding and squalor (lack of sewage disposal/fresh water) and seeking out SCLC leadership that night at Pitt's Motel lounge for help -- which never came.
From district of columbia, DC, 06/19/2008
i am just learning about this story of what happened, and my heart goes out to the people who suffered though this, jsut from listening to this, i can see that the enemy came in like a floor and destroyed that which GOD was builing, he took all of the major leaders, which represented the head,and without the head the body cannot live, but the BIBLE say vengence is the LORD and he will REPAY. Even though people has went on with their lives and forgotten about this, but GOD never forgets, and he never sleeps, i pray that GOD bless everyone who suffered though this, and even the ones who came against this project, AMEN
From Jackson, MS, 06/04/2008
I attended the funeral of Dr. King in Atlanta and returned to Jackson to graduate from Lanier High School on June 5, 1968. A few days later, I joined some others from Mississippi and headed to Resurrection City. Reverend Jesse Jackson led a group of us to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protest. After residing in a makeshift wooden hut, we were arrested and my friend, Emmanuel Daniels was taken to Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Not being 18, I was incarcerated in the youth detention of the D.C. Jail. Following my release, I was given a one-way ticket back to Jackson. A few days later, Emmanuel got back to Jackson. Gene C. Young, Ph.D., Jackson, Mississippi
From Los Angeles, CA, 05/16/2008
I, along with a friend (Ed Anderson), organized a class of 33 students from UCBerkeley who came to DC to be participant observers in the PPC. We had an academic sponsor at UC and worked with Arthur Waskow of the Inst. for Policy Studies in DC. Rev. Lafayette and Stoney Cooks were our 2 primary contacts with SCLC.
I, personally, was one of the very few of us who actually lived in the exhilarting mudhole known as Res. City--we were all initially placed with volunteer local families.
I'm sick that I missed this broadcast last week (I get the newsletter but left work early last Fri). I became a lawyer and am now an LAUnified HS teacher. It was probably the single most significant event in my entire life--childbirth included!
Thank you for this--most people really don't remember it (you tangentially mentioned RFK's assassination--there was an "uprising" in the camp--it was middle of the night for us--and the police came in and tear gassed us. It was absolutely the scariest night of my life!
thank you.
Janis Cohen-Milch
From Playa del Rey, CA, 05/10/2008
Thanks for the segment on "The Legacy of Resurrection City." It is important that listeners (many of whom are citizens of the USA and all of whom are citizens of the world) know our history and how we have gotten to where we are today. Great job! Very interesting programs--from Jello wrestling and beyond! Keep up the good work.
From Chicago, IL, 05/10/2008
I just heard the story about Resurrection City, and I remember hearing about it at the time on the radio news regularly. I had large hopes and expectations, being young and naive, that more would come out of it and wished I could get out of high school to be there. Today, when I listened to the part about the bulldozers coming in, I thought at least the people in attendance could be grateful that they weren't treated the way the war bond protesters were when they camped out after WWI--they were overrun with cavalry, shot and stabbed, women and children alike, according to a PBS program (if I remember correctly) I saw about it, and I believe Gens. MacArthur & Patton were involved; yes, the same two who later went on to great fame & glory in WWII. Short collective memories most Americans have! Thanks for the memories of the dreams many of us shared in the 60's.
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