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January 22, 2004

Unfinished business

Martin Luther King is honored all over the world as the most prominent advocate of non-violent social change since Mohandas Gandhi. Among African Americans, King is revered for his successful leadership of the civil rights movement. However, few remember the drive to end poverty that King had launched shortly before his death.

King’s great achievements were the non-violent demonstrations for equal rights that aroused the conscience of the nation. The brutal retaliation of the hardcore bigots revealed to the world the racial hypocrisy of America. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that made it a federal offense to discriminate in education, employment or places of public accommodation on the basis of race. In 1965, the president signed the Voting Rights Act that provided federal protection in areas of the South where blacks were prevented from voting by force or threats.

Disingenuous conservatives have insisted that blacks were freed from slavery by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865 and any additional legislation or programs to assist them are unnecessary. That opinion fails to recognize that there has been a concerted effort in America since then to marginalize the status of blacks. The first argument was that the freed slaves were not citizens. In 1868, Congress had to settle that question with passage of the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

Then Congress passed a Civil Rights Act in 1883 to provide equal access to places of public accommodation, but that had limited effect because of the states’ rights interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court. Also, the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which sanctioned the doctrine of separate but equal, vitiated the effectiveness of that Civil Rights Act.

For a whole century from the end of slavery African Americans fought in the courts for equality. Notable victories include Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) outlawing restrictive covenants on the sale of real estate, and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which reversed the legality of the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, and ended de jure discrimination in public schools.

As a result of Martin Luther King’s efforts, changes in the country’s laws provide for the first time reason to assert that African Americans are finally free. There has been less than 40 years of freedom not the 139 years from the end of slavery.

Martin Luther King realized that freedom would be meaningless unless blacks could attain a reasonable measure of economic equality. He was especially concerned about the plight of the poor. King said:

“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.”

At the end of his life, King was thoroughly committed to the Poor People’s Campaign. He was in Memphis helping the garbage collectors get an increase in pay when he was assassinated.

United For a Fair Economy, an organization in Boston that studies economic inequality, has recently published an analysis of the economic condition of African Americans from 1968 to the present. It is clear that much has to be done to realize King’s dream of freedom and equality for all.

 

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