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| Dr. King at the SCLC Atlanta Office. |
The SCLC, a key organizer for the 1963 March on Washington D.C., convenes in Atlanta, with a mission to combat poverty. The conference included more than 70 representatives of black, white, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and American Indian groups, and featured an address by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who sought to unite multiple allies in the struggle to end poverty and inequality.
Vincent Harding recalls the meeting:
"One of the last times I saw King alive, he was meeting in Atlanta in the winter of 1968 with a group of Native Americans, Chicanos, Appalachian whites, and urban black people—in addition to representatives of his basic Southern black constituency and his national church allies. He was looking for a way to draw all these folks together in the struggle for a new peace with justice, for a new citizenship based on responsibility and hope, for a new American nation.
The room was palpably charged with the tension of uncertainty and the hope of great, though guarded expectations. That was meant to be the vision and the spirit which informed the deepest levels of the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. It was to be the joining of all the causes, all the people."
Chicano Movement leaders Reies Tijerina, Corky Gonzales, Jose Angel Gutierrez, and Bert Corona were in attendence.
Sources:
SCLC, Wikipedia
We Shall See What Will Become of His Dreams, by Colleen Wessel-McCoy, Kairos Center.
SCLC, Black Past.
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