Poor People’s Campaign Returns To Memphis, TN

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival (PPC: NCMR) continued its march toward Washington with a rally Monday, May 23, at the former Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where an assassin tried to silence the movement when he killed Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

When Rev. King was assassinated in 1968, he had come to Memphis to support the striking sanitation workers as part of the Poor People’s Campaign. Now the PPC: NCMR-–the movement that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the National Welfare Rights Organization, and faith leaders began-– came to Memphis to say: “We won’t be silent anymore.”

As Bishop William J. Barber II, co-chair of the PPC: NCMR, said in Memphis in 2017, “Memphis cannot continue to be known as a place of King’s death. Where there’s a crucifixion, there must be a resurrection.”

The Mid-South Mobilization Committee, made up of people from Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi, led the march and rally as part of a Mobilization Tour stop on the way to the Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18th.

The program was live-streamed. The tour route started at 4:30 p.m. CT at Church Park (S. Fourth Street at Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to gather for the March to the National Civil Rights Museum, 450 Mulberry St. for the 6 p.m. CT mass meeting and rally.

The National Civil Rights Museum, the location of the Lorraine Motel, now has a Smithsonian exhibition titled “Solidarity Now” about the original Poor People’s Campaign, and it has added an exhibit titled “Poverty Today” to represent the evolution of the historic to the current movement.

The national cochairs, Bishop Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, joined poor and impacted “testifiers” from the Mid-South.

The priorities and demands of poor and low-wealth people from these three states encouraged a Third Reconstruction agenda, demanding, among other things: updating the poverty measure to reflect the real cost of living; enacting a living wage; guaranteeing the right of all workers to form and join unions; and, guaranteeing quality health care for all.

All of the states joining the Monday program suffer from high poverty and the lack of living minimum wage.

Previous tour stops were Cleveland; Madison,

Wisconsin; Raleigh, North Carolina; New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. Memphis is our last tour stop before our June 18th march and assembly.

The June 18th assembly in Washington, D.C., will be a declaration of the power of poor and low-wealth people and their moral allies to say that “... this system is killing all of us and we can’t…we won’t… we refuse to be silent anymore!” organizers said.

“It is not just a day of action. It is a declaration of an ongoing, committed moral movement to: 1) shift the moral narrative; 2) build power, and; 3) make real policies to fully address poverty and low wealth from the bottom up,” Bishop William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis stated in an announcement.