Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Bogoban here.

Originally organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or SCLC,

the Poor People's Campaign was born from a push for economic justice in the civil rights era

and is now impacting policies and elections at every level of government.

We spoke via email Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, a Poor People's Campaign Steering Committee member.

He explained, The original Poor People's Campaign was a fusion movement for economic justice

that grew out of the Civil Rights Movement.

Natives, Chicano's, poor whites from Appalachia, and welfare rights organizations from Northern Cities joined

black folks from the South to demand an economy that works for everyone.

That coalition won some real gains with the war on poverty, the Fair Housing Act,

and the legislative advocacy of the Children's Defense Fund.

President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty in 1964, a year in which 19% of Americans,

about 35 million people at the time, lived below the poverty level.

King was motivated to call for representatives from various geographic and racial groups

to help gain federal funding for a number of social programs,

including a form of universal basic income,

plus housing for the poor and other anti-poverty programs.

In November of 1967, King and the staff of the SCLC met and decided to launch the poor people's campaign

to highlight and find solutions to many of the problems facing poverty-stricken people in the United States.

The initial objective was to address rampant economic inequalities with nonviolent direct action

in a widespread form of civil disobedience known as the Poor People's March.

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