“We’re going to build this city… a community of love and brotherhood. The American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, white poor Americans from the Appalachian area of our country, and black Americans will all live together here in this city of hope.” — Rev. Ralph Abernathy, May 13, 1968
After writing about the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum’s A Right to the City last month, I was eager to explore more District-related exhibits around the city. My next stop? The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture’s (NMAAHC) A City of Hope: Resurrection City & The 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.
NMAAHC hosts a satellite gallery at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. In it, A City of Hope examines the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, the national action that Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was planning when he was assassinated. To learn about this event, I made my way (bravely, I argue) through the seas of matching t-shirts and gleeful shouts in the museum’s lobby and landed in 1968.
The exhibit dives into the national political backdrop of the decade, including the Kennedy-Johnson election, Johnson’s presidency, the civil disturbances of 1968, and more. Panels explain why Dr. King wanted a Poor People’s Campaign. He and other social justice leaders around the nation believed that while many benefitted from Great Society social and economic programs in the 1960s, the poor, particularly people of color, had not received their fair share. They planned to protest these inequities by sending delegations of poor people to lobby Congress and to occupy the National Mall in a symbolic Resurrection City encampment.
The exhibit explores such topics such Dr. King’s efforts for economic justice, his assassination and the nation’s response, early planning efforts by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and life at Resurrection City.
Among the show’s striking design features is a map of the United States, which lights up to show the routes protesters took to reach Washington. To get to the next area, visitors walk through a covered wagon, where a slideshow of the journey to Washington is projected. A 3-D printed diorama of Resurrection City along the National Mall powerfully displays the great scope of the encampment. At the end of the show, oral histories supplement the visuals.
In one room designed to evoke a light-dappled tent, freedom songs play softly in the background. Sheet music, protest signs, buttons, photographs, and more from the city cover the walls. The effect: you are there.
The upbeat presentation largely ignores the outbursts of violence that marred the protest. Yet the curator rightfully concludes that the campaign effectively established a multi-ethnic human rights movement that gave a national voice to the poor.
The other great success of the exhibit is its nod to the present poverty rates. Don’t miss a panel on one side of the 3-D diorama that compares the rates between 1968 and 2016. In 1968, 35 million of the 201 million Americans lived in poverty. In 2016, 40.6 million people of the 323 million population lived below the poverty line. In 1968, 15.6% of children and 33.5% of people of color lived in poverty. In 2016, 18% of children and 51.5% of people of color lived below the poverty line.
These statistics still have the power to impress and move us. Fifty years after the Poor People’s Campaign, a revival has sprung up to combat poverty today.
And just a few weeks ago, this relationship between past and present was visible on the National Mall. As I walked back from the museum, I stumbled upon a group of organizers, evidence of the 2018 revival of the Poor People’s Campaign. Next to them was the DC Community Heritage Project’s Soul Tent on the National Mall. The Soul Tent featured materials from DC Public Library’s DigDC and the Library of Congress American Folklife Center about the 1968 campaign.
Near the 50th anniversary of the end of the Poor People’s Campaign, it is evident that the problems that led to the protests in 1968 certainly don’t live exclusively in the past.
#CityofHope1968
Did you know that a little piece of the Poor People’s Campaign’s history is located just outside of our home at Mount Vernon Square? Read all about artist Jim Fauntleroy’s sculpture, “The Hand,” commissioned by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the 1968 campaign.
Emily Niekrasz
Social Media Coordinator
Historical Society of Washington, D.C.