adaption of booktv's "in depth". >> you are watching booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. here are some programs to look out for this weekend. ..

>> 40 million people now in the united states and mexico as well. they all depend, we all depend on the colorado river as our basic water source. we need it for everything, we need it for municipal use to drink, we need it for our houses, we need it for our industry, we need it for minding, and most importantly and the biggest water user out here is agriculture. we can't grow anything without it. it is considered to be the most litigated river in the world, and that is probably very accurate. more lawsuits, compacts, laws created to regulate what is collectively known as the law of the river. there's probably 13-15 major laws that have spanned the whole 20th century really up until the present time that talks about who gets how much of its water and who can take it, how much every year, how to share it and our relationship with mexico and the water as well. >> this weekend booktv and

american history tv tour the history and literary life of mace saw, arizona. today at noon eastern on c-span2's booktv and sunday at 5 on american history tv on c-span3. >> gordon mantler recounts the poor people's campaign of 1968 next on booktv. he examines the anti-poverty effort organized by martin luther king jr. and the relationship between african-americans and mexican-americans within the movement. it's about an hour. of -- [applause] >> thank you, tom. i appreciate it. thank you, everyone, for being here tonight. i really appreciate it. i feel a little bit like an airline pilot and telling you that i know you have choices, and so thank you for flying southwest. [laughter] there are at least three other events going on tonight about

economic justice, poverty and human rights. i think that says a lot about the community that we live in durham, how much we care about these issues and are engaged with them, it also says a lot about the state of the country that these are still issues that we're talking about, right? but i really appreciate you being here. i also want to, you know, thank the regulator and tom for having me here. it means a lot to launch the book here. we moved to durham in 2002, i started the graduate program in the history department at duke in the fall of 2002. and i had heard about the regulator even before moving to durham from people who do history and just love to read. so i came here as an avid reader. i walking my books here -- i bought my books here, and now as someone who teaches at duke in the writing program, i order my textbooks through here. so if there's anybody who is an

academic here who does not order their textbooks through the regulator, you should. you can see tom for that. so it means a lot to be here tonight and to start this here. so, you know, as tom said, the plan will be, you know, to talk for 35 or 40 minutes at the most, i'll do some reading from the book over here, and then i look forward to a robust dialogue, questions and answers at the end for, you know, the next 20 or 25 minutes after that until around 8:00, and then i'll sign some books over there, whoever wants to -- if they can read my be chicken scratch, right? so that's the plan. so this year we're going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a number of civil rights flash points. 1963 was a pretty important year in the civil rights movement. and, or what i will call the

black freedom struggle for the rest of the talk. and none will be more celebrated than the march on washington that happened on august 28, 1963. i think we can imagine that the focus will be, you know, this is probably what we're going to see a lot of, right? dr. king, the celebrity of dr. king and the "i have a dream" speech, right? maybe there will be some mention of the complexity of the march on washington, the labor unions and the labor activists who actually made it possible, who actually did all the organizing like bay yard rustin. maybe we'll hear about the full name of the march on washington which was the march on washington for jobs and freedom, and maybe we'll even hear about the kennedy administration's horror about this march. they didn't want this to happen. they were concerned that it would just lead to violence to the point where president kennedy shut down the federal government other than for essential personnel the day that this occurred in '63.

but i'm pretty certain that the commemoration's mostly going to focus on dr. king and "i have a dream." we all know the speech, i'm sure most of us can recite large chunks of it, especially toward the end, and, you know, it's a great speech. it's optimistic, it's hopeful, it's king at his best when it comes to the delivery and the cadence and the style and the emotional appeal of it. but it also freezes dr. king in 1963, in this moment, right? who's talking about equality and brotherhood which are fine themes, and a fine message, but it freezes him and obscures the complexity of king, obscures the complexity of the black freedom struggle, and it obscures the complexity of the 1960s. so tonight i want to talk more about another march, the poor people's campaign in 1968, which is what dr. king was working on

when he was assassinated in memphis. aharmed by what -- alarmed by what he saw as a vicious circle of violence by the state, police harassment and brutality or as well u.s. military involvement in asia and then the response by frustrated african-americans, very frustrated at the slow pace of change in civil rights change, particularly in urban areas and the north and west, dr. king despaired in late 1967 that he thought the united states was moving quickly toward a far it, toward fascism. but the inevitable response to the violence occurring both by the police and rioters and what, you know, the signal, the symbolism of vietnam was sending was that this was quickly, we were quickly turning into, turning toward fascism, right? and so in december of 1967, he

announces the poor people's campaign in which his organization, the southern christian leadership council, i shall refer to it as the sclc, would bring, quote, waves of the poor and disinherited to washington, d.c. to demand redress of their grievances to the goth adding that the poor would stay until america responds. but he envisioned this campaign as not just black and white, but one that included mexican-americans, puerto ricans and native americans as well. and he had hoped that the campaign would do a number of things, three primary goals; transform fully the struggle of civil rights to the struggle of human rights, bring about the federal government's redeadation to the war on poverty, a war on poverty that was declared four years earlier by president lyndon johnson but never fully fought, never fully funded, and to, hopefully, restore the

credibility of nonviolence in social justice organizing, right? which had lost ground consider my amid the calls for any means necessary and armed self-defense, particularly through the black power movement. so i'm going to lead to my first excerpt here that in some ways captures why i think the campaign's so important and how it's been treated up to this point really by most scholars and the public memory. the crew said blossomed into the most ambitious undertaking ever by king and the southern christian leadership conference. the campaign has been dismissed by journalists, scholars, king biographers and even some activists as irrelevant or a disastrous coda in the black freedom strug. one official refer today the campaign as the, quote, little

bighorn of the civil rights movement, a rather imprecise analogy because it's not clear who the la coat that and who general custer are in that analogy. and, in fact, the campaign was deeply flawed and often was preoccupied with symbolism. it did not spark a new war on poverty, it did not reinvigorate nonviolent strategy, and it did not achieve many of the stated goals including a new deals-style jobs program. yet a closer look reveals a unique and remarkably constructed experiment designed to wage a sustained fight against poverty. even amid the cacophony of the assassinations and political turmoil that spring, the campaign captured the nation's attention and imagination. only in washington in the spring of 1968 did local, regional and national activists of so many different backgrounds from veterans in the southern civil rights movements to activists of the anti-war and welfare rights

struggles attempt to construct a physical and spiritual community explicitly about justice and poverty that went beyond a one-day rally. by bringing such a diverse array of activists, the campaign highlights how politics operated alongside the identity politics of black and chicano power. that relationship was messy and exacerbated by oh forces, but ultimately activists such as martin luther king and jesse jackson, maria varela and marion wright and thousands of others did not choose either identity politics or coalitional politics at time. they chose both and participated in both. so this last part, and i'll -- most of those names, i think, are recognizable. a few of them i'll explain a little bit. this last part, this relationship between coalition identity or class and race is central to the book. the public memory, and scholars industrial break down the

1960sing into two pieces. the decade is seen as the good 1960s and the bad 1960s, right? so the good 1960s are, you know, the moment of kennedy liberalism, right? and the early civil rights coalition that is most active in the early 1960s up to 1964, '65. but then this coalition, and this is how the narrative is normally told, then this coalition devolves into conflict, urban uprisings, plaque power and identity politics. and so in reality what i argue is that coalition and conflict are always in coexistence, right? there isn't this clenching narrative from good to bad. and that class and race really are not at odds with each other all the time, that they're mutually interdependent and reinforcing, and i think the poor people's campaign is a great illustration of this process. and this relationship.

so it takes months for people to hear dr. king's call. and especially outside of traditional civil rights circles, right? sclc has never really reached tout chicanos, reached out to american indians, reached out to anyone sort of beyond the civil rights white liberal kind of constituency. so this is a new thing if more or them. and the minority group conference which he announces in early march where he invites 80 some activists from across the country, all across the spectrum of the left to come to atlanta for a one-day conference on march 14, 1968, for him to pitch to them what the poor people's campaign was all about and why they should be involved. and it really is a remarkable moment that has been almost completely forgotten in the history books. we never talk about this when we talk about dr. king usually.

but i think it's one of the most important moments in the last years of his life and certainly one of the more important achievements in the sense of the poor people's campaign, just getting all these folks in the same room together to talk about what they had in common and what they, and, you know, their differences as well. and some of the most important leaders of the chicano movement are present. so this is reyes lopez who i mentioned earlier, the land grant rights leader from new mexico who his cause, and this is a cause that goes way back to the 19th century, was that people of mention san descent in new mexico and southern colorado were poor because of the loss of land, land that was stolen from them at the end, after the mexican war that was supposed to be protected by the treaty of guadalupe hi call the doe in 1948 which ends the mexican war but then is taken from them over a generation or two two.

if this land is restored, these people would not be poor, and he built a movement in mexico that gets more and more anticipation from chicano activists across the sws and even nationally. so here he is sitting right next to dr. king. you have burt corona, a mexican-american leader from california who cut his teeth in labor organizing in the 1930s and '40s in southern california and then founded a political organization called the mexican-american political organization -- oh, , mapa, in california. jose gutierrez who was one of the founders of the mexican news organization in texas, and then corps key gonzalez, a boxer turned political activist turned chicano movement be leader, one of the more charismatic folks to.com out of the -- to come out of the movement in denver. so he will be pretty prominent

in the poor people's campaign. these two people don't make to it the campaign, but they're part of the initial stages of organizing. so, but in addition to the chicano movement, there are welfare right activists here, there are members of the liberal, the religious left, the american friends service committee which you may know as the activist arm of the quakers, the national council of churches is represented, there are american indian activists who are interested in treaty rights, interested in fishing rights, the ability to fish in ancestral waters that were once protected by treaties signed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that were being -- they were basicallying with prosecuted for doing that kind of fishing. there were student leader, coal miners like environmental -- that worked around environmental and land issues as well. and so all these people were together in this one place. and here king pitches the idea for the campaign, one that was not just about how sclc defines

poverty and the solutions to poverty, but talking to them about, well, how do you define your poverty, and what are the solutions to it? because they're not the same thing. and i think this is one of the, one of the interesting points that the poor people's campaign highlights is how different folks define poverty and define justice. so that leads to my next, my next excerpt. king made a speech for the, quote, radical redistribution of political and economic power. participants recalled that much of the speech focused on a sharp but familiar critique of the nation's economic system and the vietnam war. as well as the need for jobs or income for the nation's poor. but in a rare rhetorical gesture, king also discussed the denial of land as a source of people's poverty. although his example focused on newly-freed slaves in the reconstruction south, such a reference also attempted to bind the cause of african-americans

with those mexican-american and american indian champions of land and treaty rights. employing the delegates -- imploring the delegates to join what was now, quote, a human rights movement, king concluded that, quote: we must think of the david of truth against the goliath of injustice. the poor people's campaign was designed to get the nation right side up. but, he said, it was only possible if the people in the room joined sclc that spring. after king received modest applause, the bull session that followed showcased the anxious energy and unanswered questions of the activists present, not to mention the vastly different ways those present sought to combat poverty. echoing the concerns of jose angel duet rez and others,, someone with asked do you want -- [inaudible] corps key gonzalez argued that if king wanted to confer with chicanos, he must understand that, quote: conferring is a

two-way street. that included decision making and policy making as well as the inclusion of issues. such concerns were repeated and captivated the room with a stem-winding defense of the hand grant struggle, the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo and the distraction debates about armed violence posed. quote: whites are afraid of their own crimes, he cried. they are not afraid of violence. the liberty bell cracked in repel onagainst the betrayal of the aims of the country. that's a pretty good quote. he concluded by asking ralph abernathy, standing in for king, if the civil rights leader supported the treaty, and unsure abernathy responded, they were, quote, with him in spirit, and the room exploded in applause. over the next several hours, you can sense the tension. there is tension here, right? they're not sure what to make of each other, they don't know if this is going to work, right in

but so over the next several hours the delegates bond over food, over culture, music played and singing. and a growing realization that they are stronger together than apart. and that more importantly, perhaps, sclc was taking them seriously and took their issues seriously. miles horton, a founder of the highlander folk school which was a training center for civil rights and labor activists going back to the 1930s, after the conference wrote dr. king, quote: i believe we caught a glimpse of the future and the making of a bottom-up coalition. so king was assassinated three weeks after this, after this conference. sparking urban disorders in more than 100 cities across the can country and sparking a lot of concerns, you know, that echoed

what folks who were opposed to the campaign had been saying. this is what's going to happen. violence is going to break out in washington. of we can't have that ten blocks from the white house. we should, the campaign should be canceled. and conventional wisdom would say that with dr. king's death, um, that the poor people's campaign, it would have made sense if it was canceled. justing this is to explain who's here, obviously, coretta scott king, ralph abernathy in the middle, here's a very young harry belafonte. bayard rustin there who organized the march on washington in '63. so this is at the memorial march for dr. king. but, so the conventional wisdom said that the campaign should be canceled. who else can lead this? who else can do this but dr. can king? and in the aftermath of the violence and the mourning that

this prompted, we shouldn't do this. but ralph abernathy, as i pointed out, king's successor said, no, we're going to go on, we're going to move on. and the support for the campaign actually exploded. and i think this is, you know, maybe one of these irony is the that a lot of people who were critical of the campaign initially and had said i'm going to sit this out, i don't agree with what they're doing or the strategy they're doing, or they think it wasn't actually going to you can seed, changed their minds. so black panthers who had scoffed at nonviolent strategy as quaint and outmoded said i'm going to go as one of the panthers that i interviewed told me, i'm going to go as a tribute to dr. king, or i went as a tribute to dr. king. roy wilkins, a longtime leader of the naacp and a rival of king's in a lot of ways for fundraising and for attention, media attention, who had said that the poor people's campaign is going to provoke violence and

make it even harder to make any kind of progress in civil rights in '67 and '68, you know, when it came to the vietnam war and issues like that, wilkins doesn't support the campaign, but he withdraws his opposition. from the campaign. and so, and there are many other nameless people, black, white and brown, who want tad something, you know -- who want to do something, you know? they're upset by king's death, they think the poor people's death a good way to channel their energy whether through volunteer work or by going to washington themselves. so you see an explosion of support for the campaign that the sclc was not prepared to deal with, actually. sclc was not known for organization already. they often did things by the seat of their pants a little bit, and it worked out well

enough. but what they're trying to do is a major campaign bringing thousands of people to d.c., building an encampment on the washington mall and the national mall to house those people and really run a small city all while trying to mourn the death of their friend and leader, right? and so this, it becomes really obvious in early may how difficult this is going to be even though the campaign's moving forward. and as it begins and a series of caravans which bring with people from across the country from the northeast, the midwest, the pacific northwest and southwest and south are bringing folks across the country to washington to descend on congress and the administration to say you need to take above i seriously -- poverty seriously, right? and here's an example, this is probably the most famous caravan that brought people to d.c., the

mule train. a classic symbol of southern poverty, right? black and white sharecropping in particular, a couple pieces, here's a piece of material culture, one of the rallies that happens later on. what's interesting, though, about this is while this becomes the most important symbol of -- one of the most important similar polls of the -- symbols of the poor people's campaign, it's actually misleading. it reinforces this idea that the campaign was mostly worried about black poverty and southern poverty, right? and it erases somewhat not undeliberately, but it still erases the other, the multiracial makeup that you have, right, of mexican-americans and puerto rican-americans and appalachian whites, all these other folks that were participate anything the campaign. this doesn't really capture, you

know, their poverty. so another symbol of this was resurrection city. i mentioned the encampment on the washington mall. so this is west potomac park now. it's mostly athletic fields, softball, soccer depending on the season. but this is where they set up camp with wood a-frame tents to house, the plan was up to 3,000 people, right? and this would be a launch. pad for protest demonstrations and lobbying of congress and federal agencies in the white house. and there'd always been this plan to do this ever sense the very beginning to use king can's words until america responds. we will stay here until america responds, right in but resurrection city, um, takes on a life of its own in a lot of ways and becomes a symbol of the campaign that's both good and bad.

resurrection city had become home for almost 2500 people at its peak in late may. described by one magazine as a, quote, revival meeting within a carnival within an army camp, resurrection city took on a, quote: unique, throbbing personality through a rich diversity of people and a high level of creativity. residents identified the grassy streets, those are in quotes, between tents with names such as love lane and abernathy avenue. homes became the sugar shack, the great society, the cleveland rat patrol. doctors made shanty calls, barbers cut hair, marshals tried to keep the peace. men played checkers. if residents did not meet during periodic demonstrations at a federal agency or a meeting with a member of congress, they saw each other in line for food or

chemical toilets. a newspaper written solely by the camp's inhas been tonights, true unity news began to publish, and seemingly every night the entertain ultimate -- entertainment was, quote, the finest in town. resurrection city quickly became a renowned concert you. the tent city even had its own zip code in part for residents to receive government benefits. also intentional efforts to foster a sharing of different cultural styles and knowledge particularly through the many races soul center. the soul center, located in the small so-called white section of resurrection city fostered intercultural exchange among the campaign's diverse participants. coordinated by the highlander folk school, the center organized activities ranging

from historical discussions to live performances. while organizers sponsored well known artists, a particular interest was finding musicians and artists from among the residents themselves. other writing by the residents. when the rain started, a shelter was built above the fire where coffee was always boiling and around which good conversation or singing was always taking place, wrote miles horton. long having understood cultural understanding through music and art. the scheduled sessions soon gave way to an 18-hour round of informal discussions, arguments, music, singing, cough of fee-drinking and eating. visiting intertapers found their way there -- entertainers found their way there singing freedom songs, performing traditional mexican ball adds. the soul center hosted a daily symphony of course. reagan recalled an evening as one of her earliest movements of

multiracial culture exchange. quote: musicians were acknowledging the relationship between who they were and who somebody else was. so miles horton references rain, right? and, boy, did it rain. one of my, one of the folks that i did an oral history with, i did about 40 of them from folks who went to the poor people's campaign, many of whom lived at resurrection city, talked about how it rained like in the bible. it rained 19 out of 31 days at the peak of the poor people's campaign in late may and early june. and -- yeah. thanks. [laughter] good, good -- and you can see right here the ankle-deep water and the mud that it would leave behind even after the waters receded. it became a remarkable mess for

those who were trying to organize and make the city work, right? you can see some of the better days with the barbers cutting hair and one of the white families that was there from appalachia. but it rained so hard that resurrection city had to be evacuated twice. the mess hall collapsed at one moment. there were concerns about flu epidemics and other kinds of epidemics of disease. that never happened, but there was a lot of talk about that. the medical community on human rights was on top of trying to make sure that folks were not, you know, obviously spending too much time in standing water and were getting, you know, clean food and water to drink. of and coretta scott king who visited resurrection city multiple times was literally carried by campaign officials through resurrection city rather than let her walk through the ankle-deep mud. so by the time most mexican-americans and native americans arrive from the

western caravans, they arrive about a week and a half, two weeks later in mid to late may, resurrection city is not a very attractive place to want to live. and so in what i think is a great upside statement but one of -- understatement, ernesto said, quote: we didn't see what we had hoped to see. [laughter] clearly, for understandable reasons. martin luther king had been assassinated. but we figured, well, okay, if we don't have their crap together, we wish them the best of luck. meanwhile, we have to get on with what we want to do during the time we're here. he doesn't actually use crap, but i decided -- [laughter] try to make pg. so instead, most chicanos lived when they get to washington, move into what's called the hawthorne school. it's an experimental high school a couple miles from resurrection city. and the choice of the hawthorne school was critical, the chance to live of there. not only was it warm and dry

and, you know, a base of action, but in this space much of the campaign's constructive relationship building takes place, especially for chicanos and to the point where be many folks independently refer to it as a successful multiethnic community that developed. give you a glimpse of the hawthorne school. so as the initial rain stopped, considerable multiracial cooperation began to blossom within the confines of the hawthorne school. sometimes this took the form of a cultural exchange such as the impromptu jam sessions witnessed in the hawthorne common area. a white man, quote, starts playing this kick ass boogie on the piano, and all of a sudden these poor white p appalachians were kicking their heels, black folks jumped in, and mexicans tapped their toes. you had an interesting

cross-pollination, you can't structure that. rudy gonzalez found it invaluable to have played with kids of many backgrounds. we had a blast, he recalled, but it also took some adjustment to interact with very poor whites. quote, i had never seen poor whites before. i mean, dirt poor. of some hardly had shoes. and despite his young age, rudy was not alone. nearly all of the chicano activists echoed the sentiment. to them, whites were rich elites who ran the nation's power struggle. but when the contingent from appalachia arrived, mexican-americans were shocked. quote, i thought i was poor until i saw some of these people. gonzalez recalled that one initial response by mexican-americans there was to gather the extra shoes and jackets they had brought for the trip and to give them to their white counterparts. such interactions produced a

more sophisticated way of viewing poverty. some had been exposed to poverty of all kinds and knew, at least vaguely, about poor appalachian white, but it gave younger activists something to think about. quote: it was the first time a lot of us had contact with puerto ricans and appalachian whites. when you've never been out of the state, never like more than 100 miles from where you were born, to come in contact with all these different people from different cultures and subcultures, it helped crystallize concepts. i went through a political change from what i would call a nationalist to more of an internationalist perspective where i saw the struggle here at home. and rather vilifying white men, he began to criticize the capitalist structure and its most common defenders, rich white men, a change that would prove invaluable to him versus an activist to the chicano movement in the '70s and then an anti-war organizer later on.

so this is one of the big takeaways that participants in the poor people's campaign had. the opportunity to interact with folks that they didn't really have a chance to normally, right? such as the appalachian whites. they met people that got them thinking in more sophisticated ways, and i think it's important to note that a lot of the folks that went to washington for the poor people's campaign were relatively young, teenagers, in their 20 thes, maybe in their 30s, right? so there were older folks there as well, but it was the majority of the people that went to washington and stayed there for an extended period of time were younger, right? so maybe they were, you know, they had more time to -- hadn't really had, been able to form these kinds of, this kind of thinking, um, sort of yet. but what was even more important was the relationships between chicano activists. they said that one of the great

takeaways for them was that they got to meet people from other chicano activists from the southwest. so folks from los angeles saying that, you know, when would i have gotten together with the crusades, broken bread with them, marched every day with them, right? this was an opportunity for them to meet, you know, tbonsless and the guys for from new mexico and people from chicago, and it made them much more handgun to be involved and to participate in the chicano movement activities elsewhere. when there's a chicano youth conference where corps key gonzales calls for people to come from all over the country to denver, they were much more willing to go because they knew corky personally, right? and these kinds of interactions became so important, and i think it's one of the great legacies of the poor people's campaign, right? that is completely lost by typical media accounts and even scholarly accounts. so one of the infamous protests

that occurred was outside of the supreme court. i mentioned fishing rights earlier. this is an issue of great importance to american indians. finish -- and this idea that they should have the ability to fish in ancestral waters despite what state law said because they have treaties with the national government that protects that. supreme court rules against them, says you cannot fish in your ancestral waters beyond what the laws say, right? so there's a protest of some 400 black, chicano and american indians that go to demonstrate outside the supreme court. they don't change their mind, of course, right? but it's an important bonding moment. what's even more important that many people said was with the walk back when they were attacked by the d.c. police. and many folks say, you know, when you're beaten together and when you're sitting in jail together, you find common cause. you know, you really find common

cause when you sit in the same jail cell, said ernesto v. hill. solidarity day was aically mack tick moment in some sense. it looks a little bit like the march on washington, right? five years earlier. and it was compared quite a bit to the march on washington, usually not in a positive way. there was talk about the negative tone of the solidarity day, there was an angrier tone, for sure, but this is 1968, not 1963, and i think that's to be expected. people, media talked about ralph abernathy's lumbering, terrible speech, and it wasn't an "i have a dream" sweep. it was smaller. so there's all these comparisons with the march on washington, and they were relatively unfair. but, you know, nonetheless made. to me, solidarity day, um, is important, but it's really, it's

not one of the most important legacies, really moments of the campaign. again, it was really about these interactions that people had with each other in mundane moments often times that is one of the, you know, the great lessons, i think, of the campaign that makes it so important, interesting and illustrative. finish so five days later after solidarity day occurred, the park permit -- you had to have a park permit with the department of interior to actually have this encampment on the washington mall -- ended, and the government chose not to e new it -- renew it. so police came in, evacuated those who were left in resurrection city and flattened the place. this is interesting because this actually affects what historical documents are left about the or poor people's campaign. most of sclc's documents were destroyed from the campaign onward because they were here. and so it took me several years

of going to 20 archives and doing, you know, dozens of oral histories and spending a lot of time with underground magazines and newspapers to piece together this story, right? ask and to figure out -- and to figure out the campaign on the ground. because i couldn't just go to one around kentucky and have a cache -- archive and have a cache full of documents that i could start digging through like a lot of historians are able to do, right? so many people stuck around in the capital, many people went home emboldened by their experience there. as i said, the can chicano movement activists, many african-american activists felt emboldened about their experience even if the campaign hadn't accomplished everything they had hoped to achieve. even behind the scenes there were some policy objectives met, and i think a lot of times the media focused on resurrection city and on the mule train and

on the policy goals that they had that weren't just, you know, there wasn't immediate withdrawal from vietnam, there wasn't this rededication to the war on poverty that they had wanted. the johnson administration was a lame duck administration by this time. and so many folks said, well, the campaign, you know, was a great failure because of this. but as i said, i mean, there were some policy achievements made by marion wright, maybe better known as marion wright edelman who was a key behind the scenes actor for the sclc in the poor people's campaign who was able to get the ear of many bureaucrats when it came to surplus food, hunger issues, head start and things like that. and welfare rights activists who were looking for a more humane welfare system and arguing that every american should have a guaranteed income if they fall

below a certain level or standard of living in the country actually got a seat at the table. and they had a seat at the table during the nixon administration, at least for the first couple years, which i think is pardon pardon -- is hard to believe thinking about what we know of dick nixon now. but activists at least had some voice in '69 and '70, and a lot of it was payoff the work they -- because of the work they did during the poor campaign -- poor people's campaign. so the campaign overall takes up about half of this bookment and the rest of the book is great contextualization of any poverty activism particularly among african-americans and mexican-americans more generally. i spent some time looking at the civil rights coalition that supported cesar chavez and the farm workers and the grape poi cots that they had -- boycotts that they had across the

country, particularly in chicago. i spend time looking at reyesty arena's effort around not just land rights, but around community control over community institutions as many black power activists were talking about, and can i also write about the early rainbow coalition of fred hamp in chicago. -- hamp in chicago. it hampton. why does this matter, you know? so what, i'm always asked. i was asked this by my adviser, i always ask my students now, so what? why does the activism around antiof-poverty matter at this time? why does the poor people's campaign matter? and it seems really remote now, i think, in some ways. given the political culture that we live in today as we sit like on the edge of the guillotine, the sequester, right?

the night before literally, right? but i argue there's some takeaways here and lessons that we can learn from, by looking at the this kind of activism. one is the expectations we have about coalition. coalition can be productive even if it's fleeting, right? it doesn't have to be a sustained coalition that, you know, continues from now until eternity, that when folks come together and get something done, that doesn't necessarily mean they have to always be together or that it's even natural to be together, right? that these kinds of coalitions are natural. the recognition that people define their poverty and justice rather differently should be recognized. folks have a different historical trajectory and different histories that should be honored and respected. i also think that the relationship between race and class is important and that it's not mutually exclusive or always at odds with each other, but you

can have a strong racial identity and also be part of a coalition, right? and work along class lines at times. the poor people's campaign represents that at some level. and lastly, the nature of the civil rights movement and the black freedom struggle more generally. is it as we would, you know, if we focus on the "i have a dream" speech in '63, is the civil rights movement only about this message of brotherhood and equality where we all should just, you know, work together in this very positive way, right? or was the freedom struggle about, you know, hard demands about full citizenship that went well beyond the desegregation of lunch counters but included economic justice, right? i think that part of the civil rights movement has been lost so much even by the term "civil rights," and i slip into that language as well. civil rights suggests

citizenship in a narrow way. freedom is citizenship in a much broader way. so the poor people's campaign, i think, says a lot to these different, these different themes, and we can talk about, obviously, this is an occupy picture. we can talk about in the q&a. i wanted to end, though, with one last very short excerpt that thinks about coalition and the come mentionty of it. speaking to feminists in 983, civil rights veteran bernice johnson reagan captured the quandary face inside the 1960s and 1970s when they sought cooperation with others. coalition work not work done in your home, she said. coalition has to be done in the street, and it is some of the most dangerous work you can do. her statement still holds true today. thanks so much. [applause]

so, um, i think we have finish what time is it? oh, man, i went much longer than -- [laughter] i'm sorry. so we have time for q&a for a little while here. do folks have comments or questions? yeah, katie. >> i have a question. so in occupy people just came. >> yeah. >> but i'm wondering with the city, you said there were 2500 people -- >> at its peak. >> at its peak. did those people just come, or were they selected, that we want some people from the contingency and some from this? how did that work out? >> well, they weren't hand selected per se, but there was the initial concept was bring 3,000 people to washington, train them in nonviolence and then it was a very deliberate lobby, you know, in these different places and federal agencies in congress. and so initially the concept had been we're not going to hand select people, but but we're gog

to limit the number of people who come because that way we can control it. and then as i said, after everybody wanted to come to d.c. because of this as a tribute to dr. king, and they wanted to do something. they sort of get flooded in a lot of ways with people going to resurrection city, living there, trying to help in different ways to the point where sclc just sort of lost control at some level. and they had some partners conducting the campaign, but sclc was the main organization. so a lot of people just came, especially for solidarity day, but throughout. i mean, you had thousands of people that are part of the campaign at different times, and i think it's important to note that a lot of folks came for a day or two, maybe for a weekend, maybe for a week. some folks stayed for the duration of the time of resurrection city or even the duration of the campaign which roughly went from early may to mid to late july. but and stayed in other places

in d.c. i mean, i think, you know, the comparisons to occupy -- which you didn't ask, but i'm going to -- you know, many people say this looks like occupy. but it's different in a lot of ways because i think that, um, it's not clear what occupy wanted. there wasn't a clear statement of goals in the same way that the poor people's campaign. there was a 53-page document of goals that the campaign, sclc, had laid out with cooperation of the other folks that were a part of it. and it wasn't -- for me, i didn't really know what occupy was seeking other than, you know, a challenge to the very elite, right? but oftentimes that challenge was to the private sector as much as to the public sector. the campaign were making very specific claims on the state, right? get out of vietnam, start spending a lot more money on

anti-poverty funding, right? actually fund this war that we declared four years ago. not the war in southeast asia can which we never declared, but the war in this country. so i think there was certainly some, you know, spontaneity around participation in the campaign, but there were attempts to try and control it. and the folks that are coming from the southwest, sclc's spending all this money busing them across the country, right? and sclc, they would pay for plane tickets home, you know? so there was only so much of that they could do even with the massive donations they got of after dr. king's death. great question. >> what happened to the tiarina movement? >> good -- >> the goals of that with the land grant -- >> well, it still exists. there's still lawsuits over land grants to this day. you know, it is a -- so it starts in the 19th century.

tiarina has a vision. he grows up in sort of a pentacostal tradition, said he had a vision and said that, you know, god told him to help the poor and that this was the issue, and this was the movement that he needed to pursue. and so he ends up, he goes to jail for some of his, for the not really -- for property damage. one of the tactics that they use was to sit in on national forests. there's a lot of land -- federal land in northern new mexico, and they burned some signs, they not really -- the park rangers said that they threatened them, they said that they just, it's up to interpretation. but the bottom line is he had a lot of federal and state charges against him, and he eventually

went to jail. and when he came out, he was talking about getting king of spain to okay his movement. he sort of goes -- he's a little, a little kooky in some ways. important issue and really important movement that he brings a lot of energy to and attention to, but he's not -- he's more a preacher, no offense, jonah -- [laughter] he's more a preacher than an organizer, right? and so the movement sort of passes him by. and so it goes back into more litigation and lawsuits than the kind of direct action that he champions in the '60s. yeah, it's a great question. tiarina's a really fascinating figure. amanda, you had a question. >> you mentioned marion wright and -- [inaudible] sandler. what was the role of women? >> that's a great yes. i mean, so what the poor

people's campaign does in a lot of ways is it expands the space for women who did not necessarily see the national organization of women which was more middle class. not entirely, but more middle class, mostly white with particular goals about, you know, the opportunity, about glass ceilings for women in professional life in particular as well as reproductive rights and some other issues. but folks who didn't see the now agenda as being particularly responsive or addressing their issues. so you had people like maria varela who was a veteran of the student nonviolent coordinating committee but of mexican descent who ends up joining tiarina's movement, actually, and end up being a really -- ends up being a really involved activist around both pushing chicano men that, yes, women's issues are important in this movement. t not just -- it's not just

about masculinity. and working with land grant rights issues and cooperatives in northern new mexico. peggy terry's one of my favorite individuals. she is an appalachian my grant who came -- migrant who came from a klan family initially who migrates to uptown chicago on the north side of chicago and becomes a welfare or rights activist. and she goes to washington, becomes a spokesperson for poor whites there and is able to bring black welfare rights act visits, white welfare rights activists and chicano activists together s. and she ends up getting so much credibility through the campaign, she is tapped as the vice presidential candidate for the peace and freedom party which is a very sort of, you know, small third party in 1968 that doesn't win a lot of votes, but she's the veep nominee, and i don't know, i can't remember how many states now, but like ten states.

and so it was an opportunity for women, um, to, you know, flex their muscle in some sense in issues and directions that now do not really allow them to or really gave voice to. so, yeah, so that's a great question. and, of course, the welfare rights activists as well. just that whole idea was not something that now was particularly comfortable with, this idea of a more humane welfare system, but also a guaranteed income for everybody. and it was an idea that even the nixon administration played with not for the same reasons that the left played, was interested in it. nixon, the nixon administration saw a guaranteed income as a great way to get rid of the rest of the welfare state. so they say, okay, we'll cut a check to anybody who falls below a certain level, but then we'll eliminate food stamps, public housing and everything else.

so it was this weird moment where the left and the right sort of agreed on one concept at least in the abstract but didn't, it never came to fruition, of course. are there other questions? yeah. >> so where do you see these movements going today? because the problems are still here. >> of course. >> i mean, they're less, or they're different, but they're still here. >> right. they are. that's a good question. well, as i said, i mean, the reference to the occupy movement, i see a lot of people seem to think that congress is not even worth trying to address, right? and that there were so many claims on the private sector to intervene, you know, it starts in wall street, right in and this challenge to wall street. so to me, it was striking that occupy doesn't start, you know, in washington, but it starts in new york. i also think that there's a lot of organizing on the ground, you know, and durham is a really

good example, right? the organizations that tom campbell mentioned i've been involved with, durham can, right? it's the most diverse room in town, right? it's where black and latino, white get together in this city to make a difference. but, you know, it's often very small policy changes, right, that make a difference in people's lives. but certainly it's not addressing the great inequality that we have in the country that seems to be just, you know, getting worse. you know, i would never say -- there's a risk of becoming nostalgic about the '60s, you know? and i try to not do that because there's some great progress that we've made in many ways in the 21st century, you know, in the last 50 years. but as you say, the problems persist, and there are people trying to make a difference. but there's no one see that has

the kind of national stature that king had, that cesar chavez had leading these kinds of movements. and i don't even know if that's the answer, right? i mean, the big -- one question is, and i don't like to play in counterfactual, but if dr. king had lived, what would have happened to the poor people's campaign? it probably won't have been any more successful than if he had died, right? i think that's the sad truth. what they were trying to do was so difficult, and this was a, you know, democratic majority congress and a democratic administration. of course, the democratic party was a very different party back then with a lot of white supremacists from the south. but sort of similar conditions, major budget cutting, the cleveland rat patrol, if you remember that comment, that was a reference to congress refusing to give money to rat extermination in the major cities of the -- there was going to be a specific ra