Most Daring Dream: Robert Houston Photography & the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign

In the final years of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. was increasingly criticized for his move beyond issues of race and voting rights in the South to the broader concerns of human rights nationwide. Drawing connections between racism and the social inequities inherent in economic policies, King began challenging the political and financial motives behind discrimination. Race and racism were socially constructed smokescreens that were used to maintain hierarchies that sustained economic and social injustice.

More controversially, however, the civil rights leader argued that America’s interests in global conflict siphoned much needed financial resources away from the social programs that would elevate the nation’s poor. Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” was overshadowed by his War in Vietnam, and political ideology abroad eclipsed the domestic needs of Johnson’s Great Society. “The pursuit of this widened war,” King argued, “has narrowed the promised dimensions of the domestic welfare programs, making the poor white and Negro bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home.”¹

For King, as for many Americans, equal access to quality healthcare and education, affordable housing, and gainful employment were a matter of civil rights promised by the Constitution and the American dream. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) planned to cash this promissory note “to which every American was to fall heir” with a return to the nation’s capital. Taking their message to cities like Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, and Marks, Mississippi, the SCLC began its “people-to-people” tour to recruit protest participants and set the stage for a most daring dream, a Poor People’s Campaign. Its objective would be to draw national attention to poverty in America, with hopes of pressuring lawmakers into passing an Economic Bill of Rights to address America’s economic disparities.

Initially, the march was scheduled to begin on April 1, 1968. It was later postponed until after King’s trip to Memphis to support the black sanitation workers’ strike, where he delivered his celebrated address “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” Sadly, this would be King’s last public speech. On April 4, the day after his speech in Memphis, the civil rights leader was assassinated. To honor his memory, however, the Poor People’s march would continue under the direction of Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, and Jesse Jackson. This event marked a key transition in the Civil Rights Movement and an important shift in American history.

The first group of demonstrators arrived in Washington, DC on May 12, and by the following week, a shantytown known as Resurrection City had been built along the National Mall. Tents made of plywood and yellow tarp were constructed on a sixteen-acre site near the Lincoln Memorial. Thousands of demonstrators lived on the site, arriving every day after traveling by bus, car, foot and mule to Washington from different parts of the country. Each day demonstrators were sent to various federal agencies to protest and spread the campaign’s message. Setbacks, however, would plague their efforts. Lost momentum in leadership due to King’s death, negative press, Robert Kennedy’s assassination, federal and local government resistance, rain, floods, and an unmanageable number of protesters hindered the campaign’s success. Failing to pressure a response from legislators, the Poor People’s Campaign closed on June 19, 1968. The tents of tarp and plywood were eventually leveled to the ground.

While on assignment for Life Magazine, Robert Houston arrived in Washington, DC to photograph the 1968 Poor People’s march. With his camera and artistic instinct, Houston captured a sample of America’s poor living in Resurrection City along the Nation’s Mall. He created snapshots of dignity and found nobility where it was assumed not to exist, while revealing a collective vision through the portrayals of singular humanities. Houston’s photographs differ from most images of social protest and resistance. They are distinct in the ways in which they capture nuances of struggle in the lives of everyday individuals. The nuance of hands, prayers caught in...