In the last year of his life, King was moving from a focus on desegregation to how the black man was faring economically.
On August 16, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech at the 11th annual Southern Christian Leadership Conference Convention titled “Where Do We go from Here?” In that speech, he stated that “…in spite of a decade of significant progress, the problem is far from solved. The deep rumbling of discontent in our cities is indicative of the fact that the plant of freedom has grown only a bud and not yet a flower.” The needs of the African- American community outlined, both in that speech and the book of the same name, emphasized the importance of economic equity, access to quality education, and a shift in public funding from a defense-centric federal budget to one that focused on the needs of its citizens
In March of 1968, King traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to stand in solidarity with the striking sanitation workers to stress the importance of the next episode of the civil rights movement – the Poor People’s Campaign. The unequal treatment of African-American workers to their white counterparts, the low wages and lack of benefits was emblematic of the economic justice issues that were plaguing the nation.
The Poverty Report: Memphis Since MLK has been issued to see how this issue has fared 50 years since King’s assassination
Key Findings
1) The incidence of childhood poverty for all Shelby County children has risen in the new millennium. Childhood poverty rates for both African Americans and whites are higher than in 1980.
2) The childhood poverty rate for African American children is more than four times greater than that for whites.
3) The rate of poverty for African Americans in 2016 has fallen from its peak in 1960. However, African American poverty rates are two and a half times higher than that of whites.
4) Post Brown vs. Board of Education the rate of African Americans completing high school increased by 76%.
5) Bachelor’s degree achievement for African Americans has also increased from 1.2% in 1950 to nearly 20% in 2016.
6) Median income for African Americans has stubbornly remained at approximately 50% of income for whites for the past half century.
7) Despite the increase in white-collar employment among African Americans, income for this group remains at about 50% of that of whites in Shelby County.
8) Whites in Shelby County enjoy a higher median income than that for African Americans and that of the general population in Shelby County.
9) The incarceration rate for African Americans has increased 50% since 1980, while the incarceration rate for whites has fallen slightly.
10) There is no doubt that the rate of incarceration of African American males since the late 20th century has had a dramatic impact on the unemployment rate for African American males. We can thus hypothesize that the removal of African