Cover Photo: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks to a crowd in Memphis during the AFSCME Local 1733 sanitation workers' strike.

Withers, Ernest C., 1922-2007, “King speaks in Memphis,” I Am A Man, accessed January 13, 2023,

https://projects.lib.wayne.edu/iamaman/items/show/176.

Historical Context

By 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had shifted his focus from ending segregation to The Poor People's Campaign. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s had focused on ending legal segregation, and prioritized the advancement of the middle class. The lower and working class Black communities still struggled with poor wages and harsh working conditions. Sanitation workers were not the only sector of Black employees making "part time wages for full time work." Employees in all jobs deemed unskilled labor struggled to make ends meet, and Dr. King felt as though the Black middle class was out of touch with the realities of the Black working poor. Dr. King shifted his focus to economic justice for the poor and imagined a multiracial coalition of poor people working together for economic justice. It was this fight for economic justice for the poor that brought him to Memphis.

Introductory Activity

Before you look at any sources, create an illustration of what you know about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Use pictures and words, and be as creative as you'd like to!

Dr. King's Popularity

Sources One and Two

During the 1960s, King was a very divisive figure. The last Gallup poll to ask about his popularity during his lifetime, taken in 1966, found his unfavorable rating was 63%. This included 39% of Americans who gave him a -5 rating on a scale, with -5 being least favorable and +5 being most favorable.

King’s highly negative rating came when he had turned his attention from southern de jure segregation toward de facto segregation in northern cities.

...

When Americans were asked which three Americans they had the least respect for in a 1964 Gallup poll, King came in second at 42%. ...

Perhaps even more revealing is that a lot of White Americans thought King was doing more harm than good for the fight for civil rights. In a 1966 Harris Poll, 50% of White Americans indicated that he was hurting the Civil Rights effort. A mere 36% said he was helping. King’s favorable rating among them was 27% in 1966.

Black Americans saw things very differently. The vast majority in 1963 thought his work for equal rights was moving at the right speed (71%) or not fast enough (21%) compared to 8% who believed it was happening too fast. In 1966, 84% of Black adults had a favorable view of him, while 4% had an unfavorable view.

Even in the immediate aftermath of his death, many Americans had a negative view of King. Nearly a third (31%) say he brought his 1968 assassination upon himself. Less than a majority (43%) said they were sad (38%) or angry (5%).

Economic Justice for the Working Poor

Sources Three and Four

Dr. King's Assassination

Sources Five-Eight

A Lasting Impact

Source 9

Summative Activities

What have we learned?

Return to the illustration you created about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the beginning of this lesson. Add new words and illustrations to show your new understandings of Dr. King. You might choose to create a completely new illustration.

Found Poetry

Use the excerpt from Dr. King's speech (Source 4) to create "found poetry." Here are the rules:

1. You can only use words that are in the speech.

2. You can repeat words or lines as many times as you want to.

3. You do not (should not) use every word or line from the speech.

Your poem should illustrate what you think Dr. King's big idea is, or an idea from the text that stood out to you.

Consider pairing your poem with a photograph or another primary source.