#poorpeoplescampaign

Reblogs are also greatly appreciated.

Apologies again for another donation post but this week, let alone the entire month, has been very hard on us. We can barely afford the room each day and have gone without food for the majority of this month, and sadly tonight isn't any different. We now owe 110$ for tomorrow since we couldn't finish paying off the room for today, and we'll also need to pay off both tomorrow and tonight in the morning. If we can't, well be kicked out. We also don't have any food here currently and haven't eaten today. Everything closes in 45 mins or so, so I'm hoping to get something for all of us before then.

I don't like asking for just donations since I know it's a lot to ask for, and I also have commissions (in my pinned post on my blog) if you'd like to support me through there instead of just donating. It has all the information about our situation on it, in case you were curious or suddenly came across the post. If you're interested in donating, please message me and I'll send you the payment info directly, since I've been having a frustrating time with the amount of scammers and bots in my inbox.

Lesson 100: “It [was] not something you read that causes you to change... it’s when you see other individuals fight against the system, and insist that justice will come, and believe that justice will come, even if you have to lose your life.”

Early in his life, Bernard Lafayette, Jr. knew that racial and social justice would be central to his life. After seeing the abuse his grandmother received on segregated streetcars, he was motivated to his very core and joined the NAACP at the age of 12. While a freshman at American Baptist Seminary (alongside classmates John Lewis and James Bevel -- see Lesson #58 in this series), he studied under James Lawson’s nonviolent workshops (see Lesson #79 in this series). By 1961 he was a full participant in the newly-formed SNCC and was among the first wave of Freedom Riders --and was, predictably, on the receiving end of violence and was arrested multiple times.

Later, Dr. Lafayette worked with the SCLC, sharing his experiences and his commitment to social change through nonviolent direct action. Impressed by Lafayette's commitment, in 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King appointed Lafayette to the position of National Coordinator of the new Poor Peoples' Campaign; the two men met in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee --on the morning of April 4, 1968. Dr. Lafayette boarded a plane for Washington, D.C. late that afternoon... but history unfolded while his plane was in the air, and nobody from the campaign picked him up at the airport that evening.

(My photo reference for this particular portrait is a detail of Dr. Lafayette from a larger Associated Press photograph from January 1968, in which he is standing at Martin Luther King's left, looking on during a speech in Atlanta.)

Among his many distinguished accomplishments, Dr. Lafayette returned to the American Baptist College of ABT Seminary in Nashville --this time as its President, from 1992 to 1995. He was also the Scholar in Residence at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia; and Pastor emeritus of the Progressive Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Today (literally) at the age of 81 he is the Senior Scholar in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and also the scholar-in-residence at the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University.

The Poor People’s Campaign, envisioned and developed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other faith leaders 50 years ago, aimed to eliminate poverty—as envisioned in Deuteronomy. In December 1967, King announced a plan to put these biblical proclamations into practice. He called for a march on Washington, D.C., to demand better jobs, better homes, and better education. According to Rev. Dr. Ralph Abernathy, the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 intended to “dramatize the plight of America’s poor of all races and make very clear that they are sick and tired of waiting for a better life.”

King’s martyrdom occurred before the full engagement of the campaign. Despite that tragedy and other challenges, legislative reforms did result from the campaign.

In 2018, the campaign has been renewed, with the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The organizers of the new campaign explain that half a century later, we have still failed to achieve economic justice. The campaign is uniting tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation, and the nation’s distorted morality.