--- title: Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorations in Memphis Share Theme description: Many of the events marking the 50th anniversary of King's death focus on his later work on economic justice. That's a striking shift in tone. canonical: https://time.com/5226109/remember-martin-luther-king-jr/ author: Simon Balto article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-04-04T12:00:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-12T09:05:04.253Z article:section: History og:title: Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorations in Memphis Share Theme og:description: Many of the events marking the 50th anniversary of King's death focus on his later work on economic justice og:url: https://time.com/5226109/remember-martin-luther-king-jr/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8387e8702c5e0151/69892cae7cdbac476dd5c7cf/i-am-a-man.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2405 og:image:height: 1353 og:image:alt: Marching In Memphis og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorations in Memphis Share Theme twitter:description: Many of the events marking the 50th anniversary of King's death focus on his later work on economic justice twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8387e8702c5e0151/69892cae7cdbac476dd5c7cf/i-am-a-man.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Commemorations in Memphis Show That How We Remember Martin Luther King Jr. Is Changing > Sponsored content. 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Five decades after the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of social justice for all is still a work in progress._ by [Simon Balto](https://time.com/author/simon-balto/) ## Simon Balto Apr 4, 2018 12:00 PM UTC Five decades after the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of social justice for all is still a work in progress. by [Simon Balto](https://time.com/author/simon-balto/) ## Simon Balto Apr 4, 2018 12:00 PM UTC By the time Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis in the spring of 1968 to march in solidarity with sanitation workers striking for union recognition, better wages and safer working conditions, his diagnoses of America’s ailments had evolved significantly. He’d been to Los Angeles in the midst of the 1965 Watts riot, and witnessed the anguish of poor and marginalized black Angelinos. He’d spent much of 1966 in Chicago, fighting for open housing and a dramatic relief program for the city’s poor. By late that year, he’d begun to seriously refocus upon exposing and subverting the systemic processes that trapped millions of Americans — of all races — in crippling poverty. One result of that refocusing was the interracial Poor People’s Campaign of 1967-1968 that King helped launch and [died trying to build](http://time.com/5221565/martin-luther-king-last-campaign/). Among the many gathered in Memphis this week, on the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination there on April 4, 1968, will be those who seek to bring its goals to fruition. Taken together, those commemorations reflect important dynamics in how King’s legacy is being remembered — and put to use. “We are seeing that the people are ready,” Rev. Dr. William Barber II told me by phone last Friday. This week, he and I are both in Memphis to mark the anniversary, but when we spoke, Barber was traveling between West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, organizing coal miners on behalf of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. That modern campaign, which Barber co-chairs with Rev. Liz Theoharis, is dedicated to the pursuit of economic justice across lines of race, religion, region, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. It’s explicitly modeled after King’s campaign of the same name. As a historian of African America, I have spent recent weeks thinking about how commemorators and organizers are interpreting the King legacy and putting it to use in 2018\. When Barber and I spoke — and when I spoke to Theoharis in a separate, shorter conversation — we discussed at length the new Poor People’s Campaign, and what it draws from King and longer freedom struggle traditions. Notably absent from our conversation was the King who predominates in public memory. Barber mentioned the March on Washington once, but only to refer to the more radical aspects of the speech King delivered there (he does not mention “the Dream”). He mentioned the Selma campaign, but again only once, and then to highlight King’s theories — delivered at the end of the Selma campaign — about how elites historically fed poor and hungry whites the “psychological bird” of Jim Crow in order to bolster their understandings of racial superiority and keep poor white and black people from uniting in common cause. Instead, when he and Theoharis talk about the lessons that King offers, most of what they draw upon is the work that King turned to in the last years of his life. It isn’t that King turned away from trying to dismantle white supremacy during that later period, but rather that he increasingly understood the limited harvests that racial justice might reap absent economic justice. Late in 1967, when he announced the Poor People’s Campaign, he urged divestment in the Vietnam War and domestic reinvestment — most notably in an “economic bill of rights” with a guaranteed annual income, full employment and low-income housing. He also increasingly argued that the nation’s collective soul was on the line. On the day he was killed, King was writing a Sunday sermon entitled “Why America May Go to Hell.” “America is going to hell,” he wrote, “if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life.” As historian Vincent Harding (King’s friend and sometime speechwriter) [put it](https://books.google.com/books?id=ka4TcURYXy4C&pg=PT17&lpg=PT17&dq=vincent+harding+%E2%80%9Cin+the+consciously+chosen+company+of+the+poor.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=2hp1wF3bPb&sig=zhoFMy5F0uO57IjPrej5BOX8iAQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3ovWn2Z7aAhUqqlQKHSbTAW4Q6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=vincent%20harding%20%E2%80%9Cin%20the%20consciously%20chosen%20company%20of%20the%20poor.%E2%80%9D&f=false), King died in Memphis “in the consciously chosen company of the poor.” That is also how he spent much of his final years. This is the King — capacious in his critiques, radical in his politics, and who suggested that America was quite possibly hell-bound over its militarism, materialism and failures to care for “the least of these” — that animates many of the most significant commemorations unfolding in Memphis this week surrounding the anniversary of his death. Virtually all of these commemorations are explicitly activist in nature. Given King’s life’s work, this is as it should be. The degree to which these efforts are future-facing and pull from the antipoverty activism of King’s final years is, nevertheless, striking. Locally, [MLK50: Justice through Journalism,](https://mlk50.com/meet-our-team-2756b8c43e35) a team of investigative journalists led by long-time antipoverty activist and journalist Wendi Thomas, has labored over the past year to confront the causes of Memphis’ depressed wages and chasming wealth gap, and to expose the ways that power and wealth structure the city. Meanwhile, Micaela Watts from MLK50 [notes](https://mlk50.com/memphis-activists-take-it-to-the-streets-as-city-commemorates-mlk50-8bef981a36d6) that local activists from across Memphis, after a busy year fighting for justice on multiple fronts, have generally been quiet about this week’s commemorative events — the major exception being those that foreground fighting for fair pay and workers’ rights in accordance with the “radical economic agenda” of King’s final months. And the National Civil Rights Museum co-sponsored a [symposium](http://mlk50.civilrightsmuseum.org/mlk50-where-do-we-go-from-here-symposium) earlier this week asking participants to draw from King’s legacy and propose “actions and solutions” in pursuit of justice on everything from poverty to voting rights to police violence. The new Poor People’s Campaign also returns to town this week to continue a collaborative initiative with The Fight for $15 campaign on behalf of a living wage. That effort was launched this February, on the 50th anniversary of beginning of the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike. Activists explicitly pulled from the sanitation strike, carrying signs modeled after those that workers famously held declaring “I AM A MAN.” The “I AM 2018” campaign — a collaboration between the AFSCME union (which represented the sanitation workers in the 1968 strike) and the Church of God in Christ (whose international headquarters at Mason Temple in Memphis were the site of King’s final public speech) — similarly draws from the past. The campaign seeks to train new activists under the vision that “there can be no racial justice without economic justice and no economic justice without racial justice.” Whether they make the point explicitly or implicitly, it’s clear that the way these organizations are using the King legacy flows from present conditions in Memphis and in America. The civil rights movement’s demolition of legal Jim Crow apartheid in the late 1950s and early 1960s was one of the most important human achievements in American history, and is worth celebrating. Nevertheless, 50 years after King died fighting for the poor, there are about 15 million more poor people in the country than there were at the time of his assassination, [according to the new Poor People’s Campaign](https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/PPC-Report-Draft-1.pdf). A majority of them are white, but black, Latino and Indigenous communities all experience poverty disproportionately relative to population numbers. Meanwhile, in majority-black Memphis, the[ black poverty rate](https://mlk50.com/snapshot-newly-released-poverty-report-shows-memphis-area-children-suffering-8552a683afdc) is two-and-a-half times the white one, and black median income has remained slightly more than half of white median income for fifty years. And whereas King died trying to help workers win a union contract, today, the [Memphis Chamber of Commerce ](https://memphischamber.com/select-memphis/workforce/#1496258482014-39e36bc2-e26c)uses the fact that Tennessee is a Right-to-Work state as a corporate recruiting tool. In short, the essential logic framing and informing these commemorations is this: the problems of American poverty and the plight of American workers are in many ways worse than they were on April 4, 1968, meaning that the only proper way to commemorate Dr. King is to keep fighting for what he sacrificed his life for. At the end of our conversation, Rev. Barber circled back to King’s last speech, delivered April 3, 1968, at Mason Temple. The speech has gone down in history as “The Mountaintop Speech” because of King seemingly prophesying his own death. But, Barber told me, calling it “The Mountaintop Speech” forgets King’s true purpose that night. The sermon was a celebration of mass uprising, and it was a call to keep pushing. “It wasn’t a mountaintop speech,” Barber explained. “It was a mobilization speech. King was in the _valley_, and he was there with garbage workers.” And, indeed, in that speech, King highlighted the urgency of economic empowerment, and called for Memphis to go forth with a “dangerous unselfishness.” He told his audience: “we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end… Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.” That, more than anything, captures the spirit of what activists and organizers have been trying to do this week, this month and this year to honor Dr. King. **_Historians explain how the past informs the present_** _Simon Balto is an Assistant Professor of History and Director of African American Studies at Ball State University. He is the author of the forthcoming_ Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power, _which will be published by the University of North Carolina Press._ ## Transcript >> I remember the day when the March in Washington was all over. We went back down to the White House. President Kennedy invited us back down. And he stood in the door of the Oval Office and greeted each one of us. He was like a proud beaming father that everything had gone so well. >> For months after that, we just saw a really harvested-- the emotional joy of what we have done. >> The joy that we took home with us out of that-- out of that arena inspired us to start thinking about what could we do beyond what we were doing already. And the lesson is not to stop, not to give up. >> If you asked us back then that Barack Obama would be in the White House today, we would say no way. >> When people laughed as Dr. King suggested, we wouldn't have went back home back to the heart of the deep south to intensify efforts to gain a vote, to get a Civil Rights Bill passed, but 18 days after the march was the terrible bombing of the church in Birmingham. About 4 girls were killed on a Sunday morning. That was a sad and dark hour for the movement, but it stirred to us that we had more work to do. >> I'll just say that it encouraged us more. These people are reacting this way against us because we're being effective and so we're gonna keep on doing. We're gonna do even more if we can. We won't let this stop us. We won't let this turn us around. >> We did get the Civil Rights Bill. Eventually, we did get a vote on our side. The quality of life for many people remained the same for many, many years. Other ways to really stop a movement is to kill off its thinkers and they killed Dr. King and they killed Medgar Evers and they killed Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy. All this was in one fell swoop, eliminated. >> After the civil rights movement, which moved into the entire world movement, other movements were gaining enormous energy, so the women's movement, the environmental movement took shape. The anti- apartheid movement and the will and the belief that they could be successful emanated from the remarkable ability of the civil rights movement to progress. >> I recognized very quickly that the young people and the other people who were in the Occupy Wall Street Movement, they were the stepchildren of Martin Luther King, Jr. They were the stepchildren of the March in Washington. They were trying to raise the consciousness of the country to the inequitable distribution of wealth opportunities very much in the same way that he was trying to do it. >> We need to lead to get out front on some of the big issues and to be a headlight and not a taillight. And people who are speaking up today for immigration reform, for gay rights, control of the proliferation of guns, they have shown some courage. >> The action of the Supreme Court 5 in gutting the essence of the-- of the Voting Rights Act, it's an enormous reversal. It's been one of the most successful pieces of legislation in modern history. >> Enormous change takes time and you have to continue to battle. You don't win a lawsuit or win yet another law in the books and then fold your tents and go home. Oh no, you know, the struggle continues. >> I was part of this mobilization that has never been duplicated again and I wonder why. I wonder why. I'm not blaming young people. Well, yes, I am. But they ought to be doing a bit more. >> I really thought that feeling around Obama was so important to know that it existed. >> I, in retrospect, wish that we've managed to keep him from running for office 'cause he could have run a movement. I think he would have had a better chance at making social change happen if he had approached it and, you know, the way King did. >> What I say to a lot of young people who speak about the fact that the civil rights movement is somehow a thing of the past, I say, " Let me paint a picture for you ." Almost all the movement in that period, almost all critical thought, almost all critical decisions are made by the young. They can wanna take a look at John Lewis and where he was. He was 18. You could take a look at Julian Bond. He was 18. You could take a look at Diane Nash. She was pregnant and then leading a movement. She was the one who designed the freedom rights. And none of these people [ unk ] with political design and with clear thought. These were simple ordinary folks. When young people say, " Where do we find our leaders? Where are the Dr. Kings ?" Well, look where Dr. King resided and where he was found in the first instance and maybe you'll find that there's some more Dr. Kings there. >> I credit the fact that I got schooled, I got brought up in the movement-- in the civil rights movement to give me the perspective. >> That march laid the basis for the modern battles for human rights all across the globe. It cannot be underestimated the fact that individual ordinary people from across America made up their minds, they were gonna step into that movement and step into the streets and come to Washington to raise their grievances in the finest traditions of American democracy. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5226109/remember-martin-luther-king-jr/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5226109/remember-martin-luther-king-jr/"},"headline":"Commemorations in Memphis Show That How We Remember Martin Luther King Jr. Is Changing","datePublished":"2018-04-04T12:00:55.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-12T09:05:04.253Z","description":"Many of the events marking the 50th anniversary of King's death focus on his later work on economic justice","url":"https://time.com/5226109/remember-martin-luther-king-jr/","keywords":["Opinion","Civil Rights"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8387e8702c5e0151/69892cae7cdbac476dd5c7cf/i-am-a-man.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Simon Balto","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/simon-balto/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8387e8702c5e0151/69892cae7cdbac476dd5c7cf/i-am-a-man.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Marching In Memphis","caption":"Marching In Memphis","creditText":"Robert Abbott Sengstacke—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/opinion/","name":"Opinion"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5226109/remember-martin-luther-king-jr/","name":"Commemorations in Memphis Show That How We Remember Martin Luther King Jr. Is Changing"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"A Lasting Legacy","description":"Five decades after the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of social justice for all is still a work in progress.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/NGyDN8dT/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-08-13T14:32:31.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/NGyDN8dT.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/5226109/remember-martin-luther-king-jr/","duration":"PT6M49S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/5226109/remember-martin-luther-king-jr/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```