Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974
Gordon K. Mantler
Abstract
The Poor People's Campaign of 1968 has long been overshadowed by the assassination of its architect, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the political turmoil of that year. This major reinterpretation of civil rights and Chicano movement history demonstrates how King's unfinished crusade became the era's most high-profile attempt at multiracial collaboration and sheds light on the interdependent relationship between racial identity and political coalition among African Americans and Mexican Americans. It argues that while the fight against poverty held great potential for black-brown cooperation, ... More
The Poor People's Campaign of 1968 has long been overshadowed by the assassination of its architect, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the political turmoil of that year. This major reinterpretation of civil rights and Chicano movement history demonstrates how King's unfinished crusade became the era's most high-profile attempt at multiracial collaboration and sheds light on the interdependent relationship between racial identity and political coalition among African Americans and Mexican Americans. It argues that while the fight against poverty held great potential for black-brown cooperation, such efforts also exposed the complex dynamics between the nation's two largest minority groups. Drawing on oral histories, archives, periodicals, and FBI surveillance files, the author paints a rich portrait of the campaign and the larger antipoverty work from which it emerged, including the labor activism of Cesar Chavez, opposition of Black and Chicano Power to state violence in Chicago and Denver, and advocacy for Mexican American land-grant rights in New Mexico. Ultimately, he challenges readers to rethink the multiracial history of the long civil rights movement and the difficulty of sustaining political coalitions.
Keywords:
Poor People's Campaign,
civil rights,
multiracial collaboration,
racial identity,
political coalition,
African Americans,
Mexican Americans,
poverty,
black-brown cooperation,
minority groups
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780807838518 |
Published to North Carolina Scholarship Online: July 2014 |
DOI:10.5149/9781469608068_Mantler |