An anti-poverty march will take place in Jack­son, Mis­sis­sippi this week­end. The size of the march is what we are not sure on. Orga­niz­ers say “bus­loads” yet the local police will not have extra patrols around for the march.

The orga­niz­ers are the South­ern Chris­t­ian Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence, who traces their roots to Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. The march will begin in the inner city and make it’s way to the state capi­tol. Some say the num­bers may be small, and that the SCLC should have done more to get the word out.

From Macon dot com, writer She­lia Byrd tells us more about the conference’s roots.

The SCLC was co-founded by the King in 1957. When King was killed in 1968, he was work­ing on a sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive to reduce poverty, espe­cially in hard-hit areas of the coun­try. Evans said efforts to help the poor on a large-scale began to wane after that.

“We just let it lay. I’m not try­ing to be accusatory, but we went into the 70s doing our own things and it ended last year with almost the ruin of Amer­ica,” Evans said.

The renewed push comes as the nation grap­ples with a deep reces­sion, and Con­gress has steered bil­lions in fed­eral dol­lars to cor­po­rate bailouts. Clay has said the poor have been left out.

King’s cam­paign was to cul­mi­nate in a march in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and Clay said ini­tially that’s where the SCLC had planned to revive the movement.

But he said God instead directed him to go to Jack­son, a cap­i­tal city with a pop­u­la­tion of 176,614 that is nearly 71 per­cent black. Twenty-three per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion lives under the poverty level. He said Mis­sis­sippi also is home to the Delta region, con­sid­ered among the poor­est areas in the nation.

Some res­i­dents liv­ing in a poor area of Jack­son where peo­ple are to gather Sat­ur­day said they weren’t told about the march.

Like

Unlike