In 1967, Martin Luther King was busy planning a new march on Washington, called the Poor People’s Campaign, which would bring thousands of blacks and whites to the capital to demand jobs and fair pay.
He had traveled north to Chicago, in a quest to end segregation in the schools and unfair housing practices there. He had also begun to actively oppose the war in Vietnam. But his work on the Poor People’s Campaign was interrupted when garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee, went on strike. They needed someone who was well known to take on their cause, and an old friend of King’s asked him to be that person. In March of 1968, King led 6,000 people in a march through Memphis. Toward the rear, young blacks started to throw rocks and break windows. When looting started, King was rushed to safety. But he knew he had to return to Memphis and finish what he had started.
