Statement by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
President, Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Atlalta, Georgia
December 4, 1967
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Last week the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference held one of the mostimportant meetings we have ever convened. We had intensive discussions and analyses of
our work and of the challenges which confront us and our nation, and at the end we made adecision which I wish to announce today.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference will lead waves of the nation's poor anddisinherited to Washington, D. C., next spring to demand redress of their grevances by theUnited States government and to secure at least jobs or income for all.
We will go there, we will demand to be heard, and we will stay until America responds.
If this means forcible repression of our movement, we will confront it, for we have done thisbefore. If this means scorn or ridicule, we embrace it, for that is what America's poor now
receive. If it means jail, we accept it willingly, for the millions of poor already are imprisoned by exploitation and discrimination. But we hope, with growing confidence, that our campaig11
in Washington will receive at first a sympathetic understanding across our nation, followedby dramatic expansion of nonviolent demonstrations in Washington and simultaneous protests
elsewhere. In short, we will be petitioning our government for specific reforms, and we
intend to build militant nonviolent actions until that government moves against poverty.
We have now begun preparations for the Washington campaign. Our staff soon will betaking new assignments to organize people to go to Washington from 10 key cities and 5 ruralareas. This will be no mere one-day march in Washington, but a trek to the nation's capitalby suffering and outraged citizens who will go to stay until some definite and positive action istaken to provide jobs and income for the poor.

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We are sending our staff into these key areas to meet with the local leadership of theseareas to discuss· their readiness to cooperate with us in this venture.
In the coming weeks we will disclose our detailed plans on mobilizing this massive
campaign and on the specific proposals which we are formulating.
Today I would like to tell you why the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has
decided to undertake this taSk with the adVice and participation we anticipate from otherorganizations and thousands of individuals.
America is at a crossroads of history, and it is critically important for us, as a nation
and a society, to choose a new path and move upon it with resolution and courage.
It is impossible to Wlder-estimate the crisis we face in America.

The stability of acivilization, the potential of free government, and the simple honor of men are at stake.
Those who serve in the human-rights movement, including our Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, are keenly aware of the increasing bitterness and despair and frustration that threaten the worst chaos, hatred and violence any nation has ever encountered.
In a sense, we are already at war with and among ourselves. Affluent Americans arelocked into suburbs of physcial comfort and mental insecurity; poor Americans are locked
inside ghettoes of material privation and spiritual debilitation; and all of us can almost feelthe presence of a kind of social insanity which could lead to national ruin.
Consider, for example, the spectacle of cities burning while the national government speaksof repression instead of rehabilitation. Or think of children starving in Mississippi while
prosperous farmers are rewarded for not producing food. Or Negro mothers leaving children
in tenements to work in neighborhoods where people of color can not live. Or the awesome
bombardment, already greater than the munitions we exploded in World War II, against a small
Asian land, while political brokers de-escalate and very nearly disarm a timid action against
poverty. Or a nation gorged on money while millions of its citizens are denied a good education,adequate health services, decent housing, meaningful employment, and even respect, and arethen told to be responsible.

!'- 3 The true responsibility for the existence of these deplorable conditions lies ultimately withthe larger society, and much of the immediate responsibility for removing the injustices can belaid directly at the door of the federal government.
This is the institution which has the power to act, the resources to tap, and the duty to respond.
And yet, this very government now lacks the 'Will to make reforms which are demanded by arising chorus acros.s the nation. According to the Harris Poll, for example, a substantial majorityof Americans believe that we must proceed at once to tear down and rebuild the slums, and asolid majority feel that everyone should have a job. Concerned leaders of industry, civil ....rights
organizations, labor unions and churches are joining in such groups as the new Urban Coalition tourge progressive economic measures at th§ national level. Many urban political leaders are ready to...

carry out enlightened prog!"ams if only the federal government will provide the needed financial supp~t.
Newsweek magazine recently devoted an entire issuJ!; to the problem of racism in America and set
forth some sound proposals for dealing with this situation.
I cite these facts merely to show that a clear majority in America are asking for the very things
which we will demand in Washington.
We have learned from h~rd and bitter experience in our movement that our government does not
move to correct a problem involving race until it is confronted directly and dramatically. It
required a Selma before the fundamental right to vote was written into the federal statutes. It
took a Birmingham before the government moved to open doors of public accomodations to all
human beings.
What we now rie~d is a new kind of Selma or Birmingham to dramatize the economic pl~ght of
the Negro, and cJmpel the government to act.
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- 4,.Unrest among the poor of America, and particularly among Negroes, is growing rapidly. In thisage of technological wizardry and political immorality, the poor are demanding that the basic
need of people be met as the first priority of our domestic programs.

Poor people can not longbe placatE:Jd by the glamour of multi-billion-dollar exploits in space.

Poor people who encounter

racial discrimination evj;lry day in every aspect of their lives can not be fooled by patronizing
gestures and half-way promises.

Poor people who are treated with derision and abuse by aneconomic system soon conclude with elementary logic that they have no rational interest in
killing people 12, 000 miles away in the name of defending that system.
We intend to channelize the smouldering rage and frustration of Negro people into an effective,militant and nonviolent movement of massive proportions in Washington and other areas. Similarly,
we will be calling oft the swelling masses of young people in this country who are disenchanted withthis materialistic society, and asking them to join us in our new Washington movement. We also
look for participation by representatives of the millions of non-Negro poor--Indians, MexicanAmericans, Puerto Ricans, Appalachians, and others. And we shall welcome assistance fromall Americans of good will.
And so, we have decided to go to Washington and to use any means of legitimate nonviolent
protest necessary to move our nation and our government on a new course of social, economic, andpolitical reform. As I said before, the power to initiate this reform resides in Washington. The
President and the Congress have a primary responsibility for low minimum wages, for a degrading
system of inadequate welfare, fer subsidies of the rich and unemployment and underemployment of
the poor, for a war mentality, for slums and starvation, and racism. The survival of a free societydepends upon the guamntee and survival of freedom and equality. This is what we seek.
In the final analysis, SCLC decided to go to Washington because, if

we did not act, we would beabdicating our responsibilities as an organization committed to nonviolence and freedom. We
are keeping that commitment, and we shall call on America to join us in our forthcoming Washington
campaign. In this way, we can work creatively against the despair and indifference that have s<floften caused our nation to be immobilized during the cold winter and shaken profoundly in the hot summer.

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