Dr. King's Challenge to Washington: We Are Coming to Get Our Check

Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968. 

A clergyman, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the Black Civil Rights Movement. In a rare speech, Dr. King Speaks about White Welfare and Subsidies paid to whites while Blacks were left mired in deep poverty.

"In the last two months of his life. Dr. King faced the fact that civil rights alone could not solve the problem of poverty. He roamed the south trying to gain support for a poor people's campaign. His goals: full employment, a guaranteed income, and decent housing for every American. This was a different Martin Luther King.

Just weeks before his murder, in tones suggestive of the Black Panthers. He begin to talk about how the government had broken its promise to the newly freed slaves just after the Civil War."*

 "At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land. Through an act of Congress, our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the mid-West, which meant it was willing to under girth its peasants from Europe with an economic floor. But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that, they provided country agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farm. Not only that, today many of these people are getting millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm. And they are the very people telling the Black man that he outta lift himself up by his own bootstraps. And this is what we are faced with. Now this is the reality. Now when we come to Washington, in this campaign, we are coming to get our check.

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 “Those who live by compassion are often canonized. Those who live by justice are often crucified.”
— John Dominic Crossan

*Source for this excerpt, which can be found on YouTube is most probably the "Eye on the Prize" series by Blackside.