Martin Luther King Jr.’s staff called the labor troubles in Memphis a distraction and advised against his going there. They argued that King had a mass of details to work out for the Poor People’s Campaign, a nationwide series of marches and speeches that would end with a giant rally in Washington. But the civil rights leader insisted on marching in Memphis, where black sanitation workers employed by the city were demonstrating to form a union. These men, he said, were abused and overworked, yet unwilling to remain silent — exactly the qualities he was looking for. Said King: “You’re doing in Memphis what I hope to do in the Poor People’s Campaign.”
A freak storm covered the city with 25 inches of snow that late March week, making conditions unfavorable for public protest. But it was the violence that would distress King more. Members of the Invaders, a local group of black militants, infiltrated his march with the garbage men. When windows were smashed, police moved in against orderly demonstrators and radicals alike. Despondent over the chaos and the rift in his once solid movement, King said, “Maybe the good people should just stand aside until the violence has run its course.”
But King began preparing for another demonstration. The week after the disastrous march, he delivered one of his most stirring speeches to supporters at Centenary Methodist Church. “I just want to do God’s will,” he declared. “And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. And I’m happy % tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Shortly after 6 the next evening, King was shot dead by an assassin.
Despite pleas for calm from his widow Coretta Scott King, blacks throughout urban America turned to violence. “When white America killed Dr. King, she declared war,” said radical Stokely Carmichael. The nation’s cities — at least 125 in 28 states — caught fire. Washington, Chicago, Baltimore and Kansas City, were hardest hit. More than 65,000 federal troops were required to quell the disorders, which raged for a week.
At King’s funeral in Atlanta, his truth was marching on. Mourners played a tape of his last sermon. “If any of you are around when I have to meet my day . . . I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry . . . that I did try in my life to clothe the naked . . . that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison . . . that I tried to love and serve humanity.” On April 8 in Memphis, 42,000 people walked silently in the march Martin Luther King Jr. had planned. By the end of the month, Ralph Abernathy, his friend and successor, kicked off the Poor People’s Campaign. In May, the campaign arrived in Washington. There, two months after King’s death, a makeshift village arose. It was called Resurrection City U.S.A.