Nation: PLAGUE AFTER PLAGUE

THE Rev. Ralph David Abernathy has vowed time after time that unless something is done to help the poor, they will bring down "plague after plague" upon "the Pharaohs of this nation." Last week, as his Poor People's Campaign continued to flood into Washington, it began to look as if somebody, somewhere, had mistaken the poor for the Pharaohs and their "Resurrection City" for old Egypt land.

Eighteen of the poor were arrested for unlawful assembly on Capitol Hill. Two hundred young toughs, mostly from Chicago and Detroit, were bounced from the 15-acre tent city for drinking, stealing and, as the Rev. James Bevel put it, "beating on our white people." Organizational snafus forced the leaders to put off a big march scheduled for this week until June 19 (known as "Juneteenth Day" for the anniversary of the freeing of the slaves in Texas in 1865). They also sent out an emergency summons to Bayard Rustin to handle the march, which may prove to be their smartest move yet; Rustin is the master organizer who turned the 1963 March on Washington into a nonpareil of nonviolence.

Then came the worst plague—a drenching thunderstorm and an on-and-off drizzle climaxed by a 17-hour deluge. Before it ended, the greensward had been churned into six inches of gumbo as thick as Delta farm land, and clouds of mosquitoes dive-bombed the dwellers. To avert dysentery and flu epidemics, the leaders evacuated 100 of the 2,400 residents, mostly toddlers, until the campsite could dry out. Still, the campaign's leaders professed themselves undiscouraged. "I was talking to the Lord," Bevel reported, "and he said he was going to let a little mud in here, so those it troubled could go on home. The Lord says he don't want them around."

Carnival Revival. Before that oozy intervention, Resurrection City had begun to take on a unique, throbbing personality. Life in the compound reminded some of a revival meeting within a carnival within an army camp.

There were blacks and whites, flower-decked hippies in shawls and black nationalists in African robes, sharecroppers in denim and urban youths in cowboy boots. The neat rows separating the plywood tents were given names like "Soul Street" and "Atlanta Street" while the shelters themselves bore inscriptions like "Soul House No. 1½," "We Shall Overcome," and "Girls Wanted, Experience Unnecessary." Children lined up for free inoculations against measles, whooping cough, diphtheria and lockjaw, and two vans for dentistry served kids and adults, many of whom had never before seen a dentist. Evenings, the entertainment was the finest in town—Jazz Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, soul singers and freedom singers, ripsnorting revivalist sermons. Everything was free, even a seven-man outdoor barber shop.

Though the campaign's financial worries were far from over, Sammy Davis Jr. came through with a $17,800 check, Jack Lemmon promised half his salary from his next film (he has received as much as $1,000,000 for a movie), and Sidney Poitier, who donned work clothes last week to join a cleanup detail, contributed liberally.