Poverty: Insurrection City

From the start, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy's lax grip on leadership of the Poor People's Campaign has been steadily slipping away. Last week his hold relaxed to the point of paralysis. While Resurrection City afforded Washington an unseemly display of backbiting and verbal pyromania, the protest movement's leaders purged the man who, above all, might have given their faltering cause realistic direction.

Bayard Rustin, invited by Abernathy to make order of the chaos surrounding the upcoming mass march June 19, took his task seriously and responsibly, setting out to organize a peaceful demonstration...