Solidarity Day, June 19, 1968

National Archives , photo no. 516368

© Carlos Raúl Dufflar & Ángel L. Martínez

Dawn has risen on this Wednesday, June 19, morning. Within eyesight of the Lincoln Monument, the Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument. It was an unusual hot, humid day on Juneteenth, Solidarity Day.

A moment to jump in joy as they have come to support the Poor People’s Campaign. From around the country, more than a hundred thousand people with their beautiful banners:

• Poor People’s Power
• We Have the Right to Live
• United Auto Workers – A Useful Job at Decent Pay

• Wipe Out Poverty

• UAW Supports an Economic Bill of Rights

• Jobs and Income Now

• A Better World is Possible 

• No More Hunger in the USA

• Be Real (Diggers sign)

• East Harlem Demands Human Rights 

• Get the Hell Out of Vietnam

• Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker

• The Ripon Republicans Join the Poor People’s Campaign 

• Why Are We Poor in a Land of Plenty?

• Welfare Rights

• Feed the Folks

• Justice is Our Creed

• The Union Demands Jobs, Peace and Justice

• Hey LBJ, How Many Children Did You Kill Today?

• Both Parties Serve Corporations 

• Dick Gregory for President – And I Mean Dick

• Help the Poor to Live and Don’t Kill the Innocent People 

• Senator Eugene McCarthy – The Peace Candidate 

• Jews for Urban Justice 

• Did LBJ Sign the Crime Control Bill Safe City Act of 1968?

As people were standing side by side, residents and supporters on this humid hot day, they went inside the Reflecting Pool to keep themselves cool. 

The program started with 

• Dr. Benjamin Myers, president emeritus of Morehouse College, 
• Dr. Wyatt T. Walker, Canaan Baptist Church of Christ (Harlem, NYC), 
• Rabbi Jacob P. Rubin, President of the Synagogue Council of America 
• Sterling Tucker, National Coordinator of Solidarity Day
• Rev. James Bevel, Director of Non-violence,  Poor People’s Campaign 
• Dorothy Height, President of the National Council of Negro Women
• Peggy Terry, JOIN Community Union
• Cleveland Robinson, Presiden,  Negro American Labor Council 
• Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle, Archbishop of Washington, DC
• Johnnie Tillmon, National Chairman, National Welfare Rights Organization 
• Walter Reuther, President, United Auto Workers 
• Gilberto Gerena Valentín, Congreso de Pueblos
• Senator Edward Brooke, Massachusetts
• Reies López Tijerina, Alianza de Pueblos Libres
• Martha Grass, Ponca Nation, Oklahoma
• Roy Wilikins, Executive Director, NAACP
• Rev C.K. Steele, Vice President, SCLC
• Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles, Crusade for Justice, Denver
• Rev. Bernard Lafayette, National Coordinator, PPC
• Whitney Young, Jr., Executive Director, National Urban League 
• Rev. Andrew Young, Executive Vice Chairman, SCLC 
• Mary Gurley
• Mrs. Coretta Scott King
• Mahalia Jackson 
• Rev. Joseph Lowery, Chairman of the Board, SCLC
• Rev. Dr. Ralph Abernathy, President, SCLC
• Aretha Franklin, singing “Beaming to Heaven as I Do”
• Rev. Jesse Jackson, Director of Operation Breadbasket, SCLC
• Hosea Williams, Director of Direct Action, SCLC
• Rt. Rev. John D. Bright, First Episcopal District, AME Church, NYC

As Dick Gregory speaks and said if he was elected President, he will paint the White House black and end the killings of children and mothers in the war on Vietnam. And people jumped up and sat cheering repeatedly. Senator Eugene McCarthy, the peace candidate of the Democratic Party, said that if he was elected President, he would end the war on Vietnam and restore the funding for the anti-poverty programs. Also coming to study us was Richard Nixon, Presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

When Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was at the time the Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, spoke out on stage saying he wanted to help the poor people, the people jumped up and said “BOO! BOO! BOO! BOO!” With the banners in the crowd: “Hell, No, We Won’t Go,” “Get the Hell Out of Vietnam,” “Peace Now,” “Bring the Troops Home Now,” and a beautiful one that said, “We Want Freedom, We Want Freedom and We Will Get Our Freedom.” (LBJ dropped out of the race on March 30, just before the start of our Campaign.)

It was a beautiful moment in my life, with so many people supporting Solidarity Day 

The artists in support of the Poor People’s Campaign were:

• Eartha Kitt
• Nina Simone
• James Brown
• Aretha Franklin
• Lou Rawls
• Dizzy Gillespie 
• Louis Armstrong
• Roberto Clemente
• Peter, Paul & Mary
• Buffy Sainte-Marie
• Jimmy Collier & Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick 
• Pick (our resident banjoist)
• James Baldwin
• Harry Belafonte
• Tony Bennett
• Ossie Davis (Host)
• Ruby Dee
• Bernice Johnson Reagon
• Allen Ginsberg

• Burt Lancaster
• Marlon Brando
• Barbara Streisand 
• Len Chandler 
• Joan Baez
• Odetta
• Sidney Poitier
• Pete Seeger
• Leon Bibb
• Diane Di Prima
• Muhammad Ali
• Jerry Lewis
• Frank Sinatra
• Charlton Heston
• The Unidentified Flautist

And our leaders in Resurrection City:

• Cornelius “Cornbread” Givens
• Tillie Walker
• Big Snake
• Reies López Tijerina
• Martha Grass
• Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles
• Hank Adams
• George Crow Flies High
• Al Bridges
• Mattie Grinnell

This will last forever in my heart. It was a moment that lifted our spirits with joy as we were marching against the walls of Jericho.

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