LIFESTYLE

A. Quinn Museum and Cultural Center in Gainesville to host 1968 Poor People’s Campaign exhibit

Voleer Thomas
Correspondent

A museum exhibit that captures the essence of the historic Poor People’s March on Washington, D.C., in 1968 will be coming to Gainesville.

The exhibit, billed as the “City of Hope: Resurrection City and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign," will open at 7 p.m. Friday and run through the summer at the A. Quinn Jones Museum and Cultural Center at 1013 NW Seventh Ave.

“What I like about it is the historical photos traced when a diversity of people came together for the Poor People’s Campaign,” said Carol Richardson, cultural affairs manager for the city of Gainesville. “This particular march was a grassroots march to bring economic justice to everyone in the U.S.”

The exhibit will be open to the public from 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays or by appointment, Richardson said.

“They’re going to get a snapshot into historical issues in 1968 that are still happening today,” Richardson said. “Great strides have been made but we still have a long way to go.”

A diverse group of Americans participate in the 1968 Poor People's Campaign March on Washington, D.C. to protest poverty in the U.S. (Credit: Photo courtesy of the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University)

Museum dedication:City dedicates museum honoring A. Quinn Jones

There also will be a showcase of past local activists who made strides in 1968, Richardson said.

“We wanted to recognize that there were people in the community doing the same thing,” Richardson said. “I would like people to see there was unity for a cause. This museum wants to show solidarity and that together we can achieve a lot more.”

Other events associated with the exhibit include:

  • A lecture about the history of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 18 by Paul Ortiz, director of the University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program;
  • UF professor emerita Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 15, will share her firsthand experience as a civil rights organizer in the 1960s and attendance at the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign March;
  • A discussion exploring the historical context and contemporary implications of Black individuals and communities advocating for better health that will be led by Alyssa Cole, an assistant professor of African American Studies at UF, at 6:30 p.m. on March 21
  • A workshop at 10 a.m. March 28, hosted by Emma Shaw Crane, Ph. D., titled “Research Justice: A Workshop on Collaboration”;
  • and at 6:30 p.m. on April 18, the museum will host a music and cultural event featuring work of artists, musicians and writers who came out of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign movement.
"City of Hope: Resurrection City and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign" exhibit will run through the summer at the A. Quinn Jones Museum and Cultural Center at 1013 NW Seventh Ave. (Credit: Submitted photo)

“It (Poor People’s Campaign) was (Dr. Martin Luther) King’s last effort to abolish poverty in the U.S.,” Ortiz said. “He was a genius and forced Americans to talk about what they don’t want to talk about.”

Ortiz referenced King's speech during the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike — the night before his assassination on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis — and how King did not agree with the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The efforts of the Rev. Dr. William Barber, one of the co-leaders of this generation’s Poor People’s Campaign, is continuing the fight to address poverty, Ortiz said.

“I will be using King’s book, ‘Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?’ as a starting point to think about the connection between the past and the present,” Ortiz said. “We have seen a renaissance of this kind of activism with the labor movement, affordable housing rights, immigration rights and the Black Lives Matter movement.”

Simmons said she was representing the National Council of Negro Women when she attended the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign March.

She remembers King speaking in her hometown of Memphis in April 1968 to address sanitation workers who were on strike due to a fatal tragedy.

According to the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, on Feb. 1, 1968, two Memphis garbage collectors, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning truck.

Eleven days later, frustrated by the city’s response to the latest event in a long pattern of neglect and abuse of its Black employees, 1,300 Black men from the Memphis Department of Public Works went on strike.

“It was an amazing event and it was undercut by the assassination of Dr. King,” Simmons said. “It was his last major program. One of the amazing things about it was, King expanded his organizing skills and began focusing on the issue of poverty.”

Simmons said the movement was multicultural and included Black, Hispanics, Latinos, Appalachians, whites and Native Americans.

“King wanted America to rid itself of its triple evils — racism, militarism and materialism,” Simmons said. “I believe this played a big part as to why he was assassinated

The exhibit will be presented through a partnership between the African American Museum of History and Culture, Smithsonian Traveling Exhibitions and thr A. Quinn Jones Museum and Cultural Center.