What was the name of the 1968 campaign organized by Martin Luther King Jr. to demand economic justice?

The 1968 campaign organized by Martin Luther King Jr. to demand economic justice was the Poor People’s Campaign.

King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference announced the campaign as a multiracial effort to unite poor people around demands for jobs, housing, education, and income security. It was designed to broaden the civil rights movement beyond desegregation and voting rights toward economic equality.

King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, before the campaign reached Washington. Ralph Abernathy and other SCLC leaders continued the effort. Protesters established Resurrection City, a temporary settlement on the National Mall, beginning in May 1968.

The campaign faced difficult weather, internal disagreements, and government restrictions, and the settlement was removed in June. It did not win all of its immediate demands, but it connected racial justice with poverty and influenced later movements. The campaign is distinct from King’s earlier Chicago Freedom Movement, which focused on housing discrimination in Chicago.