On Monday, January 15, 2024, we will honor MartinLuther King, Jr. and his legacy. Dr. King was an extraordinary leader who defied the norm, built bridges between communities, and resiliently fought for his community, core values, and beliefs. Though today King is widely revered, that was not always the case with less than a third of white Americans viewing him favorably in 1966, two years before his assassination. The influence of Dr. King’s words and work continued to grow after his death and have inspired many throughout the years, with individuals and organizations taking up the causes of racial equality and nonviolence and working toward the more equitable world that Dr. King envisioned. His life inspired the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities.
At the same time, one of the interesting aspects of Dr. King’s legacy is that people are often familiar with his more famous speeches and earlier work, but less attention is given to his later work that is still remarkably relevant today, almost 60 years later. He was not only a civil rights leader, but also through his work organizing communities was increasingly focused economic inequality toward the end of his life. Shortly before his death, he was working on the launch of the Poor People’s Campaign that happened in the late spring of 1968, focused on employment opportunity, a fair minimum wage, a guaranteed annual income, educational opportunity, and increasing low-income housing. King described the campaign as, “the beginning of a new co-operation, understanding, and a determination by poor people of all colors and backgrounds to assert and win their right to a decent life and respect for their culture and dignity.”
In one of this less often cited speeches given in 1967 titled “The Other America,” he says, “But we must see that the struggle today is much more difficult. It’s more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine equality, and it’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good, solid job. It’s much easier to guarantee the right to vote than it is to guarantee the right to live in sanitary, decent housing conditions. It is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to make genuine quality integrated education a reality.”
Dr. King’s advocacy for more affordable housing is directly linked to a need we see for our youth today. Center for Coordinated Assistance to States (CCAS) estimates that nationally 46% of youth who have experienced homelessness have been held in juvenile detention centers at some point, relative to 15% of youth in the general population.
The number of homeless youths in Oregon increased 34% to 1,424 between 2022 and 2023 – one of the highest increases in the country. Most unhoused youth are between 18 and 24 years old, falling into an awkward gap where they have aged out of foster care but don’t feel safe in typical adult shelters. Housing can be a key intervention in prevention of entry into the juvenile justice system as well as helping our youth not to reoffend and provide them with needed stability to change course.
We still have much to learn from Dr. King. This Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we encourage you to read (or re-read) two of the speeches he made before his death to learn about and reflect on what he was working towards: