Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

by Ibram X. Kendi

King made his way out of the good graces of assimilationist America that year. Assimilationists still wanted to keep him in the doubly conscious dreams of 1963, just as they had wanted to keep Du Bois in the doubly conscious souls of 1903. But King no longer saw any real strategic utility for the persuasion techniques that assimilationists adored, or for the desegregation efforts they championed. He now realized that desegregation had primarily benefited Black elites, leaving millions wallowing in the wrenching poverty that had led to their urban rebellions. King therefore switched gears and began planning the SCLC’s Poor People’s Campaign. His goal was to bring poor people to the nation’s capital in order to force the federal government to pass an “economic bill of rights” committing to full employment, guaranteed income, and affordable housing, a bill that sounded eerily similar to the economic proposals on the Black Panther Party’s ten-point platform.