This week, ABS honors the leaders who took a strong stand to improve the economic conditions of black people.
Though he is celebrated for his courageous stands against social injustice, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out just as forcefully against the brutality of poverty. In November 1967 he started the Poor People’s Campaign to bring attention to the plight of America’s poor — because he believed that African-Americans and other minorities would never enter full citizenship until they had economic security. In fact, it was his stand on behalf of the striking sanitation workers that brought him to Memphis in April 1968. That was where King met his end, much too soon. In this video clip, we hear King speaking forcefully about the plague of poverty in America.
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This election season, the stakes are higher than usual — and so is the pressure on newsrooms to soften their coverage, stay quiet, or just disappear. Independent reporting, the kind that answers to readers instead of advertisers or political pressure, matters more in a moment like this, not less.
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