Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered for his leadership of the civil rights movement and for his vision of racial justice. However, he also fought against economic inequality, including authoring an economic bill of rights and organizing the Poor People’s Campaign. He delivered his “I have a Dream” speech at an event called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, highlighting the inextricable connection between economic equity and civil rights.
The economic expansion that lasted until February 2020 led some to predict that economic inequality would soon vanish and that the War on Poverty largely had been won. However, more than 50 years after the assassination of Dr. King, incremental gains in absolute terms have failed to meaningfully close the extremely large differences in economic status by race. For example, Black workers for decades have been nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as White workers. The median Black family earns almost $30,000 per year less than White counterparts and has net wealth of only $24,100—just one-eighth that of the median White family. Black Americans are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as their White counterparts.
The coronavirus pandemic and resulting recession have confirmed Dr. King’s insight that economic disadvantage undermines the most fundamental human rights. Partly as a result of economic inequality, the poor and working class, people of color and immigrants have suffered disproportionally from the pandemic. For example, Black Americans are nearly 4 times more likely than White Americans to be hospitalized from the coronavirus and nearly 3 times more likely to die from it. In December 2020, more than half of Black households reported having difficulty covering usual household expenses and one in five reported going hungry sometimes or often in the previous week.
