The National Mall is a seat of democracy, a site for protest, and the home of the Smithsonian Institution. These truths converged in 1968, when antipoverty demonstrators staged a six-week campaign on “America’s front yard.”

The Smithsonian had a front seat to “Resurrection City, USA,” the protesters’ name for their encampment. Today, a salvaged mural from the often forgotten event is back on the Mall, in the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The slogans of solidarity inscribed on the mural inspired curators Aaron Bryant (National Museum of African American History and Culture) and Mireya Loza (National Museum of American History) to reflect on the campaign’s multiethnic character, while Kendra Greendeer (National Museum of the American Indian) brings the legacy forward to recount how American Indians and allies traversed the same hallowed ground at a recent march across the Mall.

See our discussion questions before reading. 
 

Communities in Solidarity

Aaron Bryant, Museum Curator, NMAAHC

Panel 1 of Resurrection City, USA mural
Vincent deForest, an activist with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) who participated in the Poor People’s Campaign, salvaged these murals after the Resurrection City encampment was shut down. After storing them for decades, deForest donated these panels to the NMAAHC in 2012. Gift of Vincent DeForest. See more
Panel 2 of Resurrection City, USA mural
Panel 3 of Resurrection City, USA mural
Panel 4 of Resurrection City, USA mural
Panel 5 of Resurrection City, USA mural
Panel 6 of Resurrection City, USA mural

Martin Luther King Jr.’s final vision was perhaps his most ambitious dream—the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. A continuation of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King’s poverty campaign was a multiethnic, human rights movement in which protesters of different races, cultures, and regions of the country assembled in Washington, D.C., to demand an Economic Bill of Rights.

Despite King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, the campaign continued in his honor marking an important transition in U.S. history as the Civil Rights period transformed into an era of human rights and cultural justice movements. Public events began on May 12, and within a week, demonstrators had built a protest encampment along the National Mall, known as Resurrection City. Thousands of protesters occupied the encampment for more than six weeks, after arriving each day in caravans of cars and buses from across the country. 

Resurrection City organizers building tent structures

Building components for Resurrection City arrived on May 13, 1968. Following a groundbreaking ceremony, activists and volunteers began building the iconic tents that housed campaign participants along the National Mall. 
Constructing tents - Resurrection City, Wash., D.C. - 1968. Photograph by Robert Houston.

 

Gift of Robert and Greta Houston, © Robert Houston
The people built the Many Races Soul Center and painted their souls on Hunger’s Wall. The Poor People’s Campaign: A Photographic Journal Atlanta: Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1968.
Woman siting on chair in between two rows of Resurection City dwellings

In a mass act of civil disobedience, protesters occupied the nation’s capital and created a community from the tarp and plywood tents that became symbols of the movement. 
Woman between tents - Resurrection City, Wash, D.C. - 1968. Photograph by Robert Houston. 

Gift of Robert and Greta Houston, © Robert Houston

Demonstrators personalized Resurrection City with slogans that declared the space as their own. As a curator of political and cultural movements, this mural represents to me protesters claiming the National Mall as a site for democracy where they could exercise their political voices and make their presence known. Demonstrators communicated the movement’s most critical concerns in the mural’s symbols of identity and unity. Adorning the plywood walls with multilingual expressions of social and cultural power, they identified themselves and others as allies working in solidarity.

 

Chicano Power

Mireya Loza, Museum Curator, Division of Political History, NMAH

When I look at the Resurrection City mural, my eye is drawn toward the words in the middle of the mural: “Chicano Power.” By the mid-1960s, many Mexican Americans who were frustrated with conservative approaches to Mexican American Civil Rights organized and ushered in a new movement that not only aligned itself in solidarity with the African American Civil Rights Movement but also pushed for more radical racial identities embodied by the term “Chicano.” 

“Chicano Power” written on Resurrection City mural panel
“Chicano Power” written on Resurrection City mural panel
“Chicano Power” written on Resurrection City mural panel
“Chicano Power” written on Resurrection City mural panel
Activists referenced historical figures who symbolized independence and resistance, such as Joaquin Murrieta, Che Guevara, Emiliano Zapata, and Pancho Villa.

For the Poor People’s Campaign, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference recognized the common ground African American and Latino communities shared. They reached out to key Chicano activists such as Reies López Tijerina, Bert Corona, Alicia Escalante, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, and others. As Bert Corona would recall in his 1994 biography, Martin Luther King Jr. “understood our particular historical condition, but he also stressed that we needed to come together to correct common abuses.”

United Farm Workers Organizing Committee representatives with banner at the Poor People’s Campaig

The mural reminds me of the rich collection of Civil Rights objects and photographs at the National Museum of American History, including this image of United Farm Workers Organizing Committee representatives attending the Poor People’s Campaign. 
Gift of Patricia A. Lipman

 

Reies López Tijerina led a group from New Mexico, while Corky Gonzales urged Chicanos from Colorado to follow him, and Alicia Escalante and Bert Corona organized California groups. Chicano attendees spoke up about farm labor conditions, land rights, political representation, and educational disparities—concerns that they shared with poor whites, American Indians, African Americans, and others in joining the campaign.

 

A New Alliance

Kendra Greendeer, Curatorial Resident, NMAI

The Poor People’s Campaign drew people from across the country to Washington, D.C., to protest issues that affected them, including a group of American Indians disputing a court decision over fishing rights in Washington State. The protest was considered a “monumental victory” because it gained media attention and forced the country’s leaders to listen to American Indian concerns.  

Mattie Grinnell, a 101-year-old Mandan tribeswoman, speaks to the press outside the Supreme Court during the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C.

Mattie Grinnell, a 101-year-old Mandan tribeswoman, speaks to the press outside the Supreme Court during the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C.
Photograph by Bill Wingell

In 2014, another protest created a new partnership between American Indians and like-minded individuals—cowboys. The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline could have violated tribal sovereignty, resulted in climate change, and caused oil spills and water contamination. Keystone’s preexisting oil pipeline spans from Canada to Texas, and the “XL” pipeline extension would have cut through the states of Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska. 

Adding a new Keystone “XL” or “express line” could have had devastating effects on the environment and people. Cowboy Indian Alliance march in Washington, D.C., April 22–27, 2014.
Adding a new Keystone “XL,” or “express line,” could have had devastating effects on the environment and people. Cowboy Indian Alliance march in Washington, D.C., April 22–27, 2014. Photograph by Katherine Fogden
Steve Tamayo’s public artwork features blue and green borders symbolizing the Ogallala Aquifer, the vast natural reservoir beneath the High Plains and the land. The cedar tree and turtle represent a connection to the earth and the protection and long life of future generations. Tamayo’s tipi cover is now in the collection of the NMAI. Oyate Owicakiye Wicasa/Awe Kooda Bilaxpak Kuuxshish, 2014, Washington, D.C.
Steve Tamayo’s public artwork features blue and green borders symbolizing the Ogallala Aquifer, the vast natural reservoir beneath the High Plains and the land. The cedar tree and turtle represent a connection to the earth and the protection and long life of future generations. The tipi cover is now in the collection of the NMAI.
The tipi cover is entitled Oyate Owicakiye Wicasa /Awe Kooda Bilaxpak Kuuxshish, the two names given to President Obama by the Lakota and the Crow Nations. The names translate to “Man Who Helps the People” and “One Who Helps People throughout the Land," Washington, D.C., April 22–27, 2014. Photograph by Katherine Fogden
The tipi cover is entitled “Oyate Owicakiye Wicasa /Awe Kooda Bilaxpak Kuuxshish,” the two names given to President Obama by the Lakota and the Crow Nations. The names translate to “Man Who Helps the People” and “One Who Helps People throughout the Land,” Washington, D.C., April 22–27, 2014. Photograph by Katherine Fogden

The Cowboy Indian Alliance commissioned artist Steve Tamayo to create this tipi cover (above, center) as a symbol of opposition to the expanded oil pipeline. The horses pictured on the tipi evoke both the tribes and the cowboys, while the green and blue colors represent valued lands and waterways. Protesters, who helped paint the piece, marched the completed tipi cover from Lafayette Park, near the White House, to the National Museum of the American Indian. On their route, they crossed the National Mall, where the Resurrection City encampment was located nearly 50 years before. Upon arriving peacefully at the museum, protesters presented the tipi as a gift to President Barack Obama. In 2015 the president rejected the proposed pipeline on the basis that it would not serve the national interest.

Winona LaDuke and Faith Spotted Eagle Make a Stand, 2014, John Isaiah Pepion (Blackfeet, b. 1983).
Photograph by Angelika Harden-Norman

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