June 19 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 19.

Solidarity Day March

In November 1967 civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) met and decided to launch a Poor People’s Campaign to highlight and find solutions to many of the problems facing the country’s poor.

The Poor People’s Campaign was still in the planning stages when King was assassinated in April 1968.

The plan for the march was that protestors would come together in Washington, D.C., and demonstrate daily from May 14 to June 24, 1968.

June 19th was declared Solidarity Day, and a rally was held, attracting between 50–100,000 people. Addresses were made by Ralph Abernathy, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Reuther as well as Coretta Scott-King.

In 1969, a Poor People's Campaign delegation, including Abernathy, met with President Nixon and asked him to address hunger and malnutrition.

The 2nd Solidarity March came near the 10 year anniversary of the first and drew between 250,000 and 325,000 people.

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