City of New Hope

Martin Luther King's final dream was a mighty Poor People's March on Washington, originally scheduled to begin late last month. The immensely detailed logistical preparations for the march continued despite King's assassination. This week his successor, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, will lead a vanguard of 100 march leaders into the capital, starting what one aide called "the greatest nonviolent demonstration since Gandhi's salt march to the sea."*

Focal point of the campaign will be Abernathy's "City of New Hope," a super-shanty town that by mid-May will house some 3,000 of the anticipated 50,000 demonstrators. Last week hammers rang and saws brayed as volunteers built the first of 200 triangular-shaped shelters, costing $10 per inhabitant, which will be moved to the camp-in site--as soon as one can be agreed upon. Congressional pressure against allowing the marchers to use federal land is mounting. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall has been cool to the use of the Capitol Mall, where crowds gathered to hear King deliver his ringing "I have a dream" speech in 1963. A likely compromise may be West Potomac Park near the Lincoln Memorial, a magnet for tourists.

Bullhorns & Diapers. Abernathy would probably be happy to get so visible a location, since the main purpose of the campaign is to wrench the national conscience and prod Congress into granting greater aid to the 29,900,000 American poor. "We will stay until Congress deals with racial poverty," said Abernathy last week. It will be an expensive stay: merely to feed the demonstrators should cost upwards of $150,000 a day, and Abernathy's procurement list includes items as various as 300 bullhorns, 10,000 disposable diapers and 250,000 nails. Day-care centers for demonstrators' infants have already been organized, as have "freedom schools" for the older children and an agency to process marchers' welfare checks.

The demonstrators will descend on Washington in nine "caravans" that will include vehicles as disparate as Greyhound buses and 325 mule-drawn wagons. Though the majority of the marchers will be black, there will also be American Indians, Appalachian whites and Mexican-Americans led by California's Cesar Chavez, who organized the successful Delano farmworkers' strikes, and New Mexico's Reies Tijerina, whose abortive attempt to "reclaim" land last year made him a latter-day conquistador in Spanish-American eyes.

Though many white Americans, principally churchmen, have contributed money and time to the march, others view it with emotions that range from nervousness to outrage. "When that bunch comes here," bellowed Louisiana's Senator Russell Long, "they can just burn the whole place down, and we can just move the capital to some place where they enforce the law!" Other officials feared that the march might trigger a repetition of the riots that singed Washington and 167 other cities after King's murder, and the Pentagon hastily added more than five brigades--some 30,000 troops--to the stand-by force, now 45,000 men strong, available for riot-control duty.

* Which took place during March and April, 1930, when the Indian leader hiked for 24 days to the sea at Dandi and symbolically broke the British salt monopoly.

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