PLAGUE AFTER PLAGUE

THE Rev. Ralph David Abernathy has vowed time after time that unless something is done to help the poor, they will bring down "plague after plague" upon "the Pharaohs of this nation." Last week, as his Poor People's Campaign continued to flood into Washington, it began to look as if somebody, somewhere, had mistaken the poor for the Pharaohs and their "Resurrection City" for old Egypt land.

Eighteen of the poor were arrested for unlawful assembly on Capitol Hill. Two hundred young toughs, mostly from Chicago and Detroit, were bounced from the 15-acre tent city for drinking, stealing and, as the Rev. James Bevel put it, "beating on our white people." Organizational snafus forced the leaders to put off a big march scheduled for this week until June 19 (known as "Juneteenth Day" for the anniversary of the freeing of the slaves in Texas in 1865). They also sent out an emergency summons to Bayard Rustin to handle the march, which may prove to be their smartest move yet; Rustin is the master organizer who turned the 1963 March on Washington into a nonpareil of nonviolence.

Then came the worst plague--a drenching thunderstorm and an on-and-off drizzle climaxed by a 17-hour deluge. Before it ended, the greensward had been churned into six inches of gumbo as thick as Delta farm land, and clouds of mosquitoes dive-bombed the dwellers. To avert dysentery and flu epidemics, the leaders evacuated 100 of the 2,400 residents, mostly toddlers, until the campsite could dry out. Still, the campaign's leaders professed themselves undiscouraged. "I was talking to the Lord," Bevel reported, "and he said he was going to let a little mud in here, so those it troubled could go on home. The Lord says he don't want them around."

Carnival Revival. Before that oozy intervention, Resurrection City had begun to take on a unique, throbbing personality. Life in the compound reminded some of a revival meeting within a carnival within an army camp.

There were blacks and whites, flower-decked hippies in shawls and black nationalists in African robes, sharecroppers in denim and urban youths in cowboy boots. The neat rows separating the plywood tents were given names like "Soul Street" and "Atlanta Street" while the shelters themselves bore inscriptions like "Soul House No. 1 1/2," "We Shall Overcome," and "Girls Wanted, Experience Unnecessary." Children lined up for free inoculations against measles, whooping cough, diphtheria and lockjaw, and two vans for dentistry served kids and adults, many of whom had never before seen a dentist. Evenings, the entertainment was the finest in town--Jazz Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, soul singers and freedom singers, ripsnorting revivalist sermons. Everything was free, even a seven-man outdoor barber shop.

Though the campaign's financial worries were far from over, Sammy Davis Jr. came through with a $17,800 check, Jack Lemmon promised half his salary from his next film (he has received as much as $1,000,000 for a movie), and Sidney Poitier, who donned work clothes last week to join a cleanup detail, contributed liberally.

Abernathy (see box), who became president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and took charge of the Poor People's Campaign when the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, moved into the tent city after some of its citizens lambasted him for living at the nearby Pitts' motel. He was then appointed mayor of Resurrection City by acclamation.

Wanted: Wilbur Mills. The arrests were made when more than 200 demonstrators marched to the Hill to demand that Arkansas Democrat Wilbur Mills and his potent House Ways and Means Committee repeal recent amendments limiting eligibility for the Aid for Dependent Children program. Mills has supplanted Lyndon Johnson as the pet hate of Negro militants--they plan to put up "Wanted" posters throughout the city, charging the Congressman with "conspiracy against children." Mills refused to see a delegation of the protesters. "I don't convene the committee on anyone's demands, not even the President's," he declared quite accurately. When the demonstrators began singing outside the Longworth House Office Building, ignoring warnings that they were breaking a law, police finally herded them into vans.

Washington remains fearful that, at some point, the poor will really get out of hand. Abernathy did nothing to ease those fears when he told a campsite crowd: "We're going to raise hell downtown." In a more elegant setting, he told a group of business executives in the ballroom of Washington's Shoreham Hotel essentially the same thing: "It is suicidal for any nation to develop a people who do not feel they have a stake in that society. In due course that people will rise up and destroy that nation, even though they may destroy themselves in the process."

Such veiled threats can prove to be a two-edged sword. They can maintain interest in the campaign at a high pitch, but they are also likely to infuriate enough Congressmen to wreck all chances of achieving significant legislative gains.

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