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FREEDOMWAYS     THIRD QUARTER 1969

as a way of preparing for the future. 

From the community-organizing side of the picture, the Charleston strike was also instructive in regards to the response it received from the black middle-class. The "black bourgeoisie" in Charleston, while not hostile was quite cool towards the events taking place. This surprised some of our most experienced activities, accustomed as we are to the more positive response from them to civil rights issues. What this reflects, of course, is that poverty as an issue does not touch the black middle-class in the same direct way as the struggle against segregation did. Many of the black bourgeoisie have never known poverty of the kind we are dealing with in the Poor People's Campaign, but they have known the insult of segregation. The black middle-class related to the issue of ending segregation more easily and more readily than they do to the issue of ending poverty in America. One of the important challenges for the Poor People's Campaign is to define the ways for the middle-class to relate to this new stage of the Freedom Movement. It's a challenge because it is class prejudice towards the poor which has to be boldly confronted and patiently dealt with in working with the black bourgeoisie. These prejudices were not as evident during the civil rights era because the black middle-class found it relatively easy to identify its self-interest in the movement to end segregation. 

The process of an emerging multi-ethnic social force representing the most exploited among the workers of our country is leaving its impact upon and porfoundly influencing the program and strategic direction of SCLC, as the primary mass-action organization of the Freedom Movement. At "Resurrection City" in the Spring of 1968, SCLC led representatives of the poor in "making a witness" before the nation, calling attention to the existence of poverty. That witness was violently dispersed by the police power of The STate in the nation's capital. In the Spring and Summer of 1969, the leadership of SCLC was engaged in a major tactical and strategic battle with The State at a local level over the issue of the human rights of the poor. These two events, a year apart, are really to be seen as one continuous process. It signals the opening of a whole new period in the evolution of the Freedom Movement nationally and what Dr. Du Bois called, in a pamphlet in 1911, the social evolution of the black South. 

At "Resurrection City" as well as Charleston, The State acted out the real meaning of the law and order syndrome, so dear to certain politicians in this country today. But the poor of America are determined they "ain't gonna let nobody turn them roun'." The immediate 

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