Emory University School of Law hosts Dr. King lecture on fighting poverty

The panelists discussed what economic justice looks like in Atlanta, the fight of the Gullah Geechee on Sapelo Island to preserve their historic& Black communities from development and gentrification, and investment in creating jobs and living wages for communities such as the Westside of Atlanta.& Photo by Alex Cates/The Atlanta Voice“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said during his “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” speech in 1968.& Emory Law School hosted its annual MLK Jr. Day lecture on Wednesday to celebrate the civil rights leader’s birthday. This year’s lecture delved beyond King’s focus on racial harmony to examine his activism and fight to eradicate poverty in the U.S. In collaboration with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King organized the Poor People’s Campaign, a nonviolent protest movement, in 1967. The campaign is just one of the few ways King sought to focus the nation’s attention on economic injustice and systemic poverty through income and housing before his assassination.& Crystal McElrath, senior supervising attorney at the Economic Justice Southern Poverty Law Center in Atlanta, was the keynote...