Dr. King's Prescription for Poverty Can Work Today

WASHINGTON, March 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Two noted African American economists will mark the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a new report, Beyond the Mountaintop: King's Prescription for Poverty, challenging the nation to take up King's vision of economic justice through renewed policies, practices and organizing. The report will be released at a news conference here Wednesday, April 2 at 11 a.m.

Dr. Steven Pitts, labor specialist with the University of California- Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, and Dr. William Spriggs, chair of the Howard University Department of Economics, urge the nation to reduce poverty by embracing three priority areas -- stronger anti- discrimination laws and enforcement; elimination of barriers to unionization; and an effective minimum wage -- advocated by Dr. King to extend black advancement beyond the scope of safety net programs.

Also participating in the news conference will be Taylor Rogers, 82, one of the organizers of AFSCME Local 1733 in Memphis who served as the union's president for 20 years. Dr. King joined Rogers and the black striking Memphis sanitation workers 40 years ago in their struggle for dignity, fair wages and better working conditions.

Dr. King's prescription for ending poverty and unemployment is as urgent now as it was in 1968. By aggressively employing the three elements of King's prescription to reduce poverty between 1964 and 1969, the United States achieved the largest decline in poverty since the Second World War, reducing the number of black children in poor families by almost half. But, in the intervening years, these three key policy levers had been virtually decimated.

Today, millions of Americans are strapped by an economic downturn fueled by the housing market crisis and rising food and gas prices. Joblessness is increasing at an alarming rate. The policy brief shows that, adjusting for inflation, the minimum wage was actually higher in 1968 than it is today.

The policy brief, supported by the San Francisco-based Rosenberg Foundation, will be distributed to the Bush administration, members of Congress, African American civic, civil rights and service organizations as well as heads of Fortune 100 corporations.