In 1966, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Black leaders and civil rights organizations threw their unwavering support behind an ambitious economic plan designed to eliminate poverty in the United States by 1975. What stopped it?
A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin had crafted the “Freedom Budget” in 1966 to help the poorest Americans. The plan included job training, universal health insurance, guaranteed minimum incomes, public housing, and more. The plan was remarkable, but its authors knew it faced an uphill battle.
A. Philip Randolph wrote that the economy pitted poor people of all races against each other. He knew that this plan would have to benefit all Americans. Randolph believed that Martin Luther King Jr., with his multiracial coalition, could help pressure the government to make the Freedom Budget a reality.
Unfortunately, the dream of the Freedom Budget evaporated for two reasons. Its cost ($185 billion over 10 years) worried the government that was already fighting an increasingly expensive war in Vietnam. However, even more pressing was the immediate whitelash against a proposal by Black people that would have lifted everyone—including poor white people—out of poverty.
The rejection of the Freedom Budget illustrates how white supremacy will do anything to hurt Black people, even if it also means hurting white people. So despite the roadblocks that white supremacy throws up on our journey to liberation, we must keep finding ways around them.