SCLC Plans Poor People's Campaign

ATLANTA - The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is hoping to draw 50,000 people to the Mississippi Delta this summer to highlight poverty in America.

The campaign is not unlike the one envisioned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. toward the end of his life.

Byron Clay, the interim president of the SCLC, told The Associated Press in an interview on Tuesday that the organization will hold a Poor People's Campaign from June 19 to June 21, beginning in Marksville, Miss., and ending in Lambert, Miss.

King was working on a similar campaign to bring thousands of poor people from all backgrounds to the nation's capital before he was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, where he was working on behalf of the city's sanitation workers.