Assembling the Poor People\u27s Campaign (1968) Queer Activism and Economic Justice

This thesis attempts to bring the Poor People\u27s Campaign (PPC) of 1968 into contemporary discussions about queer scholarship and activism. The PPC assembled a diverse racial and ethnic constituency in an unprecedented way to produce a massive, national political campaign to end poverty. This complex assemblage was largely indecipherable to the press and many historians, which has contributed to the view that the campaign was a failure, particularly in relation to the civil rights movement . I describe how the mainstream gay rights movement appropriates the civil rights movement as normative to seek forms of national inclusion. I argue that the PPC provides a historical model for queer disruptions to homonormativity through radical alliances for racial, gendered, decolonial, and economic justice