Page 182 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS ARE PERSUASIVE

of the Interior. Rather than resist the invasion, as many urged him to do,
Secretary Udall made the courageous decision to welcome the campaign
as an appropriate use of this national treasure. And he assigned me—I
suppose because I was an architect and knew about urban planning and
plywood-floored tents—to inspect the camp daily and report to him on
problems.”

Unfortunately, there were plenty of problems to report. It rained inces-
santly, turning the makeshift streets between the rows of tents into impass-
able quagmires. Port-A-Cans could not be reached for servicing. Azaleas
were trampled into the mud. The reflection pool in front of the Lincoln
Memorial became a community bathtub. McGinty’s daily reports to Udall
became bleaker and more heartbreaking, softened only by Udall’s stead-
fast conviction that the cause was worth the sacrifice. For several weeks,
the protesters lobbied the government for passage of the Economic Bill of
Rights. They staged demonstrations and engaged in acts of civil disobe-
dience aimed at drawing attention to their plight. However, infighting soon
emerged among the group’s leadership. The New York Times reported that
a rift developed between protestors living in the filth and squalor on the
Washington Mall and Abernathy and other high-ranking campaign offi-
cials, who were all staying at a comfortable midtown hotel.
The group’s support on Capitol Hill and in the White House began
to wane. A New York Times reporter wrote, “The anxious observers . . .
include a number of high officials in the Johnson Administration, whose
interest is in giving the Poor People’s Campaign what one of them called
today ‘the maximum possible victory under very unpromising circum-
stances.’” Halfway through the campaign, on June 5, 1968, Senator
Robert Kennedy, a beloved champion of civil rights, was assassinated. The
protestors’ morale plummeted. Violence erupted not only in the tent city
but also throughout Washington, D.C. The American people, the Johnson
administration, and the country’s lawmakers turned their backs on the Poor
People’s Campaign. The defeated campers returned home.
“By sunset of the final day the tent city was abandoned. The National
Mall of the United States consisted of nothing more than a sea of grassless
mud and mountains of soaked canvas, plywood, and human household
debris,” McGinty said. “Looking at the dismal scene, I thought about how
and why the Poor People’s Campaign failed. The group might have achieved

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