The civil rights movement always linked race and money. The 1963 March on Washington was a march for Jobs and Freedom. In 1966, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin released the Freedom Budget, a plan for full employment, a guaranteed income and decent housing. In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. organized the Poor People's Campaign, which brought thousands of poor people of all races to Washington after his assassination that April.
Economic justice looks at systems rather than individual choices. It asks why the median white household held $285,000 in wealth in 2022 while the median Black household held $44,900, according to the Federal Reserve. It points to policies such as redlining, unequal labor protections and predatory lending as causes.
Modern economic justice work includes campaigns for a living wage, guaranteed income, baby bonds, reparations, union rights and affordable housing. The Poor People's Campaign was revived in 2018. The idea matters because racial equality cannot be achieved while the economy keeps sorting people by race.