The Civil Rights Movement Revised Edition

156 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.
    And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised
    plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in which only Black
    colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of
    determining the will of Black people as to their national destiny.
    Source: Black Panther, 5 July 1969.

GRAPH OF POVERTY STATUS BY RACE, 1939–1994

This graph shows the dramatic decline in the percentage of blacks below the

poverty line, a decline that coincided with the migration of blacks to the indus-

trial North, the implementation of federal assistance programs, and the rise of

the civil rights movement.

Document 19

Sources: Reprinted with permission from Jaynes, G.D. and Williams, R.M., Jr. (eds) A

Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society, Figure 6.1, © 1990 by the National

Academy of Sciences, courtesy of the National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.

Data from 1959 to 1994 from US Bureau of the Census (1993) ‘Poverty Status of

Persons, by Family, Relationship, Race and Hispanic Origin: 1959 to 1993,’ http://

http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/incpov93/povtab2.html and US Census Bureau (1996)

‘Age, Sex, Household Relationship, Race and Hispanic Origin – Poverty Status of

Persons in 1994,’ pub. 18 November, http://ferret.bls.census.gov/macro/03/995/pov/

1_001.htm.