ABSTRACT
Poverty has been a feature of American life fromcolonial times to the present. So have the collective struggles of poor people to end their penury. From spontaneous and inchoate riots for bread in early colonial towns to well-organized and disciplined Unemployed Councils in the 1930s, poor people’s efforts have taken many forms. Poor people have marched on City Hall and Washington, organized unions, rioted in the streets, sat in at lunch counters and government offices, created settlement houses, taken freedom rides, constructed activist organizations, and formed political parties. Sometimes, poor people’s efforts have achieved groundbreaking reforms, such as the labor and antipoverty legislation of the New Deal and Great Society. At other times, poor people’s activity has victimized racial and ethnic minorities, as in the riots against Catholics during the economic depression of 1857 or the Civil War draft riots that targeted African Americans. Whatever their form and content, the movements of poor people have demonstrated repeatedly that millions of Americans have been and remain excluded from their United States’ unparalleled economic abundance, yet they refuse to accept their fate quietly.
