Martin Luther King dreamed of a guaranteed income to address racial inequity. Here’s how we make it reality.

“The simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is… the guaranteed income.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote these words two years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. He spent his final year advocating for a federal program of stable and certain cash payments to alleviate poverty, because he, alongside many Civil Rights leaders, knew civic freedoms would be of little use for Americans still denied basic financial freedom — something I’ve witnessed firsthand while organizing in his former neighborhood. 

In the fifty years that followed Dr. King’s death, guaranteed income policies gained little traction – but in the past five years, over twenty guaranteed income programs have launched across the country. However, if this policy is to usher in his vision of the “total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty,” we must not equate two dozen temporary programs reaching a few thousand households with success. 

There are still unanswered questions about guaranteed income, like what amount works best and with what frequency? How can it interact in a coordinated way with the existing social safety net? How well does it work in suburban and rural communities? While recent U.S. pilots have produced promising results, they’ve nearly all been based in urban areas. Most importantly, how do we build an economy where everyone can thrive and what role does guaranteed income play?

In pursuit of these answers, we must center those who have been most affected by injustice — embracing the perspective that those closest to the problem have the most to teach the world about the solution. Instead of viewing those experiencing the most pernicious impact of pervasive economic insecurity as lacking knowledge, our communities are rich with resources and insight that can yield solutions to the deepest societal failures – if only we trust these voices.  

While Dr. King called for a guaranteed income for all in need, he hoped Black Americans facing both poverty and systemic racism would be aided by “the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.”

Atlanta’s historic Old Fourth Ward, where Dr. King was born, pastored, and where he and Coretta are now buried, was once a working-class African American neighborhood. Today, amid gentrification, it’s home to the largest concentration of Section 8 housing in the Southeast juxtaposed to million dollar newly constructed homes. The result? 38% of Black women in the area live in poverty, compared to only 8% of white women — a stark example of how our nation’s economic and political systems benefit certain communities while leaving others behind, usually across racial and gender lines.

King praised inventive policies “elicited from specialists and scholars,” but cautioned that “it is necessary that they be discussed and debated among the ordinary people affected by them… to enhance their value and increase support for them.” Too often, poverty policy is developed top-down, resulting in ineffective, cumbersome programs and policies that can create exclusion by design and outcomes counter to their goals.

Although guaranteed income has the potential to advance racially equitable outcomes, this is not inevitable. Before implementing any nationwide policy, efforts should be focused on ensuring the policy is created from the ground up for those experiencing the most pernicious and brutal systemic failures of our economy. However, it’s effectiveness for Black households in poverty is only being tackled by a handful of pilots: Magnolia Mother’s Trust, the Abundant Birth Project, and In Her Hands — an initiative I co-direct focused on reaching Black women in Georgia, who earn $0.63 on the dollar compared to white men.

To date, there have been targeted guaranteed income pilots focused on groups including mothers, unhoused youths, young adults leaving foster care, and artists, but the few programs focused on Black women tend to face particular public skepticism rather than being viewed as vital for a growing policy conversation in which Black women are among those with the most at stake and the most to contribute. Here, King’s words about the compounding impact of systemic racism on poverty reverberate.

There is good reason to be heartened by the current momentum but we must fight with vigilance if society is to “change its concepts by placing the responsibility on its system, not on the individual,” as Dr. King said. As of this month, families are no longer receiving expanded Child Tax Credits, sending an estimated 10 million children back into poverty, because Senator Joe Manchin, a key vote for renewal, reportedly withheld support over a false fear that parents would “waste” the payments instead of providing for their families. 

King knew this work would not be easy:

“We are struggling now for genuine equality, and it’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income.”

Rather than be sated by moderate progress, King’s legacy should compel us to action – to ensure that the arch of history bends toward justice for all.

Hope Wollensack is Executive Director of the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund and the co-director of In Her Hands, the largest guaranteed income initiative in the South. She previously served as a Senior Strategist at the Economic Security Project, where she helped start and lead the Guaranteed Income Community of Practice, a national collective of advocates working to advance guaranteed income and financial stability.