Newsweek, August 28, 2023, Sixty Years Later, We Can Make King’s Dream A Reality
Sixty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic keynote at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
As of 2019, the last year with complete data, the median wealth of Black households was just $9,000—compared to $160,000 for white people. These figures have improved little since King’s time. In 1961, African Americans had 12 cents for every dollar of wealth of non-Black Americans. By 2019, that figure had risen to just 18 cents.
At that rate, it would take 780 years for Black wealth to equal non-Black wealth.
