Beyond the Mountaintop: King’s Prescription for Poverty, by Steven Pitts of UC Berkeley and William Spriggs of Howard University, is a policy brief that analyzes African Americans’ economic progress over the last 40 years and uses Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, vision of economic justice as the basis for policy recommendations to dramatically reduce poverty.

This study that finds that more than half of U.S. Black workers earn low wages and lack advancement options. The study also explores how new global economic realities are having an impact on future employment prospects for Black workers.

This report presents a detailed view of the Black workforce, with a focus on the incidence of low-wage work. It finds a two-dimensional crisis of work in the Black community: that of unemployment, and that of low-wage jobs. The author argues that not enough attention is paid to the crisis of low-wage jobs or to the task of transforming the millions of low-wage jobs into jobs that pay family-sustaining wages. The report includes recommendations on policies that will increase standards in the areas of wages (minimum wage laws; living wage laws); benefits (protecting employer-based health care and pension plans); and the right to unionize.

This data brief illustrates the worsening condition of the Bay Area Black working population, drawing special attention to the problem of low-wage employment. The study reveals that, from a numerical standpoint, low-wage employment is a greater concern than unemployment in the black population. The report also highlights the dramatic downturn in the fortunes of the black male and young black working populations, respectively.

This report documents the disproportionate number of Blacks holding low-wage, dead-end jobs, and assesses responses to this crisis from activist organizations nationwide. The author reviews the wide range of activities of Black-oriented non-profits, generally, and the geared towards work and employment issues, specifically. The author notes the lack of programs directly targeting the transformation of bad jobs, and discusses reasons for this state of affairs. The report weighs the effectiveness of race-based organizing, and discusses collective action strategies to combat the problem of bad jobs.