In the fall of 1965, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., prominent economists, allies from the labor movement, and others who had participated in the 1963 March on Washington began working on what they called "A Freedom Budget For All Americans".
He was determined to win the "full and final triumph of the civil rights movement, to be achieved by going beyond civil rights, linking the goal of racial justice with the goal of economic justice for all people in the United States" and doing so "by rallying massive segments of the 99% of the American people in a powerfully democratic and moral crusade.
[4] Rustin found it encouraging that President Lyndon Johnson seemed willing to connect racial equality to a broader progressive agenda of social and economic policies.
In a commencement address at Howard University in June 1965, Johnson denounced the economic disparities between white and Black Americans and promised to fight against this “inherited gateless poverty.”[5] Randolph and Rustin’s first public mention of the concept of a Freedom Budget was in November 1965 at a planning meeting for the White House Conference on Civil Rights.
[8] In addition, he lobbied extensively for the Freedom Budget, traveling the country on a speaking tour and organizing a two-pronged crusade to gain support from influential figures while mobilizing grassroots activism.