Economic aid for the poor--not Black or White racism--is the way to end racial strife, Bayard Rustin, organizer of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, told a sympathetic audience filling Lowell Lecture Hall last night.

Rustin's speech kicked off the weekend program of the New England Conference on the Freedom Budget, a plan to combat poverty with massive federal spending.

"Not Congress but President Johnson is the fundamental obstacle to the success of our poverty programs," Rustin said. "Change is definitely needed and it's up to the leader, the President, to act in order to insure our success."

The Negro leader said that he considers the civil rights movement and the anti-poverty plan identical because today freedom is synonymous with affluence.

He outlined the following programs of the Freedom Budget:

* Guaranteed minimum income for all families,

* Free medical care for all who can not pay for it themselves,

* Decent housing for all Americans,

* Free education "up to the Ph. D. level for anyone with a brain."

"If we can subsidize Mr. Rockefeller's railroads for millions of dollars, we can insure a minimum family allowance to make the heads of families economically independent," he said.