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Dr. King's legacy has really been whitewashed. Everyone can recite that line from the I have a dream speech and claim Dr. King wanted people judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. That was early in the revolution. When Dr. King was still naive about white America as a whole. So I want to focus on the latter part of his life. The part that doesn't get talked about a lot. When Dr. King was assassinated by the government he had a public disapproval rating of 75%!! Seems impossible now because of the way his legacy has been whitewashed. In his latter years Dr. King became a revolutionary. And he realized his dream of integration may actually be a nightmare
He was vehemently against the Vietnam war, which wasn't a popular stance to take back then. In hindsight he was 100% correct
Dr King even supported urban uprisings
He also called for reparations and for poor whites to join with black people
When Dr. King became getting into class warfare issues is when he was killed. Remember he was killed in Memphis during a labor march. Not a racial civil rights issue. And when he called for poor people of all colors to join together is when he became a problem America had to get rid of.
This is an interview given less than a year before his assassination. This is the Dr. King I like to remember
“I’ve come upon something that disturbs me deeply. We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know we will win, but I have come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house. I’m afraid that America has lost the moral vision she may have had, and I’m afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensuring that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears the soul of this nation. I fear I am integrating my people into a burning house.”
King’s vision of a “revolution in values” was not purely domestic. In April 1967, he denounced American involvement in Vietnam, once at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and once at Riverside Church in New York before 3,000 people, on April 4, precisely a year before he was killed. He decried the hypocrisy of sending young black men “eight thousand miles to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia or East Harlem.” Beyond that lay the painful irony of seeing them join white soldiers, with whom they could “hardly live on the same block in Chicago or Atlanta,” in “brutal solidarity” as they torched “the huts of a poor village.” In this they were, however unwittingly, agents of a U.S. policy that destroyed and depopulated the countryside, forcing its former inhabitants to take refuge in cities teeming with “hundreds of thousands of homeless children” who were “running in packs on the streets like animals.”
“Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena,” King suggested during his “Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement” dissertation at the American Psychology Associations’ annual convention in Washington, D.C, on Sept. 1, 1967. “They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the [Caucasian] community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting, which is their principal feature, serves many functions.”
He added, “Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the [Caucasian] man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the [Caucasian] man. These are often difficult things to say, but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.”
He added, “Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the [Caucasian] man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the [Caucasian] man. These are often difficult things to say, but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.”
King sat for a Playboy interview with Alex Haley, in which he endorsed a massive federal aid program for blacks. Its whopping $50 billion price tag was, he pointed out, less than annual U.S. spending for defense. Such an expenditure, he argued, would be more than justified in “a spectacular decline” in “school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting, and other social evils.” Many poor whites were “in the very same boat with the Negro,” he added, and if they could be persuaded to join forces with blacks, they could form “a grand alliance” and “exert massive pressure on the Government to get jobs for all.” King had made passing allusions to this possibility before, but a straightforward call for an active biracial coalition of have-nots was just as terrifying to white ruling elites, be they on Peachtree Street or Wall Street, as it had been when raised by the Populists in the 1890s.
This is an interview given less than a year before his assassination. This is the Dr. King I like to remember
THREAD:
— JazzieeB (@Bdwal359) January 20, 2020
In May, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr gave an interview to NBC about the "new phase" of the struggle for "genuine equality."
This was the radical Dr. King most of white America was not ready for. Note Dr. King’s reference to reparations.#MLKDay #MLKDay2020 #RealTalk pic.twitter.com/AGSjtrHPe8
In May, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr gave an interview to NBC about the "new phase" of the struggle for "genuine equality."
— JazzieeB (@Bdwal359) January 20, 2020
Dr. King spoke about the effects of slavery on America.
This was the radical Dr. King most of white America was not ready for.#MLKDay #MLKDay2020 pic.twitter.com/JLDczmKAQ5
In May, 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr gave an interview to NBC about the "new phase" of the struggle for "genuine equality."
— JazzieeB (@Bdwal359) January 20, 2020
Dr. King spoke of the need for reparations for black people.
This was the radical Dr. King most of white America was not ready for.#MLKDay2020 pic.twitter.com/KwGYowGe4i
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