King for More Than a Day

With the annual Martin Luther King Day upon us, let us not allow this great leader to be whitewashed again as usual. Besides being one of the greatest leaders of the civil rights movement, Dr. King was also a steadfast advocate for economic justice. There is so much more to his legacy than the "I Have a Dream" speech.

While there is no question that King frowned on communism, he did support democratic socialism. Below is information on the often under reported side of this great man

His widow Coretta Scott King noted that "within the first month or so of our meeting," in 1952, King "talked about working within the framework of democracy to move us toward a kind of socialism," arguing that "a kind of socialism has to be adopted by our system because the way it is, it's simply unjust."

She commented that "Democracy means equal justice, equity in every aspect of our society," and that King "knew that the basic problem in our society had to do with economic justice, or . . . the contrast of wealth between the haves and the have-nots. Believe it or not, he spoke these words to me when I first met him. It wasn't something that he learned later and developed."
- The Radical Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Christian Core, Socialist Bedrock by Paul Le Blanc.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
- Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence MLK Speech

Perhaps it was no accident that he was murdered not during his campaign to end segregation, but when he began to challenge the foundations of American capitalism, militarism and imperialism.
-Remembering the Real Martin Luther King by Stephen Zunes

You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry.... Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong... with capitalism.... There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.
-Wikipedia quoting MLK

How many know the King who told the SCLC that "the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people," King elaborated for his colleagues. "And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you beg to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question you begin to question the capitalistic economy."
-Martin Luther King, Jr. Democratic Socialist by Paul Street (no link, received via email)

When you remember Dr. King on Monday, remember the whole man, not the narrow view presented by the mainstream media.