Tonight, American Experience's Citizen King airs on most PBS stations (check local listings). It explores the last six years of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., which includes a period Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have written is usually not explored on television:
[The] national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years...
King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.
Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.
Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.
"True compassion," King declared, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
The documentary includes clips from speeches many people have never seen before. Filmmaker Orlando Bagwell says his film is "the story of a man losing fear, gaining courage and becoming great." The photograph above of King at 1963 March on Washington is courtesy of American Experience/Corbis.
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Article comments
1 - Mac Diva
Good post, Steve. I think the omission of what Dr. King saw when he reached the moutaintop is purposeful. His dream became too radical for most of America's leadership, then and today.
For something different, and a reminder of why the fight isn't over, I've posted a poem about King by a neo-Confederate leader for my MLK Day entry.