Martin Luther King, Jr

King is perhaps most famous for his "I Have a Dream" speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins, NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr., Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). For King, this role was another which courted controversy, as he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.

The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the South and a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.

As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington," and members of the Nation of Islam who attended the march faced a temporary suspension.[4]

The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for the District of Columbia, then governed by congressional committee.

Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington's history. King's I Have a Dream speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory. President Kennedy, himself opposed to the march, met King afterwards with enthusiasm - repeating King's line back to him; "I have a dream", while nodding with approval.

Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his long experience as a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a passionate statement of his crusade for justice. On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States.


Bayard Rustin
African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence in 1956, and had a leadership role in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. However, Rustin's open homosexuality and support of democratic socialism and ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African American leaders to demand that King distance himself from Rustin, which he did on several occasions, but not all — such as when he ensured Rustin's role in the March on Washington.


Chicago
In 1966, after several successes in the South, King and other people in the civil rights organizations tried to spread the movement to the North, with Chicago as its first target. King and Ralph Abernathy, both middle class folk, moved into Chicago's slums as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.

Their organization, The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Committee of Community Organizations, an organization itself founded by Albert Raby, Jr., and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of The Chicago Freedom Movement (CFO). During that Spring a number of dual white couple/black couple tests on real estate offices uncovered a now banned by the Real Estate Industry practice of "steering" and the racially selective processing of housing requests by the couples who were exact matches in income and background and number of children and other attributes, with the difference being the race of the couples. Without exception, the black couples were rejected and the white couples were accepted at the real estate offices which were then picketed by CFO.

The needs of the movement for radical change grew and several larger marches were planned and executed including those in the following neighborhoods: Bogan, Belmont-Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (A Suburb southwest of Chicago), Gage Park and Marquette Park, among others.

In Chicago, Abernathy would later write, they received a worse reception than they had received in the South. Thrown bottles and screaming throngs met their marches and they were truly afraid of starting a riot.

King had always felt a responsibility to the people he was leading. He would not unnecessarily stage a violent event, something personal to him as a radical social leader of the 1960s or any other decade. If King had intimations that a peaceful march would be put down with violence he would call it off for the safety of people. But he himself still faced death many a time by marching at the front in the face of death threats to his person. And in Chicago the violence was so formidable, it shook the two friends.

But worse than the violence was the two-facedness of the city leaders. Abernathy and King secured agreements on action to be taken, but this action was largely bureaucratically killed after-the-fact by politicians within Mayor Richard J. Daley's corrupt machine. Some of their small successes, such as Operation Breadbasket, translated into People United to Save Humanity P.U.S.H. as large as the desegregation cases of the bus boycott in the South. They lit the fire of ideas like affirmative action and organizing labor as legitimate techniques in the minds of the people.

Abernathy could not stand the slums and secretly moved out after a short period. King stayed and wrote about how Coretta and his children suffered emotional problems from the horrid conditions and inability to play outside.

When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student with experience with the movement in the south since he had joined King, in charge of their organization. While Jackson had a great deal of heart and oratorical skill, he managed to start the very first boycotts which showed success against what we would have called "Big Box" stores today. One such campaign was that against A&P Stores which refused to hire blacks as clerks in their stores. The campaign was so effective, that it laid the groundwork for the equal opportunity programs of the Seventies and on. Jackson also initiated the first "Black Expo" under the auspices of SCLC as Operation Breadbasket, and continued free standing as Operation P.U.S.H. after a split with SCLC. Black Expo became P.U.S.H. Expo, which continued to showcase the many long-standing and newly formed Black Businesses such as Johnson Publishing, Parker House Sausage, Seaway National Bank, and many businesses that were start-ups then, that exist today, and which owe their existence to P.U.S.H. EXCEL, the current form of the organization.Marketex 22:04, 16 September 2006 (UTC)


Further challenges
Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. On April 4, 1967 -- exactly one year before his death -- King spoke out strongly against the US's role in the war, insisting that the US was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." But he also argued that the country needed larger and broader moral changes:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."[5]
King was long hated by many white southern segregationists, but this speech turned the more mainstream media against him. TIME called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi", and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

With regards to Vietnam, King often claimed that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands." (Quoted in Michael Lind, Vietnam: The Necessary War, 1999 p. 182) King also praised North Vietnam's land reform. (Quoted in Lind, 1999) He accused the United States of having killed a million Vietnamese "mostly children." (Guenter Lewey, America in Vietnam, 1978 pp. 444-5) He once even equated U.S. involvement in Vietnam to Nazi Germany's use of concentration camps. (Quoted in Lind, 1999)]]

The speech was a reflection of King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, sparked in part by his affiliation with and training at the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center. King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation. Toward the end of his life, King more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice. Though his public language was guarded, so as to avoid being linked to communism by his political enemies, in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism:

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. (Frogmore, S.C. November 14, 1966. Speech in front of his staff.)
King also stated in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. The New York Times article, "A Negro is Killed in Memphis", discusses the Memphis Sanitation Strike, and explains what the workers were looking for; higher wages and better treatment. The African American workers were paid $1.70 per hour. They wanted a 15 cent raise, but were only offered an 8 cent raise.*[ProQuest "A Negro is Killed in Memphis"] by Walter Rugaber, The New York Times, March 29, 1968, retrieved March 11, 2006.

However, according to the article "Coalition Building and Mobilization Against Poverty", King and SCLC's Poor People's Campaign was not supported by the other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Bayard Rustin. Their opposition incorporated arguments that the goals of Poor People Campaign was too broad, the demands unrealizable, and thought these campaigns would accelerate the backlash and repression on the poor and the black.[6]

The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States. He crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington -- engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be -- until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection."

King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor" -- appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness." His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of racism, poverty, militarism and materialism, and that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced." Garrow, op.cit. p. 214.

In April 3, 1968, King prophetically told a euphoric crowd during his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech:

It really doesn't matter what happens now.... some began to... talk about the threats that were out -- what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers.... Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain! And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord!

Assassination

The Lorraine Motel, where Rev. King was assassinated, now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum
Martin Luther King's tomb, located on the grounds of the King CenterKing was assassinated at 6:01 p.m. April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Friends inside the motel room heard the shots and ran to the balcony to find King shot in the throat. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m. The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 60 cities.[7] Five days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader. A crowd of 300,000 attended his funeral that same day. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey attended on behalf of LBJ, who was meeting with several advisors and cabinet officers on the Vietnam War in Camp David. Also, there were fears he might be hit with protests and abuses over the war.

Two months after King's death, escaped convict James Earl Ray was captured at London Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder, confessing to the assassination on March 10, 1969 (though he recanted this confession three days later). Later, Ray would be sentenced to a 99-year prison term.

Ray, a presumed white supremacist and segregationist, allegedly killed King because of the latter's extensive civil rights work. On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray took a guilty plea to avoid a trial conviction and thus the possibility of receiving the death penalty, although it is unlikely that a death sentence would have been carried out, due to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 decision in the case of Furman v. Georgia that invalidated all state death penalty laws then in force.

Ray fired Foreman as his attorney (from then on derisively calling him "Percy Fourflusher") claiming that a man he met in Montreal, Canada with the alias "Raoul" was involved, as was his brother Johnny, but not himself, further asserting that although he didn't "personally shoot Dr. King," he may have been "partially responsible without knowing it," hinting at a conspiracy. He spent the remainder of his life attempting (unsuccessfully) to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had.

On June 10, 1977, shortly after Ray had testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he did not shoot King, he and six other convicts escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee. They were recaptured on June 13 and returned to prison. [8] More years were then added to his sentence for attempting to escape from the penitentiary.


Allegations of conspiracy
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Some have speculated that Ray had been used as a "patsy" similar to the way that alleged John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have been. Some of the claims used to support this assertion are:

Ray was a small-time thief and burglar, and had no record of committing violent crimes with a weapon.[9]
The weapon that Ray is believed to have used in the assassination (a Remington Gamemaster Model 760 .30-'06 caliber rifle) had only two of Ray's fingerprints on it.
According to several fellow prison inmates, Ray had never expressed any political or racial opinions of any kind, casting doubt on Ray's purported motive for committing the crime.
The rooming-house bathroom from which Ray is said to have fired the fatal shots did not have any of his fingerprints at all.
Ray was believed to have been an average marksman, and it is claimed by many that Ray had not fired a rifle since his discharge from the United States Army in the late-1940s.
Many suspecting a conspiracy in the assassination point out the two separate ballistic tests conducted on the Remington Gamemaster had neither conclusively proved Ray had been the killer nor that it had even been the murder weapon. Moreover, witnesses surrounding King at the moment of his death say the shot came from another location, from behind thick shrubbery near the rooming house, not from the rooming house itself, shrubbery which had been suddenly and inexplicably cut away in the days following the assassination. Also, Ray's petty criminal history had been one of colossal and repeated ineptitude; he'd been quickly and easily apprehended each time he committed an offense, behavior in sharp contrast to his actions shortly before and after the shooting; he'd easily managed to secure several different pieces of legitimate identification, using the names and personal data of living men who all coincidentally looked like and were of about the same age and physical build as Ray; he spent large sums of cash and traveled overseas without being apprehended at any border crossing, even though he had been a wanted fugitive. According to Ray, all of this had been accomplished with the aid of the still unidentified "Raoul." Investigative reporter Louis Lomax had also discovered the Missouri Department of Corrections, shortly after Ray's April 1967 prison escape, had sent the incorrect set of fingerprints to the FBI and had failed to notice or correct this error. Lomax had been publishing a series of investigative stories on the King assassination for the North American Newspaper Alliance, stories challenging the official view of the case, and had been reportedly pressured by the FBI to halt his investigation.

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