The country celebrated Martin Luther King Day earlier this week.<\/p>\n
Americans were treated to various media biographies on the life of MLK and his influence on the civil rights movement in the United States. Throughout the course of his life, MLK earned a well-deserved reputation as a key figure who fought for a racially integrated society \u2013 something we eventually achieved \u2013 but his thoughts and actions went well beyond the realm of civil rights.<\/p>\n
Politically, MLK considered himself a democratic socialist. Here is a portion of a speech MLK gave to his staff in Frogmore S.C., in November 1966:<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/em><\/p>\n One of MLK\u2019s last acts of courage was supporting a group of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. right before his assassination in April 1968. He told the workers: \u201cWe\u2019ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end.\u00a0 Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We\u2019ve got to see it through.\u201d King believed the struggle in Memphis exposed the need for economic equality and social justice that he hoped his Poor People\u2019s Campaign would highlight.<\/p>\n MLK also served as a voice for the cause of peace. The 2015 book \u201cThe Radical King,\u201d edited by writer and social critic Cornel West, covers MLK\u2019s dedication to this cause.\u00a0 Mr. King idolized India independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi and \u201cRadical King\u201d speaks of a sermon he delivered on Gandhi\u2019s life. MLK gave the Indian leader credit for lifting the domination of the British Empire over India without the help of an army or military might. In this sermon, he credited Gandhi for living a life filled with love and nonviolence and absent of hatred. King used similar peaceful tactics to free our country from segregation.<\/p>\n During the latter part of his life, MLK became an opponent of our country\u2019s controversial war in Vietnam, ignoring the advice of those who thought civil rights and the question of Vietnam don\u2019t mix. In a sermon at Riverside Church in New York City in the spring of 1967, MLK talked of how the war was draining funds from President Lyndon Baines Johnson\u2019s War on Poverty. Dr. King felt that the war in Vietnam threatened our country\u2019s reputation for revolution, democracy,\u00a0and freedom and that we were spreading images of violence and militarism.<\/p>\n In the same sermon, MLK talked about values – a common issue with today\u2019s political leaders. He wanted the U.S. to make a transformation from a \u201cthing oriented society\u201d to a \u201cpeople-oriented society.\u201d\u00a0 MLK said that when machines and profit become more important than people that \u201cthe giant triplets of racism, materialism,\u00a0and racism are incapable of being conquered.\u201d \u00a0MLK won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The country celebrated Martin Luther King Day earlier this week. Americans were treated to various media biographies on the life of MLK and his influence on the civil rights movement in the United States. Throughout the course of his life, MLK earned a well-deserved reputation as a key figure who fought for a racially integrated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/king.jpg?fit=162%2C227&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5254"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5607,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254\/revisions\/5607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}