Montgomery bus boycott, 1955

The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was influential in the Montgomery African-American community. As the church's pastor, King became known for his oratorical preaching in Montgomery and the surrounding region.^[97]

In March 1955, Claudette Colvin—a fifteen-year-old black schoolgirl in Montgomery—refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in violation of Jim Crow laws, local laws in the Southern United States that enforced racial segregation.^[98] Nine months later on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus.^[99] The two incidents led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which was urged and planned by Edgar Nixon and led by King.^[100] The other ministers asked him to take a leadership role because his relative newness to community leadership made it easier for him to speak out. King was hesitant but decided to do so if no one else wanted it.^[101]

The boycott lasted for 385 days,^[102] and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed.^[103] King was arrested for traveling 30 mph in a 25 mph zone^[104] and jailed, which overnight drew the attention of national media, and greatly increased King's public stature. The controversy ended when the United States District Court issued a ruling in Browder v. Gayle that prohibited racial segregation on Montgomery public buses.^[105]^[1]^[101]

King's role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.^[106]

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct nonviolent protests in the service of civil rights reform. The group was inspired by the crusades of evangelist Billy Graham, who befriended King,^[107] as well as the national organizing of the group In Friendship, founded by King allies Stanley Levison and Ella Baker.^[108] King led the SCLC until his death.^[109] The SCLC's 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom was the first time King addressed a national audience.^[110]

Harry Wachtel joined King's legal advisor Clarence B. Jones in defending four ministers of the SCLC in the libel case Abernathy et al. v. Sullivan; the case was litigated about the newspaper advertisement "Heed Their Rising Voices". Wachtel founded a tax-exempt fund to cover the suit's expenses and assist the nonviolent civil rights movement through a more effective means of fundraising. King served as honorary president of this organization, named the "Gandhi Society for Human Rights". In 1962, King and the Gandhi Society produced a document that called on President Kennedy to issue an executive order to deliver a blow for civil rights as a kind of Second Emancipation Proclamation. Kennedy did not execute the order.^[111] The FBI, under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, began tapping King's telephone line in the fall of 1963.^[112] Kennedy was concerned that public allegations of communists in the SCLC would derail the administration's civil rights initiatives. He warned King to discontinue these associations and later felt compelled to issue the written directive that authorized the FBI to wiretap King and other SCLC leaders.^[113] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover feared the civil rights movement and investigated the allegations of communist infiltration. When no evidence emerged to support this, the FBI used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years, as part of its COINTELPRO program, in attempts to force King out of his leadership position.^[3]

King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights supporters, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the civil rights movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.^[114]^[115]

King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights.^[1] Most of these rights were successfully enacted into law with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.^[116]^[117]

The SCLC used tactics of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the methods and places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities, who sometimes turned violent.^[2]

Survived knife attack, 1958

On September 20, 1958, King was signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store in Harlem^[118] when Izola Curry—a mentally ill black woman who thought that King was conspiring against her with communists—stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener, which nearly impinged on the aorta. King received first aid by police officers Al Howard and Philip Romano.^[119] King underwent emergency surgery by Aubre de Lambert Maynard, Emil Naclerio and John W. V. Cordice; he remained hospitalized for several weeks. Curry was later found mentally incompetent to stand trial.^[120]^[121]

Atlanta sit-ins, prison sentence, and the 1960 elections

Thumb — King led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and later became co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (pulpit and sanctuary pictured).

In December 1959, after being based in Montgomery for five years, King announced his return to Atlanta at the request of the SCLC.^[122] In Atlanta, King served until his death as co-pastor with his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Georgia governor Ernest Vandiver expressed open hostility towards King's return. He claimed that "wherever M. L. King Jr., has been there has followed in his wake a wave of crimes", and vowed to keep King under surveillance.^[123] On May 4, 1960, King drove writer Lillian Smith to Emory University when police stopped them. King was cited for "driving without a license" because he had not yet been issued a Georgia license. King's Alabama license was still valid, and Georgia law did not mandate any time limit for issuing a local license.^[124] King paid a fine but was unaware that his lawyer agreed to a plea deal that included probation.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta Student Movement had been acting to desegregate businesses and public spaces, organizing the Atlanta sit-ins from March 1960 onwards. In August the movement asked King to participate in a mass October sit-in, timed to highlight how 1960's Presidential election campaigns had ignored civil rights. The coordinated day of action took place on October 19. King participated in a sit-in at the restaurant inside Rich's, Atlanta's largest department store, and was among the many arrested that day. The authorities released everyone over the next few days, except for King. Invoking his probationary plea deal, judge J. Oscar Mitchell sentenced King on October 25 to four months of hard labor. Before dawn the next day, King was transported to Georgia State Prison.^[125]

The arrest and harsh sentence drew nationwide attention. Many feared for King's safety, as he started a prison sentence with people convicted of violent crimes, many of them White and hostile to his activism.^[126] Both Presidential candidates were asked to weigh in, at a time when both parties were courting the support of Southern Whites and their political leadership including Governor Vandiver. Nixon, with whom King had a closer relationship before, declined to make a statement despite a personal visit from Jackie Robinson requesting his intervention. Nixon's opponent John F. Kennedy called the governor (a Democrat) directly, enlisted his brother Robert to exert more pressure on state authorities, and, at the personal request of Sargent Shriver, called King's wife to offer his help. The pressure from Kennedy and others proved effective, and King was released two days later. King's father decided to openly endorse Kennedy's candidacy for the November 8 election which he narrowly won.^[127]

After the October 19 sit-ins and following unrest, a 30-day truce was declared in Atlanta for desegregation negotiations. However, the negotiations failed and sit-ins and boycotts resumed for several months. On March 7, 1961, a group of Black elders including King notified student leaders that a deal had been reached: the city's lunch counters would desegregate in fall 1961, in conjunction with the court-mandated desegregation of schools.^[128]^[129] Many students were disappointed at the compromise. In a large meeting on March 10 at Warren Memorial Methodist Church, the audience was hostile and frustrated. King then gave an impassioned speech calling participants to resist the "cancerous disease of disunity", helping to calm tensions.^[130]

Albany Movement, 1961

The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. In December, King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation in the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he "had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel."^[131] The following day he was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made concessions. According to King, "that agreement was dishonored and violated by the city" after he left.^[131]

King returned in July 1962 and was given the option of forty-five days in jail or a $178 fine (equivalent to $1,800 in 2023); he chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Police Chief Laurie Pritchett discreetly arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release. "We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools ... ejected from churches ... and thrown into jail ... But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail."^[132] It was later acknowledged by the King Center that Billy Graham was the one who bailed King out.^[133]

After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote nonviolence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts.^[134] Though the Albany effort proved a key lesson in tactics for King and the national civil rights movement,^[135] the national media was highly critical of King's role in the defeat, and the SCLC's lack of results contributed to a growing gulf between the organization and the more radical SNCC. After Albany, King sought to choose engagements for the SCLC in which he could control the circumstances, rather than entering into pre-existing situations.^[136]

Birmingham campaign, 1963

In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign used nonviolent but intentionally confrontational tactics, developed in part by Wyatt Tee Walker. Black people in Birmingham, organizing with the SCLC, occupied public spaces with marches and sit-ins, openly violating laws that they considered unjust.

King's intent was to provoke mass arrests and "create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation."^[138] The campaign's early volunteers did not succeed in shutting down the city, or in drawing media attention to the police's actions. Over the concerns of an uncertain King, SCLC strategist James Bevel changed the course of the campaign by recruiting children and young adults to join the demonstrations.^[139] Newsweek called this strategy a Children's Crusade.^[140]^[141]

The Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs against protesters, including children. Footage of the police response was broadcast on national television news, shocking many white Americans and consolidating black Americans behind the movement.^[142] Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. But the campaign was a success: Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs came down, and public places became more open to blacks. King's reputation improved immensely.^[140]

King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest^[143] out of 29.^[144] From his cell, he composed the now-famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that responds to calls to pursue legal channels for social change. The letter has been described as "one of the most important historical documents penned by a modern political prisoner".^[145] King argues that the crisis of racism is too urgent, and the current system too entrenched: "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."^[146] He points out that the Boston Tea Party, a celebrated act of rebellion in the American colonies, was illegal civil disobedience, and that, conversely, "everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal'."^[146] Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, arranged for $160,000 to bail out King and his fellow protestors.^[147]

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."

—Martin Luther King Jr.^[146]

March on Washington, 1963

King, representing the SCLC, was among the leaders of the "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were Roy Wilkins from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Whitney Young, National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James L. Farmer Jr., Congress of Racial Equality.^[148]

Bayard Rustin's open homosexuality, support of socialism, and former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin,^[149] which King agreed to do.^[150] However, he did collaborate in the 1963 March on Washington, for which Rustin was the primary organizer.^[151]^[152] For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President Kennedy in changing the focus of the march.^[153]^[154] Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.^[155] With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to ensure its success. President Kennedy was concerned the turnout would be less than 100,000 and enlisted the aid of additional church leaders and Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, to help mobilize demonstrators.^[156]

The March, a 1964 documentary film produced by the United States Information Agency. King's speech has been redacted from this video because of the copyright held by King's estate.

The march originally was planned to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern U.S. and place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to denounce the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks. The group acquiesced to presidential pressure, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.^[157] 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 the Nation of Islam forbade its members from attending.^[157]^[158]

I Have a Dream

30-second sample from "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963

Problems playing this file? See media help.

The march made specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public schools; 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 (equivalent to $20 in 2023); and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee.^[159]^[160]^[161] Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success.^[162] More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.'s history.^[162]

King delivered a 17-minute speech, later known as "I Have a Dream". In the speech's most famous passage – in which he departed from his prepared text, possibly at the prompting of Mahalia Jackson, who shouted behind him, "Tell them about the dream!"^[163]^[164] – King said:^[165]

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

"I Have a Dream" came to be regarded as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.^[166] The March, and especially King's speech, helped put civil rights at the top of the agenda of reformers and facilitated passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.^[167]^[168]

St. Augustine, Florida, 1964

In March 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with Robert Hayling's then-controversial movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Hayling's group had been affiliated with the NAACP but was forced out of the organization for advocating armed self-defense alongside nonviolent tactics. However, the pacifist SCLC accepted them.^[169]^[170] King and the SCLC worked to bring white Northern activists to St. Augustine, including a delegation of rabbis and the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, all of whom were arrested.^[171]^[172] During June, the movement marched nightly through the city, "often facing counter demonstrations by the Klan, and provoking violence that garnered national media attention." Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed. During this movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.^[173]

Biddeford, Maine, 1964

On May 7, 1964, King spoke at Saint Francis College's "The Negro and the Quest for Identity", in Biddeford, Maine. This was a symposium that brought together many civil rights leaders.^[174]^[175] King spoke about how "We must get rid of the idea of superior and inferior races," through nonviolent tactics.^[176]

New York City, 1964

On February 6, 1964, King delivered the inaugural speech^[177] of a lecture series initiated at the New School called "The American Race Crisis". In his remarks, King referred to a conversation he had recently had with Jawaharlal Nehru in which he compared the sad condition of many African Americans to that of India's untouchables.^[178] In his March 18, 1964, interview with Robert Penn Warren, King compared his activism to his father's, citing his training in non-violence as a key difference. He also discusses the next phase of the civil rights movement and integration.^[179]

Scripto strike in Atlanta, 1964

Starting in November 1964, King supported a labor strike by several hundred workers at the Scripto factory in Atlanta, just a few blocks from Ebenezer Baptist.^[180] Many of the strikers were congregants of his church, and the strike was supported by other civil rights leaders.^[180] King helped elevate the labor dispute from a local to nationally known event and led the SCLC to organize a nationwide boycott of Scripto products.^[180] However, as the strike stretched into December, King, who was wanting to focus more on a civil rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, began to negotiate in secret with Scripto's president Carl Singer and eventually brokered a deal where the SCLC would call off their boycott in exchange for the company giving the striking employees their Christmas bonuses.^[180] King's involvement in the strike ended on December 24 and a contract between the company and union was signed on January 9.^[180]

Selma voting rights movement and "Bloody Sunday", 1965

In December 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.^[181] A local judge issued an injunction that barred any gathering of three or more people affiliated with the SNCC, SCLC, DCVL, or any of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.^[182] During the 1965 march to Montgomery, Alabama, violence by state police and others against the peaceful marchers resulted in much publicity, which made racism in Alabama visible nationwide.

Acting on James Bevel's call for a march from Selma to Montgomery, Bevel and other SCLC members, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize a march to the state's capital. The first attempt to march on March 7, 1965, at which King was not present, was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday and was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the civil rights movement. It was the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King and Bevel's nonviolence strategy.^[52]

On March 5, King met with officials in the Johnson Administration to request an injunction against any prosecution of the demonstrators. He did not attend the march due to church duties, but he later wrote, "If I had any idea that the state troopers would use the kind of brutality they did, I would have felt compelled to give up my church duties altogether to lead the line."^[183] Footage of police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused national public outrage.^[184]

King next attempted to organize a march for March 9. The SCLC petitioned for an injunction in federal court against Alabama; this was denied and the judge issued an order blocking the march until after a hearing. Nonetheless, King led marchers on March 9 to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, then held a short prayer session before turning the marchers around and asking them to disperse so as not to violate the court order. The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement.^[185] The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, 1965.^[186]^[187] At the conclusion of the march on the steps of the state capitol, King delivered a speech that became known as "How Long, Not Long". King stated that equal rights for African Americans could not be far away, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" and "you shall reap what you sow".^{[lower-alpha 2]}^[188]^[189]^[190]

Chicago open housing movement, 1966

In 1966, after several successes in the south, King, Bevel, and others in the civil rights organizations took the movement to the North. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Avenue, in the slums of North Lawndale^[191] on Chicago's West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.^[192]

The SCLC formed a coalition with Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of the Chicago Freedom Movement.^[193] During that spring, several white couple/black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered racial steering, discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income and background.^[194] Several larger marches were planned and executed: in Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park, Gage Park, Marquette Park, and others.^[193]^[195]^[196]

King later stated and Abernathy wrote that the movement received a worse reception in Chicago than in the South. Marches, especially the one through Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, were met by thrown bottles and screaming throngs. Rioting seemed very possible.^[197]^[198] King's beliefs militated against his staging a violent event, and he negotiated an agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley to cancel a march in order to avoid the violence that he feared would result.^[199] King was hit by a brick during one march, but continued to lead marches in the face of personal danger.^[200]

When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization.^[201] Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks.^[202]

A 1967 CIA document declassified in 2017 downplayed King's role in the "black militant situation" in Chicago, with a source stating that King "sought at least constructive, positive projects."^[203]

Opposition to the Vietnam War

The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced

–Martin Luther King Jr.^[204]

We must recognize that we can't solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power... this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together… you can't really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.

—Martin Luther King Jr.^[205]

King was long opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War,^[206] but at first avoided the topic in public speeches to avoid the interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President Johnson's policies might have created.^[206] At the urging of SCLC's former Director of Direct Action and now the head of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, James Bevel, and inspired by the outspokenness of Muhammad Ali,^[207] King eventually agreed to publicly oppose the war as opposition was growing among the American public.^[206]

During an April 4, 1967, appearance at the New York City Riverside Church, King delivered a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence".^[208] He spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, arguing that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony"^[209] and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today".^[210] He connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change:

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."^[211]

King opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."^[211] He stated 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",^[212] and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children".^[213] King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam's land reforms.^[214]

King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies including President Johnson, Billy Graham, union leaders, and powerful publishers.^[215]^[216]^[217] "The press is being stacked against me", King said,^[218] complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown Vietnamese children".^[219] Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi",^[211] and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."^[219]^[220]

The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated.^[221]^[222] King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the American political and economic situation, and more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct injustice.^[223]^[224] He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism.^[225]^[226]

King stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."^[227] King quoted a U.S. official who said that from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution."^[227] King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America", and said that the U.S. should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution.^[227]

King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the 1968 presidential election. King contemplated but ultimately decided against the proposal as he felt uneasy with politics and considered himself better suited to activism.^[228]

On April 15, 1967, King spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam under chairman James Bevel. At the U.N. King brought up issues of civil rights and the draft:

I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both.^[229]

Seeing an opportunity to unite civil rights and anti-war activists,^[207] Bevel convinced King to become even more active in the anti-war effort.^[207] Despite his growing public opposition to the Vietnam War, King was not fond of the hippie culture which developed from the anti-war movement.^[230] In his 1967 Massey Lecture, King stated:

The importance of the hippies is not in their unconventional behavior, but in the fact that hundreds of thousands of young people, in turning to a flight from reality, are expressing a profoundly discrediting view on the society they emerge from.^[230]

On January 13, 1968, King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars":^[231]^[232]

We need to make clear in this political year, to congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the president of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killings of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self-determination in Southeast Asia.^[231]^[232]

Correspondence with Thích Nhất Hạnh

Thích Nhất Hạnh was an influential Vietnamese Buddhist who wrote a letter to Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 entitled: "In Search of the Enemy of Man". It was during his 1966 stay in the US that Nhất Hạnh met with King and urged him to publicly denounce the Vietnam War.^[233] In 1967, King gave a famous speech at the Riverside Church in New York City, his first to publicly question U.S. involvement in Vietnam.^[234] Later that year, King nominated Nhất Hạnh for the Nobel Peace Prize. In his nomination, King said, "I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of [this prize] than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity".^[235]

Poor People's Campaign, 1968

In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an "economic bill of rights".^[236]^[237]

The campaign was preceded by King's final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? which laid out his view of how to address social issues and poverty. King quoted from Henry George's book Progress and Poverty, particularly in support of a guaranteed basic income.^[238]^[239]^[240] The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the U.S.

King and the SCLC called on the government to invest in rebuilding America's cities. He felt that Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity". He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided "poverty funds with miserliness".^[237] His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism", and argued that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."^[241]

The Poor People's Campaign was controversial even within the civil rights movement. Rustin resigned from the march, stating that the goals of the campaign were too broad, that its demands were unrealizable, and that he thought that these campaigns would accelerate repression on the poor and the black.^[242]

Global policy

King was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution.^[243]^[244] As a result, in 1968 a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.^[245]