King and the Promised Land

If he had lived, Martin Luther King would have been 85 this January 15th.
Reverend King was assassinated April 4, 1968 while supporting a strike by AFSCME sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. At his death King was physically exhausted and under intense criticism. Time Magazine who had once featured him as their man of the year called his opposition to the Vietnam War “ignorant”. The New York Times and the Washington Post also harshly criticized his anti-war statements. Some younger civil rights advocates mocked King a “de Lord”. Black power advocates derided his belief in non-violence and integration. Many liberal commentators criticized his upcoming Poor People’s March on Washington. As always, he suffered the threats and hatred of white racists.
The FBI was tapping King’s phone and closely monitoring him. The FBI knew about his extra-marital affairs and sent him anonymous letters urging him to kill himself to avoid public disgrace. King told his friends there was a “Hell Hound” on his trail. He expected death. He was only 39.
The night before his death Dr. King spoke to a Union strike rally. Near the end of the speech he said “I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I am 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.” Like Moses before him King did not get to the promised land.
Now King is the only American honored with a holiday all his own. But this shining glory blinds us to much of what King saw from the mountain top. Most people vaguely recall that King advocated racial equality. Most people don’t know that Dr. King also said “there is something wrong with capitalism”. He believed this wrongness was poverty and economic inequality. In a speech to the National AFL-CIO convention in 1961 King said “Labor will have to intervene in the political life of the nation to chart a course which distributes the abundance to all instead of concentrating it in the hands of a few”.
Americans forget that King’s “I have a Dream” speech was delivered not during the March on Washington, D.C. but was delivered during the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”. The word “Jobs” was first on purpose. One goal of the March was to raise the minimum wage to about $15.00 an hour in today’s dollars.
King died leading a Union strike. He always supported organized labor and believed the union movement was crucial for American freedom. Unions in turn provided the Civil Rights campaign money and political support. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 would probably not have passed if not for the lobbying of organized labor. King supported labor despite the entrenched racism in some unions and despite his despair that the AFL-CIO backed the Vietnam War.
King opposed war to stop death and suffering but also because he believed that military spending perpetrated economic injustice. He believed that achieving a just society would require “billions of dollars which only an alliance of Liberal-Labor-Civil Rights forces can stimulate”. Dr. King also thought we needed a “higher synthesis” of capitalism and socialism. He believed that only by combining “the truths” of both ideologies could America have a fair economic system.
Economic inequality is now far greater than when Dr. King died. According to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz America’s wealthiest one percent own about thirty-five percent of the nation’s wealth and “the richest twenty percent of income earners earn in total, after tax, more than the bottom eighty percent combined.” Homelessness and child poverty is increasing.
We can still climb to the top of the mountain and see Dr. King’s Promised Land. Will we ever get there?

We shall overcome, we shall overcome,
Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe
We shall overcome, someday.