What If…
Would he have been able to continue the fight and finally turn his famous dream into a reality?
From the early 1960s the fight against oppression, inequalities, injustices, and discrimination in the lives of Black and other non-white American citizens gathered pace, spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jr. Through his passionate, charismatic and measured public speaking – and courageous acts of passive defiance – the US, and the world, were beginning to listen. Undaunted by abuse, prejudice, ridicule and even imprisonment, his inf luence and determination to right the wrongs of America’s tainted history opened the door to those at the very pinnacle of power, only for a life of such promise to be callously cut short. But what if there had been more time? With more years what might have been achieved to change America, and the world, for the better?
How do you think King’s political influence might have grown? What alliances could have been formed, and would he have entered politics more directly?
Martin Luther King Jr’s political inf luence was indeed growing in the spring of 1968 as he prepared a Poor People’s Campaign to occupy Washington, DC. King gathered a coalition of Black, LatinX, Asian, Indigenous, and white Americans to demand a guaranteed income, living wage, freedom from hunger, poverty, racism, and violence. Dr. King’s anti-poverty and anti-racist organising dovetailed into his anti-war and anti-violence efforts. His credibility with young people, international anticolonial leaders and organisers, and Black Power activists made him an increasingly formidable figure. On the eve of his assassination, King spoke at a rally in support of 1,100 Black sanitation workers who were on strike for a living wage and safe working conditions. Labour became another pillar of a coalition King forged with sharecroppers in the Deep South, welfare rights and anti-poverty activists in places like New York and Chicago, Mexican-American farmworkers, some connected to Cesar Chavez’s movement, and poor white from Appalachia. King would not have ever formally entered politics, although people implored him to run for president or vice president on an anti-war ticket in 1968. His poli
