Public Employee Press

Book Review:
King fought for civil rights and economic justice head

In his 2008 book, “Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero,” Vincent Harding points out that when we celebrate King, too often his message and struggles are diluted into a narrow focus on the charismatic leader who delivered the famous “I have a Dream” speech in August 1963.

While the 1963 march was for jobs and freedom, and King addressed economic concerns, its overwhelming emphasis was on civil rights. But when an assassin took him from us in 1968, he was fighting for union recognition and decent conditions for striking AFSCME sanitation workers in Memphis.

His program had evolved to uniting unemployed and poor people across the country in a massive campaign and march to end poverty. Just the year before, he had declared his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

King’s evolving political and economic challenge to the status quo put him at odds with the Johnson Administration and many in the civil rights and liberal community. So when he is remembered, powerful forces recall the King of 1963 and not the more radical King of 1968, who was intent on building a movement for fundamental change of the U.S. economic system to end poverty, militarism and war.

Other treatments of King’s evolution that make similar observations are the PBS documentary, “Citizen King,” and the scholarly book, “From Civil Rights to Human Rights: King and the Struggle for Economic Justice,” by Thomas Jackson. But Harding’s short book is surely among the most eloquent.

A longtime associate, Harding collaborated with King on the famous 1967 Riverside speech in which King came out in opposition to militarism and the Vietnam War. Published by Orbis, the $16 paperback is available to members in the Education Fund Library, Room 211.

Like King’s sermons, Harding’s prose is like poetry. His soaring eloquence brings alive the continuing relevance of King’s message. It is a plea to continue King’s work by building a movement for civil rights, economic justice and peace, which with the current recession and continuing wars is as urgent today as when it was written.

— Ken Nash