King and the Other America

Abstract

Did the Civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties fail to address economic issues and to grasp that class, beyond just race, was the main cleavage and the greater hindrance in American Society? Many historians and social scientists contend that the movement too narrowly circumscribed its mission, deceptively assuming that specific race-based demands were the only way to achieve social equality and racial fairness. This book argues that, despite an inability to hamper a growing class divide, significant members of the Black Liberation movement actually intertwined civil rights to economic issues, some of them defending that class was trumping race when it comes to racial equality. Time has come, they argued, to build an interracial coalition which would bring substantive freedom to the lesser-off of America, Blacks being at rock bottom. This book will demonstrate that Martin Luther King Jr. was profoundly shaped by their conviction that racial equality was embedded in the broader class struggle, as illustrated by the forgotten Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. Although carried out postumously, the Poor People’s campaign, presented as much an interracial mass mobilization demanding redistribution as the culmination of King’s comprehension of the entanglement of class and race. It also dovetailed with compelling academic works which, either preceding or following the campaign, have vindicated its framework.