By 1966, Dr. King had become an outspoken opponent of liberal white complicity that sustained white supremacy as well as American imperialism and warmongering. Dr. King was far more radical than his speeches and books would suggest, and he moved further left over the course of his long and weary fight for African Americans’ civil rights.

For example, in 1967 King issued this challenge: “Why is equality so persistently avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains? The majority of white Americans consider themselves committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. Unfortunately, this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity. We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of enslaved black people and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white. The problems of racial and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.”  

Early in 1968, he launched the Poor People’s Campaign, which appealed to impoverished people of all races and sought to address the issues of unemployment, housing shortages, and the impact of poverty on the lives of millions of Americans. A few weeks before his assassination that April, in a high school gymnasium outside Detroit as he was constantly being interrupted by a rowdy right-wing crowd picketing his appearance, Dr. King said: “It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. America has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. It has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

And finally, a quote from Dr. King’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which he wrote after his arrest for staging a campaign attacking the city’s system of segregation. This section of his letter is often noted in the continuing struggle for equal justice: “Over the past few years, I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Counciler, 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. Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Quoting Dr. King may convey aspects of his insight into the political and economic institutions of racism in our society as it differs from how we behave toward each other as human beings in our communities. There is a difference between individual racist behavior and institutional, structural, racism.


Larry Samuels resides in Chestertown, and is involved in many community activities with organizations that do good works.