Alternate Take: What if Martin Luther King hadn’t been killed?

By History.com, adapted by Newsela staff on 02.05.19

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Image 1. People march in the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade on January 19, 2019, in Orlando, Florida. Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968. He was shot as he stood on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel. During his life, he fought for all people to be free and equal. Had he lived, it's almost certain that he would have remained an important voice against injustice.

Clayborne Carson is a historian. He also runs the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in California. Carson says that King would have continued to speak out against racism if he had lived longer. He says it's important to remember, though, that King had begun to broaden his

activism by the time of his death. He had started to address economic inequality and antiwar causes. It was economic inequality and fair housing that led him to

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march through Chicago in 1966. During his march, counter-protesters threw bottles and bricks at him. Those same causes drew him to Memphis to support the city's garbage collectors. That's when he was killed.

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s aimed to win equal rights for African-Americans. King helped ensure passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which protected African-Americans' right to vote.

"I don't think of him primarily as a civil rights leader during the last years of his life," Carson says. "His goals extended beyond civil rights" after the Voting Rights Act passed, he says.

King gave a speech when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Carson says. In the speech, King pointed out three evils in the world. One of those evils was racism. The other two were poverty and war. "Those were what he had turned his attention to," Carson says.

King Supported More Than Just Civil Rights

Lillie Edwards is a professor of history and African-American studies at Drew University in New Jersey. She also says King had broadened his understanding of civil rights. One reason was the racism he faced in Chicago in 1966. Another was seeing the Vietnam War take place.

High on King's list of plans was the Poor People's Campaign. He had announced this big plan in November 1967 along with other civil rights leaders. He planned for a group of 2,000 poor Americans of all races to march on Washington, D.C., in May 1968. They would ask for an "economic bill of rights." Its demands included more jobs and more help for people without jobs. It asked that people receive fair money for their work. It asked for more housing for the poor.

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King died before the march took place. The Poor People's Campaign went on as scheduled but it struggled without King's help. The "economic bill of rights" never came to be.

Some argue that racial relations would have been different had King lived. Carson says that is not quite true, though. One person is not going to change the country's direction alone, he says.

Remembering A Simplified Version Of

King

There may never have been a national holiday honoring King had he not been killed so suddenly in 1968. King was not widely popular at the time of his assassination. Gallup is a group that asks Americans for their opinions on different topics. Gallup asked people's opinions on King in 1966. He was not well-liked. They found nearly two people disliked him for every one person who liked him. By 1999, however, this changed. A Gallup survey then found that King ranked behind only Mother Teresa as the most-admired person of the 1900s.

Edwards says King's image today often does not recognize his revolutionary messages. King insisted on immediate action rather than step-by-step solutions to injustices. Many people remember a simplified version of King without his demands for big changes, she says.

Death brought King a respect that never existed during his life. In 1983 the government made his birthday a holiday. "If he had lived, there clearly

wouldn't be a Martin Luther King holiday," Carson says. "I think it was easier to see the idea of the holiday when he was no longer around."

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