workingclasshistory:

On this day, 4 April 1968, civil rights activist, socialist and advocate of nonviolence Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while in Memphis supporting a strike of African-American sanitation workers. His ideas had become increasing radical in recent years, and in addition to opposing racism had begun opposing US imperialism in Vietnam and elsewhere, and capitalism itself. And he had begun organising a Poor People’s Campaign, to unite working class and poor people, black and white. Though he is widely lauded by the establishment now, at the time he was hated by the establishment as well as most white Americans. He was demonised in the press, and the FBI even tried to blackmail him into committing suicide. His murder left many disillusioned with pacifism, and riots broke out across the US in the biggest explosion of social unrest since the civil war. The Memphis sanitation strike was part of a wave of stoppages across the US during the Vietnam war. More in this podcast episode: https://ift.tt/2KTg3N6 https://ift.tt/2CXuvRI