workingclasshistory:

On this day, 15 January 1929, minister and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
While famous for advocating non-violent resistance, he did not condemn those who rioted, and he personally had armed guards and a private arsenal to protect himself, and applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon which was denied by racist authorities.
Towards the end of his life he became increasingly radical, criticising militarism, war, poverty and capitalism as well as racism, which alienated some of his liberal supporters.
For example, he said that people “must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society”.
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