From Civil Rights to Human Rights · Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice

Winner of the 2007 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award of the Organization of American Historians 

"From Civil Rights to Human Rights should reinforce King's credentials as one, and perhaps the wisest, of the radical voices of the 1960s." --Dissent

Martin Luther King, Jr., is widely

celebrated as an American civil rights hero. Yet King's nonviolent

opposition to racism, militarism, and economic injustice had deeper

roots and more radical implications than is commonly appreciated, Thomas

F. Jackson argues in this searching reinterpretation of King's public

ministry. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, King was influenced by and in

turn reshaped the political cultures of the black freedom movement and

democratic left. His vision of unfettered human rights drew on the

diverse tenets of the African American social gospel, socialism,

left-New Deal liberalism, Gandhian philosophy, and Popular Front

internationalism.

King's early leadership reached beyond

southern desegregation and voting rights. As the freedom movement of the

1950s and early 1960s confronted poverty and economic reprisals, King

championed trade union rights, equal job opportunities, metropolitan

integration, and full employment. When the civil rights and antipoverty

policies of the Johnson administration failed to deliver on the

movement's goals of economic freedom for all, King demanded that the

federal government guarantee jobs, income, and local power for poor

people. When the Vietnam war stalled domestic liberalism, King called on

the nation to abandon imperialism and become a global force for

multiracial democracy and economic justice.

Drawing widely on

published and unpublished archival sources, Jackson explains the

contexts and meanings of King's increasingly open call for "a radical

redistribution of political and economic power" in American cities, the

nation, and the world. The mid-1960s ghetto uprisings were in fact

revolts against unemployment, powerlessness, police violence, and

institutionalized racism, King argued. His final dream, a Poor People's

March on Washington, aimed to mobilize Americans across racial and class

lines to reverse a national cycle of urban conflict, political

backlash, and policy retrenchment. King's vision of economic democracy

and international human rights remains a powerful inspiration for those

committed to ending racism and poverty in our time.

"Jackson makes a persuasive case that King was exposed to various

radical critiques at an early stage, that he laced his speeches with

moral indictments of inequality and praise for Scandinavian social

democracies, and that he sympathized—in private though not in public (at

least before the mid-1960s)—with more left-wing critiques of American

society."—Chicago Tribune

"An important

contribution to modern American history—and a painful reminder of just

how far we are from the Promised Land."—Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age

"In

this impressive and original account, Jackson challenges us to confront

what King and movement activists knew from lifelong experience: that

poverty and racism are fundamentally problems of power. . . . Equally

compelling is Jackson's portrait of a radicalism grounded in the give

and take of movement building and in the vast store of learning it

entailed."—Alice O'Connor, author of Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History

"A notable contribution to social, cultural, economic, and African American studies."—Choice

"Never

before have King's social and political ideas been so thoroughly

documented nor so persuasively explicated. Future generations of King

scholars will owe Jackson a debt of gratitude for this monumental book

of enduring value."—Clayborne Carson, Director, Martin Luther King, Jr.,

Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, Senior Editor, The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Jackson

takes us through the progression of King's public life, including the

iconic events—Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham, the Washington march,

Selma, Memphis—closely analyzing the ideas, the people, and the

conjunction of circumstances particularly influential at the time, as

measured by exhaustive analysis of King's speeches, writings, and

private conversations (courtesy of the Federal Bureau of

Investigation)."—Journal of American History

"[The

book] is the first to produce a sustained analysis of the origins and

development of King's radical economic analysis and the politics it

mandated. . . . Jackson's book rips away the false curtain of moderation

and reveals the substance of a rare leader who gave his life in the

pursuit of global human rights."—Sociological Inquiry

"From Civil Rights to Human Rights should reinforce King's credentials as one, and perhaps the wisest, of the radical voices of the 1960s."—Dissent

"Jackson exemplifies the best offerings of intellectual history."—Reviews in American History

"More

than any other historian of the movement, Jackson takes the civil

rights leader's ideas seriously. . . .The book was written for

academics, but it deserves a large audience. . . . it should help to

reshape our collective understanding not only of King and the civil

rights movement, but of the movements for peace and racial and economic

justice that preceded King and continue today."—Texas Observer

Thomas F. Jackson is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.