Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968) was a legendary civil rights leader.
MLK regarded progressive unions as bulwarks of the civil rights movement. In this rousing 1962 speech to the National Maritime Union, he linked the democratic struggles of workers and black people and ended by quoting the “beautiful words” of Eugene Debs.
Shortly before his death, Martin Luther King delivered a speech at Carnegie Hall in honor of another legendary black radical: W. E. B. Du Bois. We reprint it here in full.
In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr delivered a lecture calling on the “dispossessed of this nation” to revolt in nonviolent struggle. We reprint it here in full.