Michael K. Honey is the editor of King’s labor speeches, All Labor Has Dignity (2011). A historian of labor and civil rights at the University of Washington Tacoma, his books include Going Down Jericho Road: the Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign (2007), winner of the Robert F. Kennedy book award, and To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice (2018).
Jonathan Eig’s new Martin Luther King biography stirs exhilaration and visceral pain at the unexpected triumphs and vicious violence that King and the freedom movement endured. But it largely leaves out a key piece of King’s legacy: his commitment to labor.
Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated 55 years ago today while in Memphis standing in solidarity with striking sanitation workers. His life and radical words stand as a beacon of hope, urging us to keep fighting for economic and racial justice.
Until his assassination in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr led an unheralded struggle for economic justice.