Every year around the time of Martin Luther King’s birthday, we hear that the revered civil-rights leader came to understand late in his life that sweeping economic reform was essential for racial progress, but that this “radical” King has been obscured by the antiseptic apostle of brotherhood favored by the media. Since we hear this theme every year, we may ask just how deeply suppressed it can be. King as economic thinker and activist is nonetheless an undeniably neglected topic. Laurent addresses it in this new book, focusing particularly on the Poor People’s Campaign of 1967/8, King’s ambitious last political initiative.
Laurent first shows, following the lead of Jackson and Birt, that King had a deep background in social-democratic thought, having stressed inequality and economic justice for decades.1 She thus firmly rejects the “radicalization” thesis, arguing instead that the Poor People’s Campaign was “the culmination of King’s lifelong thinking...