It is not only Glen Beck who attempts to misappropriate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. There are some here who would paint King as the loyal Democrat, holding his tongue out of concern for the party's welfare and never criticizing Democratic Party politicians.
No, you don't deserve to claim MLK's legacy. He was nothing like you. You find me ONE quote where he publicly trashed IKE, JFK, or LBJ. He wasn't stupid to think that doing such was productive.
Link
Nothing could be further from the truth.
For most of his life, Martin Luther King was scrupulously non-partisan. John Kennedy famously called Coretta King when Martin was in jail at the urging of adviser and King family friend, Harris Wofford, and King did agree to a friendly meeting with JFK after his release from jail, but King never did endorse Kennedy over Nixon.
In 1967, however, King began to move away from non-partisanship toward support for a new antiwar party in America. It began with his famous Riverside Church address against the Vietnam War. The speech was a powerful indictment not only of the Johnson Administration's conduct of the war, but of brutal American militarism, as King compared U. S. conduct of the war to Nazi Germany:
The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.
They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
Johnson's response to the speech was to call the FBI dogs on the "n-----preacher" that Johnson felt had betrayed him.
Later in 1967, according to King friend William Pepper, King asked him to call a convention to form a new third party that would nominate King for President and antiwar pediatrician Benjamin Spock as Vice-President:
I was a friend of Martin Luther King in 1967 and 68, the last year of his life, after I got back from Vietnam where I was a journalist. He asked to meet with me and I came to know him and work with him. He asked me to lead a group called the National Conference on New Politics, an umbrella organization designed to remove the Johnson administration from office.
The National Conference for New Politics was the result. Held in Chicago in August of 1967, King was the keynote speaker. This speech, available through SUNY Albany, is quite eye opening its clear and radical call for a complete overhaul of the American systems of politics and economics. You can listen to it in its entirety below.
It is important to remember that when this speech was given, Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, was in the White House and Democrats had majorities in both the House and Senate.
With respect to King's call for a third party, I have transcribed the most relevant portions of the speech below, but the entire thing is a masterpiece.
King first recounts the betrayal by the Democratic Party and the Johnson Administration:
(around 3:30 in the recording)
Many of those here campaigned assiduously for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 because we could not stand by and watch our nation be contaminated by the 18th century policies of Goldwaterism. We were the hard core activists who were willing to believe that southerners could be reconstructed in the Constitutional image. We were the dreamers of a dream that dark yesterdays of man's inhumanity to man would soon be transformed into bright tomorrows of justice. Now it is hard to escape the disillusionment of betrayal. Our hopes have been blasted and our dreams have been shattered. The promise of a Great Society was shipwrecked on the coast of Asia, on the dreaded peninsula of Vietnam.
King later recounts specific instances of legislative betrayal:
(at 29:30)
Many of our Senators and Congressmen vote joyously to appropriate billions of dollars for the War in Vietnam, and many of these same Senators and Congressmen vote loudly against a Fair Housing Bill to make it possible for a Negro veteran of Vietnam to purchase a decent home.
Finally, he issues a call for a new institution to give voters the opportunity to cast the Johnson Administration "into oblivion."
(around 31:30)
The President who cherishes consensus for peace has intensified the war. In answer to a cry to stop the war, he has brought the war tauntingly to within one minute's flying time from China, to a moment before the midnight of world conflagration. We are offered a tax for war instead of a plan for peace.
Men of reason should no longer debate the merits of war or the means of financing war. They should end the war and restore sanity and humanity to American policy.
If the will of the people continues to be unheeded, all men of good will must work together to create a situation in which the 1967-68 elections are made a referendum on the war. The American people must have an opportunity to vote into oblivion those who cannot detach themselves from militarism. We are here because we believe, we hope, we pray that something new might emerge in the political life of this nation which would produce new men, new structures and institutions and a new life for mankind.
I am convinced that this new life will not emerge until our nation undergoes a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A civilization can flounder under conditions of moral bankruptcy as readily as financial bankruptcy.
King closed with a not-so-veiled call for a radical overturning of the American system:
True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar. It understands that an edifice that produces beggars requires restructuring.
King was no loyal Democrat. He was a radical Leftist--to his eternal credit--who openly and powerfully criticized an incumbent Democratic President and those who followed him in Washington.
He remains a model for those who care more about change that benefits the people than empty political wins and losses.
To listen to the speech, follow the link and look for the embedded mp3 player in the left column (won't embed on dKos).
Link to speech mp3
UPDATE:
There are two steps to hearing the speech. Follow the link, then enter the Captcha code and click "Download." Then use the embedded player in the left column that includes a timer.