Check out the splintering of the Civil Rights movement after MLK's death. Jackson and Sharpton literally stole the political narrative and started the decades long cycle of organized resentment and demands for reparations to boost their own careers. King's chosen successor was Abernathy who was a moderate. The Mountaintop speech was also a retirement of sorts, that the final phase of assimilation (to become simply Americans) is left to the people.
MLK was from a Republican family and might even have endorsed a Republican candidate for president... if it had been anyone but Goldwater ... with whom King was personally pissed. Goldwater was tone deaf and kind of weird, he had voted against the Civil Rights Act (and was condemned for his vote by his fellow Republicans) because he thought it was a States' Rights issue.
Check out the splintering of the Civil Rights movement after MLK's death. Jackson and Sharpton literally stole the political narrative and started the decades long cycle of organized resentment and demands for reparations to boost their own careers. King's chosen successor was Abernathy who was a moderate. The Mountaintop speech was also a retirement of sorts, that the final phase of assimilation (to become simply Americans) is left to the people.
MLK was from a Republican family and might even have endorsed a Republican candidate for president... if it had been anyone but Goldwater ... with whom King was personally pissed. Goldwater was tone deaf and kind of weird, he had voted against the Civil Rights Act (and was condemned for his vote by his fellow Republicans) because he thought it was a States' Rights issue.