Monday, April 7, 2008

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Final, Undelivered Sermon Was Titled 'Why America May Go to Hell'

In light of the Jeremiah Wright controversy, Hillary Clinton said she would not have him as a pastor. Given his final years, would she have had Martin Luther King, Jr. as one? Vern E. Smith and Jon Meacham write in Newsweek:The sun was about to set. On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. had retreated to room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, worrying about a sanitation strike in Memphis and working on his sermon for Sunday.Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sits in a jail cell in the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, Ala. on November 3, 1967. Its title: "Why America May Go to Hell." For King, whose focus had shifted from civil rights to antiwar agitation and populist economics, the Dream was turning dark.To his family, King was murdered because he was no longer the King of the March on Washington, simply asking for the whites only signs to come down. He had grown radical: the King of 1968 was trying to build an interracial coalition to end the war in Vietnam and force major economic reforms - starting with guaranteed annual incomes for all. They charge that the government, probably with Lyndon Johnson's knowledge, feared King might topple the "power structure" and had him assassinated.

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