King was unquestionably one of the most powerful orators of twentieth century America and a man of great personal courage. He was able to give voice to the passionate strivings of millions of people to throw off the shackles of racial discrimination. Unlike those within today's official civil rights leadership who seek to cash in on his memory, King was an honest man who was not driven by financial gain. ... Martin Luther King, Jr. stood head and shoulders above Jesse Jackson and other charlatans who, in the name of "civil rights," seek privileged positions as advisers and spokesmen for corporate America. Nonetheless, there was a logic to his class program and outlook which led inexorably from the idealism of the 1950s to the political skullduggery of the Al Sharptons of today. In different forms, similar processes of decay have affected not only the civil rights movement, but the trade unions, the feminist and women's groups, and all those organizations which sought to make the profit system more democratic while accepting its basic structure. Given this experience, what is the road forward today in the fight against racial discrimination, as well as the economic and social deprivation facing growing numbers of workers, black and white? The road of King's movement--of appeals for legal remedies and political reforms under capitalism--is clearly a blind alley.

'When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'

"....don't let anyone romanticize the days of slavery." "..no one has suffered like the black man." "...over 75 million were killed..." "...don't let them tell you that they did not resist capture in Africa." "...the slave owners stood waiting between her legs (for babies born into slavery) and gobbled them up like a hungry dog does a bone."

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, 'This is not just.'" - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds