It’s easy to forget that in his day, in his own country, King was considered a dangerous troublemaker. He was harassed by the FBI and vilified in the media.

In fact, King was radical. He believed America needed a “radical redistribution of economic and political power.” That’s Marxism. Wealth and power must be shared, not earned, … according to Marx.

King challenged America’s sub-rosa class and racial sub-systems. He was a strong ally of the labor union movement. He was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, where he had gone to support a union-called sanitation workers’ strike. He opposed U.S. militarism and imperialism, especially America’s involvement in Vietnam.

During King’s first year at Morehouse College, civil rights and labor activist A. Philip Randolph spoke on campus. Randolph predicted that the near future would witness a global struggle that would end white supremacy and capitalism. He urged the students to link up with “the people in the shacks and the hovels,” who, although “poor in property,” were “rich in spirit.”…. Randolph wasn’t just against poverty, he was against Capitalism itself.