Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Road to Socialism

Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Road to Socialism

From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice by Thomas F. Jackson

In early summer 1960, socialist activist Michael Harrington was asked by his friend and comrade Bayard Rustin to help civil rights groups in Los Angeles plan and organize a march to the site of the Democratic National Convention when it opened deliberations in that city in July. Under the official leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and black labor leader A. Philip Randolph, the Los Angeles “March on the Convention” sought to pressure the Democratic Party to adopt a strong civil rights plank as part of its 1960 presidential campaign platform.

Harrington did his work well, and the march attracted five to six thousand supporters, many more than organizers had anticipated. The day before it stepped off, Harrington picked up King on his arrival at Los Angeles airport. Over the next few days he shepherded King around Los Angeles, to the march itself, and to a meeting with the convention’s platform committee. Harrington and King also found time for private discussions about political strategy and philosophy. In Fragments of the Century, his 1973 memoir, Harrington reported how he was heartened to learn from their time together that King had “in the course of a much ...