Racism, economic and labor exploitation and war were named by King as the three greatest evils of American society and they needed to be fully eradicated to resolve social disparity.
King's idea of integration was complex; he struggled to eliminate or reduce poverty by linking political power, wealth, and poverty...."King's unfinished search for more radical reforms in America may have been the central reason he was killed."..."Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were both assassinated," Allen (1983: 322) writes, "at precisely the point at which they began working actively and consciously against the racism and exploitation generated by the American capitalist system..." (Jalata, 2003, p. 67)
The value of understanding the issue of class had been one that was a significant aspect of social reform research, since the post war period. One of the dominant themes in the social work research movement was discovering the connection that poverty or class had to life opportunity and choice. It was therefore the period just prior to MLK jr.'s decision to expand the civil rights movement to include broad social justice when the social sciences were also focused on class as a prominent factor in good and/or bad social choices.
Researchers involved in the "class vs. caste" debates explored the intersections of class and race, and some argued that socioeconomic status was a more powerful determinant of cultural norms than racial status (Johnson, 1934; Davis & Havighurst, 1958; Dollard, 1937; Drake & Clayton, 1946; Powdermaker, 1939). (Curran, 2003, p. 15)
Some of the social science research actually furthered misunderstandings that fueled civil rights movement claims, that the dominant culture was conceptually skewed in their understanding of race and social oppression. While on the other hand the social science research also stressed how important an expansion of understanding regarding the effects class and hence poverty had on social opportunity and therefore representation. What the researchers discovered is that class and hence poverty was so essential in the development of so many issues of the social order that it and the institutions that formed it was absolutely essential to a full understanding of the human condition. (Curran, 2003, p. 15)
This movement in research created mountains of opinion and fact laden expressions of the need to expand social movements to address class as an essential formative change force. (Curran, 2003, p. 15) it also seems that the social movement influenced many people and nations to make decisive changes in policy and representation for the development of it. In a quote by the American reformer Alinsky, a contemporary to MLK the...
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