Radical King Jr

The Radical King by Martin Luther King Jr., edited and introduced by Cornel West, is a collection of speeches, sermons, and writings by King. Martin Luther King Jr. was a pastor and one of the most widely known civil rights leaders in America. He sought to end the racial inequality, discrimination, and segregation that African Americans and minorities faced in the United States. In a time of racism, King was one of many to stand up and fight for the civil rights of African Americans, with great risk to himself and his family. Despite the danger he inspired many through his speeches, sermons, and writings, some of which are in The Radical King, and was a driving force to bring equality to minorities. During this time African Americans were

The Vietnam War was a war of great loss, according to Norton et al. (2008) “The overall costs of the war were immense. More than 58,000 Americans and 1.5 to 2 million Vietnamese had died” and “cost the United states at least $170 billion, and billions more would be paid out in Veterans’ benefits” (p. 919). King knew that if racial equality was ever going to happen the war in Vietnam had to be stopped. In The Radical King King (2015) states that the Vietnam War was sending mostly poor individuals off to die in the war and that it was cruel to have to watch “Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools” (p. 204). In the United States during this time period most African Americans and minorities were often poor, so by shipping off the poor who couldn’t escape the draft, the United States was shipping off many people of minority groups to go fight for a country that doesn’t even see them as a worthy enough person to sit with whites. The United States was fighting a gruesome war off of the backs of many blacks, a war that many would not come back from. Another problem that the Vietnam War brought on was the message that the war was sending to young African American men wanting a change. King (2015) points out

was not the first African American to speak up about civil rights. Others like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBois came before him. All men wanted racial equality, but they also all had different ideas on how to obtain civil rights. Norton et al. (2008) notes that Booker T. Washington was an educated man who was born in slavery. He believed in a separate but equal policy and thought that the best way to gain racial equality was through accommodating whites and that through hard work and obtaining property African Americans could to prove to whites that they were worthy of rights (p. 613). In his “Atlanta Compromise Speech” Washington (1895) declares to whites that “you can be sure in the future, as you have been in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen” and “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” (para 4). Washington’s approach to racial equality was very different from Martin Luther King’s approach. Washington wanted African Americans to wait patiently for equality and show that blacks were worthy of rights, King on the other hand didn’t want to be patient. Through civil disobedience and nonviolent protest King sought to make a change, instead of waiting for one to happen. As stated by Norton et al. (2008) W.E.B DuBois was the first African