I just want to throw that out there. As I was writing a review of my own politics, and my own personal resentment against the CWP shills that show up in the 'hood only for the King Day Parade, the question presented itself. The form was more like, was King really as much of a Socialist (or Communist) as J. Edgar Hoover considered him to be? I think the answer is clearly no, and that Hoover trumped up the influence of Reds on King.
Long ago (and this is actually kind of funny too, because I didn't even know that Freddy Mercury was gay) I used to wonder aloud why it was that Bayard Rustin didn't get the props that others in the Movement got when he was clearly the brains behind a lot of what was going on. But even Rustin, who was probably the most pink Pinko in the Civil Rights Movement had a complex relationship with Communists and Socialists. After all, he supported LBJ on Vietnam.
If Rustin was the most radically Left of the CR braintrust, how Socialist could Dr. King have actually been, and what evidence was there that King's activism for voting rights meant Socialist votes?
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