What if? Martin Luther King Jr not assassinated?

Martin Luther King Jr had never been assassinated? How would America and the world be different? He becomes the first black president winning over Reagan in 1980 election?
 
Martin Luther King Jr had never been assassinated? How would America and the world be different? He becomes the first black president winning over Reagan in 1980 election?

Interesting question. Honestly if MLK hadn't been assassinated, he might have eventually come under the mercy of J Edgar Hoover. The FBI did not only have recorded tapes of Dr King womanizing with members of his movement, but also recorded meeting with known communist sympathizers. Eventually MLK could have been severely discredited, threatening the legitimacy and purity of the civil rights movement.
 
King spends the remainder of the 60s involved in issues of poverty and workers rights across the Midwest and the South. He still is critical about the Vietnam War until it comes to an end, which gets him more controversy.

In the 1970s, he continues to focus on on poverty, especially during the hyperinflation of the decade. Drug crime also is a concern of his.

King retires from political life in the 1980s and ultimately dies of lung cancer after years of being a secret smoker.
 
Interesting question. Honestly if MLK hadn't been assassinated, he might have eventually come under the mercy of J Edgar Hoover. The FBI did not only have recorded tapes of Dr King womanizing with members of his movement, but also recorded meeting with known communist sympathizers. Eventually MLK could have been severely discredited, threatening the legitimacy and purity of the civil rights movement.

Hoover had those tapes all along and was constantly threatening King with them. To be honest releasing those tapes might have been worse for the FBI, because they would essentially be admitting to an illegal wiretapping operation and open themselves up to an investigation for abuse of power.
 
Interesting question. Honestly if MLK hadn't been assassinated, he might have eventually come under the mercy of J Edgar Hoover. The FBI did not only have recorded tapes of Dr King womanizing with members of his movement, but also recorded meeting with known communist sympathizers. Eventually MLK could have been severely discredited, threatening the legitimacy and purity of the civil rights movement.

This. He would never be President for this reason. Further, he was becoming more vocally anti-vietnam and pro-socialist. So, he would be remembered less and elss as a pure civil rights figure and more of a political ideologue, especially if he lived past the mid 70s.


The 60s was a generation that needed heroes. Dead political figures and musicians became those heroes. If Janis Joplin, RFK, Jimi Hendrix, and MLK lived on, they would not quite be as legendary.

You can pretty much forget about the MLK Mt Rushmore that was built.

mlk.jpg
 
This. He would never be President for this reason. Further, he was becoming more vocally anti-vietnam and pro-socialist. So, he would be remembered less and elss as a pure civil rights figure and more of a political ideologue, especially if he lived past the mid 70s.


The 60s was a generation that needed heroes. Dead political figures and musicians became those heroes. If Janis Joplin, RFK, Jimi Hendrix, and MLK lived on, they would not quite be as legendary.

You can pretty much forget about the MLK Mt Rushmore that was built.

mlk.jpg

You either die as a hero or live long enough to become a villain.

MLK's pinnacle achievement was the Civil Rights act. To try to follow up on that might have lead him to become more and more politicized.
This would have undoubtedly lead him to ostracize his original supporters and potential fracture the movement.
 
He focuses on fighting. poverty. He wins new controversy when he is critical of the free enterprise system. He dies of natural causes circa 1978. ( The doctors who did his autopsy said he had a body of a 60 year old.) His birthday is not a holiday.
 
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