WI MLK Not Assassinated?

Butterflies? One condition: he stays out of electoral politics. Since he called himself a socialist by 1968, that shouldn't be too hard.
 

Dialga

Banned
Without the martyrdom factor produced by said event, the civil rights movement may have lost steam in the 70's. It might not have revived the women's rights movement or spawned the gay rights movement like in OTL.
 
Civil rights could continue on less militantly. The Black Panthers and all really came to power in a vacuum and because of disillusion.

But, Martin Luther King really wanted to begin to focus on poverty and ending it were he to have lived past 1968. So I think he'll go into that movement.
 
So a more socially conservative US then? OK, but what happens with him personally? Among other things he reportedly planned a private RFK endorsement*, which would have to be kept under wraps for obvious reasons.

* I mention this because the last thread had him as RFK's VP in 1976. Of course, that ignores all political realities and the fact that their relationship was always formal at the best of times...
 
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So a more socially conservative US then? OK, but what happens with him personally? Among other things he reportedly planned a private RFK endorsement, which would have to be kept under wraps for obvious reasons.
Why more Socially Conservative? I'd doubt that. Conservative white backlash evolved from a more radicalized Civil Rights movement and counterculture. With King, I can see that radicalization being avoided, and as the counterculture was tied to Civil Rights, the counterculture also being at least less radicalized over the course of the 1970's and those last two years of the 1960's.
 
Well, I can see the gay and women's movements being slowed down unless King can be persuaded otherwise, like Julian Bond eventually was...
 
Your Majesty, I don't think the white backlash was entirely because of the radicalization of the movement. I believe that when the movement's CoG went to the North (where economics/open housing was the issue), that's when it began. The reception he received in Chicago in 1967 was arguably worse than Bloody Sunday: tens of thousands of people jeering, some throwing bricks at him and chanting "coon-catcher". Only the vast police presence prevented it from getting out of control.
 

Sachyriel

Banned
Otay well RogueBeaver may not get all of this but I think it is absolutely 100% relevant.

Boondocks_s1e9.jpg


It's an episode of an animated show called the Boondocks, about this little black kid. In this episode it's Alt History because instead of dying MLK comes back!

That's right:
RETURN OF THE KING!

Spoiler:
"You prank called Rosa Parks?"

 
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Okay- well RogueBeaver may not get all of this but I think it is absolutely 100% relevant.
Rogue Beaver is the only one that doesn't get it. >>>>Given that the link doesn't work
 

Raymann

Banned
Why more Socially Conservative? I'd doubt that. Conservative white backlash evolved from a more radicalized Civil Rights movement and counterculture. With King, I can see that radicalization being avoided, and as the counterculture was tied to Civil Rights, the counterculture also being at least less radicalized over the course of the 1970's and those last two years of the 1960's.

Counterculture was already in full swing by the time he as assassinated. I think the US would be more socially conservative. Unlike today's "black leaders" King didn't really have a party line to knowtow to so he wouldn't have avoided certain issues for political sakes. Unlike Jackson, Sharpton, and co. he was very much against abortion and would have forced the issue with the Democratic Party.
 
Civil rights could continue on less militantly. The Black Panthers and all really came to power in a vacuum and because of disillusion.

But, Martin Luther King really wanted to begin to focus on poverty and ending it were he to have lived past 1968. So I think he'll go into that movement.

He was also starting to question and criticise the Vietnam War. This was also linked to the poverty debate.

Some questions that I have are:
1.) When would MLK pass the torch for civil rghts? He was young 1968, how long would he be the focus of the civil rights movement?

2.) Would there be a MLK day and a MLK boulevard in every major city had not he been assassinated?
 
Your Majesty, I don't think the white backlash was entirely because of the radicalization of the movement. I believe that when the movement's CoG went to the North (where economics/open housing was the issue), that's when it began. The reception he received in Chicago in 1967 was arguably worse than Bloody Sunday: tens of thousands of people jeering, some throwing bricks at him and chanting "coon-catcher". Only the vast police presence prevented it from getting out of control.
It may have played a large part, but I'm not cynical as to be ok with the idea that white backlash was just because of Civil rights, regardless of how radical the followers were.

I have to say I think it's largely (and in simplistic terms) because people were tired of the chaos on one hand, and reacting to things in the counterculture they saw as too extreme on the other, with Civil rights going north playing some role but more a 20/20 reflective view on what led up to the conservative backlash.

Counterculture was already in full swing by the time he as assassinated.
I know that. I'm talking about the radicalization that came in the last few years of the 1960's and in the 1970's. The Weather Underground, the Black Panthers and so forth.

I think the US would be more socially conservative. Unlike today's "black leaders" King didn't really have a party line to knowtow to so he wouldn't have avoided certain issues for political sakes. Unlike Jackson, Sharpton, and co. he was very much against abortion and would have forced the issue with the Democratic Party.
King was not the be-all-end-all of social change. The matter does not necessarily lie with what he would have done but the fact that he was killed. The death of MLK and RFK really did brew disillusion into a fine radicalism, which could perhaps be said to have lent to issues like the women's movement, gay rights, abortion and so forth. Then again, there's nothing to say those couldn't have still come along as an extension of the 1960's social progress.
 
Your Majesty: I don't think either of them were very favourable to such liberal social developments, being SoCons on non-racial issues. ;) And yes, that includes the womens' movement.
 
Your Majesty: I don't think either of them were very favourable to such liberal social developments, being SoCons on non-racial issues. ;) And yes, that includes the womens' movement.
Progress is not so much based on big men as the little men who choose to follow the big men who concentrate their collective energies.

Again, feminism and gay rights and so forth do not rely on whether Robert Kennedy supported them or MLK supported them, but if people were willing to struggle for them.
 
Does King become more socially liberal, perhaps seeing these movements as an extension of his own? Julian Bond did IOTL.
Maybe. I haven't read King's biographies to know which way his character would have taken him with certainty. I think there's at least a rudimentary possibility that if not outright supportive, he won't be damning and condemning.

And I don't like calling people not socially liberal because of modern standards. You have to put them in context for what was what in their time.
 
Can King remain the CR leader in the face of increasing opposition from the radicals such as Carmichael, the Panthers, et al.? IOTL he had to move left and involve himself in electoral politics. By 1968 he was involving himself in the sanitation workers' dispute in Memphis, had condemned Vietnam in extremely harsh terms and called himself a socialist.
 
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