By Aswad Walker
Daily, more people are realizing that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. we were taught growing up represents only a fraction of the man and his mission.
For many Black people over 25, kindergarten through college education emphasized MLK the dreamer, while downplaying his sharp critique of economic inequality. Yet in the final years of his life, economic justice became not a side issue, but arguably the centerpiece of King’s work.
Why did that part of his vision receive so little attention? What exactly did King propose to address economic injustice? And more than 60 years later, do those ideas still matter for Black communities and the nation as a whole?
King’s Economic Justice Vision
King argued that civil rights without economic security were incomplete. He called for an Economic Bill of Rights as the next phase of the freedom struggle, a vision most fully expressed through the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. King named racism, poverty, and militarism as interconnected “triple evils,” insisting that none could be defeated in isolation.
His economic justice plan included full employment with living wages and union protections, a guaranteed income, guaranteed jobs for those unable to find work, affordable and safe housing, and access to land and capital, allowing marginalized communities to build wealth. Just as important, King believed impacted communities should have a voice in how government programs were designed and administered.
Assata Richards, Ph.D., founder of the Sankofa Research Institute, views King’s economic thinking as evolutionary.
“What was underpinning the need for civil rights was economic justice,” Richards said.
She argues King understood that racism itself was “underpinned by capitalism,” noting that enslavement fueled wealth accumulation for one group at the expense of another.
Diego Castillo, a product of Alief, TX, and a student of Africana Studies at Brown University, notes King’s intellectual shift following the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
“If you look at what happened after 1965, you see MLK turning increasingly to economic justice,” Castillo said, referencing King’s 1967 book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, which focuses heavily on guaranteed income and employment.
Castillo, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, adds that King’s multiracial approach posed a unique threat.
“What really harms the interests of the capitalist class is a multiracial, mass popular working-class movement,” he said.
That reality, he argues, helps explain why this phase of King’s work is rarely emphasized.
Guaranteed Income
At the heart of King’s economic plan was a guaranteed income. In Where Do We Go From Here, King wrote, “The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed matter: The guaranteed income.”
He called poverty “socially as cruel and blind as cannibalism” and urged its “total, direct and immediate abolition.”
King did not frame guaranteed income as charity. He argued that people must be made consumers either through full employment or guaranteed incomes, and that new forms of socially beneficial work should be created when traditional jobs were unavailable.
Former New York State Assemblymember Charles Barron stresses that this was not about welfare. King, Barron said, advocated a supplemental income that would lift working people to a living wage, while creating jobs for the unemployed.
“He was fighting for a living wage, a guaranteed income,” Barron said, adding that King believed this would allow people to reach their fullest potential.
Today, guaranteed income has reentered the mainstream debate. Former Stockton, Calif., Mayor Michael Tubbs, founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, credits King with shaping his thinking.
“We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together… You can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed.”
MLK speaking to SCLC staff, May 1967
“King saw that racial justice and economic justice were intertwined,” Tubbs said, referencing the “triple evils” King identified.
Tubbs’ Stockton pilot program demonstrated that guaranteed income did not reduce work effort, but rather provided people with stability during a crisis.
Economists remain divided. Critics, such as MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, warn that a universal basic income could be prohibitively expensive and destabilizing without significant trade-offs. Supporters counter that targeted or locally designed programs can reduce poverty, improve health outcomes, and restore dignity.
The Poor People’s Campaign
King’s commitment to economic justice culminated in the Poor People’s Campaign. In a 1967 speech at Stanford University, he declared, “We can end poverty in the United States. Our nation has the resources to do it… The question is whether our nation has the will.”
The campaign aimed to unite the “two Americas” through militant civil disobedience. According to Barron, King planned sustained civil disobedience in Washington, D.C., including the creation of Resurrection City, blocking airport traffic, and hindering the functioning of government offices until Congress passed a multibillion-dollar anti-poverty package.
“Dr. King was a revolutionary,” Barron said.
King was assassinated in Memphis while supporting striking sanitation workers, underscoring that his final struggle centered squarely on income inequality.
King’s Critique of Capitalism
King’s economic justice plan cannot be separated from his critique of capitalism. Over several years, he openly questioned whether capitalism itself was compatible with justice.
“There must be a better distribution of wealth,” King said in 1961. By 1967, he warned that racism, economic exploitation, and militarism were “all tied together” and required a “radical redistribution of economic and political power.”
Richards believes King’s democratic socialist leanings have been intentionally minimized.
“We celebrate people by how much money they make,” she said, “and we don’t ask at whose expense.”
Barron argues King was “frozen in history” at the moment most comfortable to the power structure. By the late 1960s, King was questioning not only integration but capitalism, a critique Barron contends posed a greater threat than King’s opposition to the Vietnam War.
Author Malaika Jabali situates King within a broader Black radical tradition that included Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Claudia Jones, and W.E.B. Du Bois, all of whom challenged capitalism’s role in producing inequality.
Why King’s Plan Still Matters
Economic inequality remains stark. Children of color are still far more likely than white children to live in poverty, and debates over universal basic income, healthcare access, and affordable housing continue to shape national politics. Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign, built around a $1,000 monthly “Freedom Dividend,” brought guaranteed income back into mainstream discourse.
For Richards, King’s relevance goes beyond federal policy.
“The idea that people deserve certain material conditions just for being alive is very different from how we think in this country,” she said. Through community land trusts, cooperatives, and food systems, she sees local efforts as living expressions of King’s vision.
Castillo believes teaching the full scope of King’s economic ideas would “radically change” how people engage with politics today. Barron agrees, arguing that King’s critique will remain relevant “as long as capitalism is around.”
More than half a century later, the question King posed still hangs in the air: Does America have the will to end poverty? His economic justice plan suggests that the tools exist. What remains unresolved is whether the nation is prepared to confront the systems that made such a plan necessary in the first place.