To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice

by Michael K. Honey

Overview

“This is a dangerous book.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams

Fifty years ago, a single bullet robbed us of one of the world’s most eloquent voices for human rights and justice. To the Promised Land goes beyond the iconic view of Martin Luther King, Jr., as an advocate of racial harmony, to explore his profound commitment to the poor and working class and his call for “nonviolent resistance” to all forms of oppression, including the economic injustice that “takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”

“Either we go up together or we go down together,” King cautioned, a message just as urgent in America today as then. To the Promised Land challenges us to think about what it would mean to truly fulfill King’s legacy and move toward his vision of “the Promised Land” in our own time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393356731
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Michael K. Honey, a former Southern civil rights and civil liberties organizer, is Haley Professor of Humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma, where he teaches labor, ethnic, and gender studies and American history. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and has won numerous research fellowships and book awards for his books on labor, race relations, and civil rights history, including the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Going Down Jericho Road. He lives in Tacoma with his wife, Pat Krueger.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Promised Land 1

1 "We the Disinherited of this Land": Kinship with the Poor, 1929-1956 19

3 "We Have a Powerful Instrument": Civil Rights Unionism and the Cold War, 1957-1963 47

3 "Northern Ghettos are the Prisons of Forgotten Men": Labor and Civil Rights at the Crossroads, 1964-1966 83

4 "In God's Economy": Organizing the Poor People's Campaign, 1967-1968 113

5 "All Labor has Dignity": Uprising of the Working Poor, 1968 135

6 "Dangerous Unselfishness" 161

Acknowledgments 195

Source Notes 199

Image Credits 225

Quotation Credits 227

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

"Michael Honey’s important and timely new book recovers the fullness of King’s social Christian vision. More than just Jim Crow’s most formidable detractor, he was one of capitalism’s most insistent and incisive critics. Honey leaves no doubt that, in our new Gilded Age, King’s dream, marked by a longing for both racial and economic justice, remains as relevant as ever."

Heath W. Carter

"King the economic radical has renewed relevance, and Honey’s work helps to shift him from static icon to dynamic thinker whose vision can guide us in taking on the grossly unfair aspects of American capitalism."

Alternet

"Michael Honey’s very cogent book shows that King intended from the start of his public career to work to end racial discrimination and poverty for all Americans.… To the Promised Land’s thorough treatment of King’s efforts to support black unionism and to forge an alliance between the black and the white working classes reveals the arduous effort that he put into this project, most heartbreakingly in his final years."

New York Review of Books - Annette Gordon-Reed

"Honey’s book offers a lively, inspiring, and carefully researched study of King’s efforts for economic justice, reminding readers of this seldom-documented but crucial aspect of King’s legacy.… To the Promised Land is especially timely and revelatory as we struggle still with racism, militarism, poverty, and extreme economic inequality 50 years after the death of King."

History News Network - Robin Lindley

"Civil rights buffs will enjoy this book."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Honey writes to each margin of the civil-rights era and clarifies it with a deep understanding of King’s true significance.… [To the Promised Land] reveals and raises up the many thousands of people who took King’s advice to commit to ‘dangerous unselfishness’ directly to heart."

Providence Journal

"A truer portrait of King’s radical hopes. It is an inspiration for the work ahead."

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore

03/05/2018
Labor historian Honey (Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, King’s Last Campaign) emphasizes Martin Luther King Jr.’s attempts to build bridges between civil rights organizations and labor unions in this concise but richly detailed work about King’s attempts to bring about economic justice for all Americans. Frustrated initially because opportunities for well-paid work were so limited for black Americans, King came to see that innovations such as automation threatened the livelihoods of workers of all races, and that the social programs of the Johnson era were being “shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam.” In his Poor People’s Campaign, organized in the last year of his life, King aimed to unite low-income Americans across lines of race and ethnicity to demand that politicians provide them with improved housing, education, and employment opportunities; without these resources, King claimed, poor men and women could not enjoy the full benefits of the nation’s ideals of freedom. Honey argues that King’s call for the nation’s economic restructuring and “a true revolution of values” was not answered in his lifetime, nor in the half a century since his assassination; however, in positioning King as a radical economic reformer, Honey encourages the many who revere his memory to continue his work toward this goal. His book contains both insight and inspiration to activists of many stripes. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"This exemplary book stands out for the way scholar and former activist Honey shows class and race as dual focuses of King’s efforts. . . . An important contribution to our understanding of King and his legacy."

Booklist

"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a revolutionary, fighting to end social injustice and economic inequality, and a catalyst for the ongoing rebellions of the poor. Michael Honey tells a compelling story of militant, revolutionary love in action. This is a dangerous book."

Robin D. G. Kelley

"No scholar is more qualified than Michael Honey to illuminate the historical roots of the 1968 Poor Peoples Campaign. To the Promised Land is a remarkable achievement — a work of serious scholarship that is also eminently readable."

Clayborne Carson

"A portrait of King that is more accurate, more troubling, and more needed than ever before."

William P. Jones

"To the Promised Land helps us to remember King as a prophet for poor and working-class people, as we carry on that campaign against racism and poverty in our own times. A terrific book."

Timothy B. Tyson

2018-01-22
A former civil rights organizer continues his studies about Martin Luther King Jr. by focusing on King's insistence that all Americans receive a living wage for their work.Honey (Humanities/Univ. of Washington, Tacoma; Going Down the Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign, 2007, etc.) makes the case that King stood for far more than racial integration, which included legal rights and voting rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Taking a deep dive into King's publicly delivered speeches, published writings, and unpublished notes, the author shows his subject's zealous commitment to organizing low-income individuals into certified or informal labor unions, not only to raise poverty-level wages, but also to close the huge earnings gap between bosses and their employees. King's effort eventually coalesced into the Poor People's Campaign. Honey notes King's prescience as an opponent of modern-day exploitative racial capitalism. When he was assassinated in 1968, he was visiting Memphis to support striking sanitation workers regarding collective bargaining for better wages, job safety, and replacement of abusive supervisors. "Some saw the strike of garbage and street and sewer workers as a small story, but…King elevated it as part of an epochal movement for human freedom," writes the author. Throughout the book, Honey mixes King's policy platforms with well-known biographical material, thus interrupting the focus on policy. Honey is especially avid in describing the attempted takedowns of King by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Honey also continually mentions the well-known premonitions by King that he would die prematurely and violently, his tactics grounded in nonviolence, and his speechmaking eloquence. Whenever the author regains his focus on King's policies, the book tends to be revelatory—especially since income inequality has become a major touchstone 50 years after King's assassination. Honey expresses disappointment that King's campaign for economic justice has stalled, with labor unions disappearing along with American-based manufacturing jobs.Less a revisionist history of King than a worthy look at a seldom-documented portion of his agenda.

Kirkus Reviews