Abstract

Through 1967 until his assassination on April 4, 1968, American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. focused his internationally-recognized authority as a moral and religious leader against America's war in Vietnam and the values that he saw perpetuating the poverty of an estimated 40-million Americans. King’s so-called “new radicalism” presented the difficult challenge of trying to win favourable news coverage for views that challenged those of the news media and mainstream America. Through the transcripts of an FBI wiretap on the home phone of King's most trusted strategist, Stanley D. Levison, and other archival documents, this thesis seeks a better understanding of the media strategy that went into advancing King's antiwar views and his efforts to rid American society of poverty. Positioning himself between go-slow moderates and go-for-broke radicals, King promoted a compelling “militant middle” that wedded radical idealism and pragmatic realism into a dramatic message that the news media could not ignore. Such a strategy was not without its risks and left King facing media coverage that was often critical of his refusal to drop his opposition to the war and adopt a more moderate approach in his fight against poverty. Yet media coverage also provided a crucial forum for his “new radicalism” that King deliberately sought out and used to warn America that its tolerance of war, racism and poverty was leading to social catastrophe and the nation’s imminent “spiritual death.”