The legendary civil rights activist pushed to ban nuclear weapons, end the Vietnam War, and lift people out of poverty through unions and access to healthcare.

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is a civil rights legend, known for leading the movement to end segregation and counter prejudice against black Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, largely through peaceful protests. . He helped pass landmark federal civil rights and voting rights laws that outlawed racial segregation and enfranchised Americans who had been excluded from the polls through intimidation and discriminatory state and local laws.

But King knew it would take more to achieve true equality. That's why he also worked tirelessly for education, equal pay, peace, housing and to lift people out of poverty. Some of King's most iconic speeches and marches were dedicated to ending war, dismantling nuclear weapons, and achieving economic justice. As King said after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he believed that any "spiritual and moral backwardness" of humanity was due to racial injustice, poverty and war.

His multifaceted vision of human rights continues to inspire today, and on the third Monday of January each year, the United States honors King's legacy of fighting for equal rights and defending human rights everywhere.

During his lifetime, King's views often made him unpopular and the subject of harsh criticism. At the time of his assassination in 1968, a poll revealed a low approval rating of only 25% among white Americans and 52% among black Americans. But in the decades after his assassination, more Americans came to recognize the enormous magnitude of King's contributions. Communities across the country began naming streets and landmarks after him, and soon there was a push to create a federal holiday in January, the month of his birth.

In 1983, despite objections from Southern legislators, conservative Republican President Ronald Reagan finally signed a bill creating the holiday and the first celebrations of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, although it took another wait. decade for states like Arizona and South Carolina to do the same.

King's work continues to influence and inspire activism, especially in the area of ​​environmental justice, as studies indicate that climate change disproportionately harms marginalized communities. These are the many aspects of King's work that America honors on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Advocated against the use of nuclear weapons

King stood firm in his belief that peace was inextricably linked to civil rights. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, great powers such as the United States and the USSR aggressively developed and tested nuclear weapons, and on several occasions came to the brink of war that threatened to annihilate the world.

King made clear the connection between the black freedom struggle and the need for nuclear disarmament, writes nuclear studies and African American history expert Vincent Intondi in the book African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement. King argued that it would be "pretty absurd" to integrate schools and lunch counters but not care about the peace and survival of the world.

King spoke out on nuclear war as early as 1957, when he signed a full-page advertisement in The New York Times calling on all nations to immediately suspend nuclear testing. When asked about his position later that year, King linked the weapons to the war as a whole, and argued that they should be banned everywhere.

"There's no arguing that a full-scale nuclear war would be totally catastrophic," he told Ebony magazine in an interview. "The primary goal of all nations must be the total abolition of war."

As part of his advocacy for peace and nuclear disarmament, King condemned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the US government had carried out more than a decade earlier to end World War II. Today, Hiroshima is one of the only cities outside North America to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.

King also used the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 (a 13-day period in which the United States and the Soviet Union were on the brink of nuclear war following the installation of Soviet long-range missiles in Cuba) as a opportunity to relate nuclear disarmament to racial and economic justice. King asked that the United States government devote its attention and funds to education, health care and civil rights, Intondi writes. He later expressed support for the nuclear test ban treaty, which was signed by President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

He spoke out against the Vietnam War.

King often linked nuclear disarmament to the Vietnam War, which escalated in the 1960s.

King was against the war, but he was initially concerned that making his stance public would derail his work to pass the Civil Rights Act and harm his relationship with President Lyndon B. Johnson, according to Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

But in 1965, the year the first American ground troops were sent to Vietnam, King made his first public statement, stating that the war was "accomplishing nothing" and calling for a peace treaty.

Over the next two years he toned down his criticism to prevent the impact of his civil rights work from diminishing, but in 1967, King became active again in the anti-war sphere, attending a march in Chicago before delivering his most recent speech. notable in this regard a few days later, on April 4.

That day, at the Riverside Church in New York, King denounced that the war aggravated the problems of black Americans and people living in poverty. He condemned the "madness" of Vietnam as "a symptom of a much deeper illness" that put the United States at odds with aspirations for social justice around the world. Just 11 days later, King led an anti-war march of 125,000 protesters to the United Nations headquarters in New York, one of the largest peace demonstrations in history.

During the last year of his life, King continued his anti-war work by encouraging grassroots peace activism. On March 31, 1968, five days before he died, King denounced the Vietnam War in his final Sunday sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., saying it was "one of the most unjust wars ever fought in history." of the world".

King did not live to see the end of the war. American troops officially withdrew from Vietnam in April 1975.

Defended union representation and workers' rights

King's passion for union representation and workers' rights is also an important part of his legacy. As in his anti-war speeches, King often linked workers' rights to the civil rights movement.

"I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice," King said in a 1958 speech in New York. "Although I came from a home of economic security and relative comfort, I could never get out of my mind the economic insecurity of many of my playmates and the tragic poverty of those who lived around me."

In a 1959 interview with Challenge magazine, King acknowledged that unions had historically sidelined black Americans, but that they could also be a key to economic justice. He called for black Americans to organize their economic and political power in the form of unions, and advocated for ideas in the labor movement, such as improved working conditions, adequate housing, a guaranteed annual income, and access to healthcare. 

For years, King continued to call for economic justice, most notably at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Before a crowd of 250,000, he delivered the legendary "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of Lincoln Memorial, in which he called for an end to poverty, especially targeted poverty and discrimination against black Americans.

One of King's last actions before his assassination was in support of the labor movement. King's final days were spent supporting a group of striking black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.

After two workers were crushed to death by a non-working truck, 1,300 black workers went on strike for 11 days to end a long line of neglect and abuse by their bosses. The strike would have ended after the City Council voted to recognize their newly formed union, but the mayor of Memphis rejected the vote. King traveled to Memphis to lead a protest march and, on April 3, he addressed striking sanitation workers.

"We have to fight this fight to the end," King said. "Nothing would be more tragic than stopping at this point in Memphis. We have to see it through."

King was shot dead by an assassin on the balcony of his Memphis hotel the next day. On April 16, the sanitation workers union was finally recognized and promised better pay, the first of many examples of how King's legacy would continue to reverberate in the work of those he inspired.

Inspire a new generation of environmental activists

Although King's final act in support of Memphis' black sanitation workers was not explicitly an act of environmental justice, it has inspired a generation of activists. Working conditions for healthcare workers were dangerous and polluting for employees, as were the conditions many black Americans endured in their communities and jobs at the time.

Modern environmental activists have been inspired by King's message: just as segregation and discrimination were inseparable from poverty, they point out that poor black communities disproportionately face environmental dangers such as pollution. They are also the most affected by the harmful effects of climate change, such as extreme weather events.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in the use of federal funds, even gave the marginalized a means to confront racial discrimination in environmental matters. As the environmental justice movement grew, King's work also inspired the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.

His advocacy for Black people to have a voice and power has inspired many communities most affected by climate change to speak up and take action. Today, the holiday honoring King is often celebrated as a national day of service. Organizations and individuals alike volunteer for their communities, often cleaning roads or river banks in the name of a man many believe would be at the forefront of the climate fight if he were still alive.

Martin Luther King: his legacy in images