To the Promised Land

Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice

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Pub Date 03 Apr 2018 | Archive Date 31 Mar 2018

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Description

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, author of The Blood of Emmett Till 

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.” Phase one of King’s agenda led to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. But King also questioned what good it does a man to “eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?” In phase two of his activism, King organized poor people and demonstrated for union rights, while also seeking a “moral revolution” to replace the self-seeking individualism of the rich along with an overriding concern for the common good. “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.

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. 

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...


Advance Praise

“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, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“A portrait of King that is more accurate, more troubling, and more needed than ever before.” - William P. Jones, author of The March on Washington

“Public memory has played tricks on King’s legacy, turning his fierce struggle against systemic racism into a quest for colorblindness. Honey restores the man in full, one who perceived desegregation as a first step on a longer path toward full citizenship and economic justice. To the Promised Land gives us a longer, messier, and unfinished civil rights movement and a truer portrait of King’s radical hopes. It is an inspiration for the work ahead.” - Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, author of Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950

“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, author of Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago

“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...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780393651263
PRICE $25.95 (USD)
PAGES 288

Average rating from 4 members


Featured Reviews

Martin Luther King’s political life seemingly had two phases: the first from the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 until the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, when his primary focus was on removing social and legal segregation, and the second comprising what turned out to be the last three year’s of his life (to which the Poor People’s March formed the coda), in which his attention centred upon addressing economic injustice.

King’s brutal early death, aged 39, meant that in crucial respects his dream for America went unfulfilled for, as King himself put it “… we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters” for “What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?”

Michael K. Honey’s ‘To the Promised Land. Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice’ performs the very useful service of pointing out that although King’s commitment to greater economic equality and the empowerment of the poor of all colours increasingly dominated his actions from 1965, his commitment to those causes was an important strand running throughout his entire political life.

Honey ably draws upon what he describes as “a plethora of scholarship”, including his own substantial work in the field, to make it possible for a wider audience to appreciate that King preached the Christian Social Gospel long before he expressed solidarity with the sanitation workers of Memphis. To put it another way, Honey indirectly vindicates J. Edgar Hoover’s view that King challenged the very warp and weft of the fabric of US society.

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