At the very time that the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China were imprisoning dissidents and their own human rights activists, and China was on the verge of starving perhaps 50 million of their own citizens, American Communists were happily chattering about the “negro struggle” and ending segregation. They were less interested in these movements as a force for increased civil rights than as a tool for civil turmoil and their usefulness in promoting a Marxist revolution in the United States.

At the time of his assassination King himself was beginning the process of coming out as a Marxist in his own style, although there is no evidence that had anything to do with the killing. Many of his close confederates like Stanley Levinson and Hunter Pitts O’Dell, both closely associated with the CPUSA, had been working to influence King for many years. The anti-war demonstrations and radical student movement were helping to convince him that the time had come.

The late 1960s were a period ripe with possibilities for increased violence and civil disorder. Had Martin Luther King lived the American civil rights movement may have taken the form of an insurgent class warfare movement. His death and the widespread reaction to the riots that followed had a tempering effect on the radicalization of the movement. Formal Marxist sentiment faded outside of small radical circles on college campuses where it still festers to this day.