The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, was a tragic blow, not only for the Civil Rights Movement, but for the rights movement of all lower class citizens in America. Dr. King, perhaps along with Bobby Kennedy, represented one of the few voices in 1968 America able to form any type of consensus among increasingly polarized groups in society. His death inaugurated a period of some of the worst race riots in American history. However, Dr. King's death did not signal the end of the Civil Rights Movement. The Movement had been splitting into factions several years before he was assassinated. The politics of confrontation, direct action, and Black Power had been gaining credence among many blacks as early as 1963. Dr. King recognized this shift in the Movement's dynamics, as well as a decline in his influence over the Movement, when he opted to take his nonviolent, integrationist message to Chicago in 1966.
Dr. King's death did accelerate the polarization of American society. In part because Black power became the leading force behind the transforming Civil Rights Movement. However, to a far greater degree, King's death signaled an alienation among white supporters of the Movement who saw in King their opportunity to participate (and many said control) the Movement, while whites opposed to the Movement hardened their stance in the face of the emerging drive for black self-determination.
The late 1950s and early 1960s represented the heyday of Dr. King's nonviolent approach to Civil Rights. A string of successful campaigns following Rosa Park's glorious refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955 catapulted Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence as the foremost spokesman of Civil Rights in America (Washington, 1991, xviii). Dr. King's non-violent approach to change through peaceful tactics such as marches, boycotts, sit-ins, public prayers, and voter registration drives, as well ...