Where Do We Go From Here

The Introduction and Foreword of the book situate the text in its late 1960s historical context while establishing the timeless significance of King’s insights and commentary. As a scholar and publisher of King’s works, Harding analyzes the philosophy of the book in relation to the transformations of the period. He emphasizes King’s “radical engagement” with the social issues of the time, describing the shifts in his rhetoric and activism toward a radicalized approach. As social unrest in the urban Black communities of the North became a central issue for King, he addressed the connection between race and class in discrimination and oppression. After the 1965 turmoil in Watts, King focused on the underprivileged Black people who lived in deeply segregated Northern urban neighborhoods and advocated for improvement in education, employment, and housing.

Harding also establishes the book’s thematic elements. As King realized that the freedom movement must continue its efforts for justice and equality, he urged foundational and institutional changes. Far from rejecting the emergent ideology of Black power, King was engaged in the project of Defining Black Power. Committed to the strategy of nonviolent resistance, King rejected the violence of the Watts Rebellion and other Black urban uprisings, associating these outbreaks of violence with a rage and despair that he argued were fully justified but not productive. As Harding points out, though, King’s emphasis on The Persistence of Racism and the Hope for Social Change had much in common with the goals of the Black power movement. Like that movement’s leaders, King criticized American materialism and militarism, condemned the expanding Vietnam War, and urged the elimination of poverty at home and internationally. Hence, King presented a new radical image of leadership. He analyzed the impact of the “white backlash” as a contributor to the late 1960s racial unrest.

With the advantage of hindsight, Harding notes that King’s emphasis on manhood was a limitation characteristic of much of the movement’s rhetoric in the period. Preoccupied with the damage racist social structures had done to Black masculinity, King sometimes failed to take Black women’s perspectives into account. Still, Harding emphasizes that King called for peace, empathy, compassion, and humanity. He characterizes King’s message as a hopeful one, asking America to finally realize its democratic and egalitarian ideals. As a leader, he remained an advocate of nonviolence and social justice for all.

The foreword by Coretta Scott King—King’s wife and a fellow leader of the civil rights movement—reiterates King’s central role and responsibility as a key leader of the freedom movement. She emphasizes that King began to realize the intersection of race and class in social oppression by focusing on “economic issues” that plague and unite people despite their racial differences. King’s international approach presented poverty as a cause of “world instability” and extended his political criticism beyond America to the West overall. She describes his assassination as a “tragedy” that derived America and the world of a gifted political leader. However, his lessons remain timeless and still benefit societies and the discourse for freedom and justice.