Politically, King had moved (or at least was transitioning) from the idea of race as the deciding factor towards the idea that it was not about race, but about class. That if you were poor or left wanting for things you couldn't afford but needed, it didn't matter if you were white or black or hispanic or Asian, you were just poor or lacking the ability to buy and provide necessities for yourself and your family. So King was going to fight not just for the black poor, but for the white poor and hispanic poor andall of the poor because it was about the low in society which were unable to provide for themselves the basic things people require to live and prosper.
He was assassinated right on the cusp of that effort, and the Poor People's Campaign he had organized, when it went on after his death, just fell apart. It's always sad when major civil rights figures and things died, like King and like Malcolm X and even the Black Panthers, because they were right on the cusp of some great thing or some great effort, but were stopped and those efforts fell apart. Malcolm X was killed when his views had become one of social and racial unity among all people, as all were equal in the eyes of Allah. The Panthers, for their part, were part of supporting and rejuvenating black communities and keeping black children from falling to a life of crime or into gangs, but white people were afraid of them, law enforcement and the government crushed their organization and arrested them, and after that, the black inner-cities socially degenerated horribly. And King was killed when he was preparing to stand up not just for the black or the black poor, but for all the people of America who could not provide of themselves and were being deprived of the necessities of life and the necessities of what would allow themselves and their children to prosper.
Well, MLK Sr lived to the ripe old age of 84. So MLK Jr could live 24 more years perhaps even with that heart of a 60 year old, dying at age 63 in 1992.
