By 1968 King saw the movement losing the battle for America’s soul

Evidence

On this night, both King and Baldwin resisted any effort to draft the civil rights movement into that story. Instead, as King conveyed the gravity of the moment in 1968 and the necessity for the Poor People’s Campaign, he conjured, without a hint of nostalgia, a history of the heroism of everyday people acting against all odds, a history no less full of disappointment and trauma. He expressed a sense that the movement was losing the battle for the soul of the nation. King didn’t mince words: America was a decidedly racist country. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 222

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the sanitized ‘I Have a Dream’ King of popular memory — the anti-triumphalist King aligns with the reader’s recanonization argument.