King’s radical turn cost him public standing and influence

Evidence

In 1967, for the first time in a decade, Dr. King was not listed on the Gallup Poll of the ten most-admired Americans. Young African Americans in ghettos throughout America questioned his relevance to the freedom struggle. They now looked to the words of Malcolm X and the example of the Black Panther Party. In four short years, King had fallen from the heights of the Lincoln Memorial, where he delivered a speech that would become a crucial document in the history of our country, to the lowly status of a lone voice in the wilderness: a voice marginalized by many white liberals, castigated by white conservatives, and dismissed by some black militants. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 272