Some historians are worried that Martin Luther King's legacy is being whittled down and simplified, leaving younger generations knowing little more than a snapshot of King's life—that he was a civil rights advocate who had a dream. Specifically, his anti-poverty and anti-war work that often made him unpopular while he was alive are overlooked by many today.

But social justice and nonviolence moved to the forefront of King's activism in his later years. In 1968, the year he was assassinated, he organized the Poor People's Campaign to address issues of economic injustice, and he was visiting Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers when he was gunned down.

By taking on issues outside segregation, he had lost the support of many newspapers and magazines, and his relationship with the White House had suffered, said Harvard Sitkoff, a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire who has written a recently published book on King.

"He was considered by many to be a pariah," Sitkoff said. But he took on issues of poverty and militarism because he considered them vital "to make equality something real and not just racial brotherhood but equality in fact," Sitkoff said.

In 1967 King gave a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam," which Time Magazine denounced as "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." The Washington Post said "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

I've included snippets of that speech below (click here to read or listen to the entire speech):

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land....

...Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours...

... The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy...

...We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

As we're mired in a very similar unpopular quagmire today, it's worth pondering what King would have said about the war in Iraq were he alive in 2003 and how his likely opposition to it would have been handled by the public and the press. Odds are, he would have been marginalized and slandered by many of the same people who will invoke his name today.

But King had always sought justice and peace, not popularity, and that's why we're remembering him.