Why did MLK jr say this about the Republican nominee for President (Goldwater)?

This was the Civil Rights era. It was almost as if there was two different Democratic parties in those days, one in the Northwest and West that was liberal and one in the South that was very conservative and reactionary. The Southern Democrats had tried only a few years before to break out as a separate party, the Dixiecrats (in 1948) but this failed.

After that there was a serious break in the Democratic Party between Northern liberals and Southern conservatives. The Republicans tried to take advantage of this big rift in the Democratic Party by siding against Civil Rights. A lot of Republican rhetoric about President Johnson (and Kennedy) was similar to today, that the Democrats wanted blacks to take over, etc. Civil Rights became a battle between the rights of the federal govt.

And state govts. Southern states saw it as a 'states' rights' issue, insisting that states had the right to segregate schools and lunch counters, restrooms and drinking fountains, to exclude blacks from certain jobs, to keep them out of certain neighborhoods, etc. The federal govt. Insisted that all Americans had the same rights of citizenship--we don't have classes of citizenship in the US, every citizen has exactly the same rights and privileges.

Believe it or not, this struggle still continues, 50 years later. In 1968 George Wallace ran on a third party ticket, actually just another attempt to create a new party out of Southern conservatives (people who wanted to maintain Jim Crow laws and segregation). He failed, but the Republicans adopted his rhetoric and strategy as their 'Southern Strategy', resulting in winning over the Southern Democrats to the Republican Party.

Within a few years, all the leaders of the Southern Democrats had switched to the Republican Party. MLK rightly criticized the Republicans for fighting against civil rights. They still do!

MLK started out as a leader of the movement to win civil rights for blacks, but in the middle of this struggle he realized that this was part of a bigger struggle for 'social justice', and he changed his focus to that. Civil rights and social justice, he realized, was not just about race. The Republicans have a longstanding strategy of dividing Americans, setting the majority against minorities in hopes of winning the majority's votes.

They instigate, encourage and exploit not just racism but EVERY kind of intolerance--xenophobia and nativism, sexism, homophobia, even religious intolerance. The Civil Rights law was what most people think of as the hard-won achievements MLK was talking about, but also the advances of the New Deal--things like Social Security, the right of workers to form unions, even things like banning child labor, the minimum wage, and the 8-hour day.

He meant the republican party could win the support of traditionally poor democrat southerners by convincing them that the republican party was the go-to party for hating blacks. They succeeded btw.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.