What if the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had lived?

(AP) -- The preacher in him would have continued speaking out against injustice, war and maybe even pop culture. He would likely not have run for president. He probably would have endured more harassment from J. Edgar Hoover.

Four decades after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fell to an assassin's bullet, colleagues and biographers offer many answers to the question: What if he had lived?

For his children, however, the speculation is more personal. They know their lives would have turned out differently had they had their beloved father to guide and teach them.

Instead, history moves on, remaking the world in myriad ways. The nation has grappled with issues of race and inequity without the benefit of King's evolving wisdom. A generation has come of age celebrating him in a national holiday, like other figures of the frozen past.

But given the trajectory of his life -- from his appearance on the national scene during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955 to his death on a second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968 -- some of those closest to him have a good idea what King might be doing now, and where we might be as a country.

In the months before his death, King was speaking out against the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam and was working with other civil rights leaders on a Poor People's Campaign, with a march on Washington scheduled for that May. He was in Memphis that spring day to support striking sanitation workers.

Were King alive today, the disciple of Mahatma Gandhi would most certainly be speaking out against the Iraq War, says King biographer David J. Garrow. However, citing the famous "Drum Major Instinct" sermon King delivered from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta just two months before his death, Garrow says people might be surprised to hear echoes of presidential candidate Barack Obama's controversial former pastor.

"God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war," King said of the fighting in Vietnam. "And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it."

While King didn't go as far as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in suggesting that God "damn America," he predicted that the almighty might punish this country for "our pride and our arrogance."

What if the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had lived? - CNN.com

The Rev.Martin Luther King Jr was a truly great man whom I hold in very high regard. I can't say that I agree with him on every issue but his words on civil rights issues changed my life and my perspective.

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"Destiny must be shaped and not left to mere chance."..Spencer Collins

He'd spend his days denouncing Jese Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the Rev. Wrights of the world...

He'd agree with Bill Cosby, and the NAACP would've denounced him...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

I was not allowed to hear any of his speeches until after I was grown and he had been dead awhile. There was so much violence starting to be broadcast on T.V., my Aunt and my mother would turn it off if there was a bunch of "stuff" going on.
I thought he preached violence. It wasn't until years later that I learned the truth.
He marched in my hometown and was put in jail in my home town as was a congressman's wife. I can't remember her name right now.
The turning point for our community to stop and consider the folks who lived literally on the other side of the tracks for the very first time, I think, came when someone poured acid into a swimming pool that blacks had crashed at a local hotel. To know that someone living among us could have done that brought home to a lot of people that these were human beings, and some of them were children.
I don't know how Dr. King continued after something like that. I do know where the Black Panthers got their rage.

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"Destiny must be shaped and not left to mere chance."..Spencer Collins

I think that if we walked in the black man's shoes in the 50's and 60's we would have a far better understanding of what they had to endure.I understand their anger but as a white man,I cannot claim that I felt their pain and there is a difference.

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"Destiny must be shaped and not left to mere chance."..Spencer Collins