Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights leader and an American hero. Almost every American adult (95%) believes he was an important figure in American history in CBS News polling. But it wasn’t always that way.
The fact that King is now beloved and has a national holiday commemorating his birthday wasn’t something that obviously was going to happen during his lifetime. This shows us that often the fight for civil rights is unpopular at the time, and it only becomes popular retrospectively. CONTINUED
Harry Enten, CNN
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