All the news that’s fit to print doesn’t begin to fit in all the news about Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King is rightly praised as a civil rights hero who called for integration and fought against racism.

But he is wrongly pigeonholed as a single issue activist. In fact, Martin Luther King, especially towards the end of his life, saw that civil rights were empty if not accompanied by economic rights, workers’ rights and human rights. He called the labor movement “the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.” Injustice, oppression, and racism against other peoples and nations was just as abhorrent to Dr. King as injustice, oppression and racism against Americans. But his position on capitalism, labor, U.S. foreign policy, and Vietnam are not part of the legend that surrounds Dr. King. So here are 10 things you didn’t learn about Martin Luther King.

1) Martin Luther King gave his life for workers on strike. You may (or may not) know that Martin Luther King went down to Memphis, where he was killed, in order to march with AFSCME Memphis Sanitation workers on strike. The night before he was killed, Dr. King addressed the workers

You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor. So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.

2) King was a labor activist: King’s support of the sanitation workers was no isolated incident. In fact, supported several workers and union movements. During the last seven years of his life King spoke at conventions and events for the AFL CIO (4 times), The UAW (2 times), 1199, The Teamsters and Amalgamated Laundry Workers. And he said

New economic patterning through automation is dissolving the jobs of workers in some of the nation’s basic industries…. We are neither technologically advanced nor socially enlightened if we witness this disaster for tens of thousands without finding a solution. And by a solution, I mean a real and genuine alternative, providing the same living standards which were swept away by a force called progress, but which for some is destruction. The society that performs miracles with machinery has the capacity to make some miracles for men””if it values men as highly as it values machines.

3) King saw the civil rights and workers’ rights movements as inextricably linked, saying “the coalition that can have the greatest impact in the struggle for human dignity here in America is that of the Negro and the forces of labor, because their fortunes are so closely intertwined” and

Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires, and few Negro employers. Our needs are identical with labor’s needs “” decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.

4. Dr. King was a health care activist and said “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

5. Martin Luther King was a fierce critic of the war in Vietnam.

I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love… I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world…. For the sake of those boys [American soldiers], for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent.

6. Martin Luther King opposed not just the war in Vietnam, but American militarism:

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

7. Dr. King called for radical economic change, not charity. He spent the last months of his life organizing what was going to be the Poor People’s Campaign, consisting of “a multiracial army of the poor” that would use nonviolent civil disobedience to convince Congress to pass a poor people’s bill of rights and a government jobs program. This was in response to the government, which showed “hostility to the poor” gave “military funds with alacrity and generosity,” but addressed “poverty funds with miserliness.” For King, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.”

8. Martin Luther King was attacked by the press for his anti-war activities. Life magazine called King’s anti war speeches “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.” Reader’s Digest condemned the Poor People’s Campaign as an “insurrection.” Newsweek accused King of being “over his head.”

9. King was aware of the double standard of the press:

America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery…. They applauded us in the sit-in movement–we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor;when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark. There’s something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, “Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There’s something wrong with that press!

10. Martin Luther King was spied on by the FBI and a target of their COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program.) Even Coretta Scott King was spied on by the FBI, years after Dr. King’s death. Recently released papers include an FBI agent’s assessment of Scott King’s autobiography My Life with Martin Luther King Jr: her “selfless, magnanimous, decorous attitude is belied by … (her) actual shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities.”

So ! Check out this great short documentary on Martin Luther King and the sanitation workers and visit AFSCME. And watch this short video below of Martin Luther King talking to the sanitation workers.