Recent scholarship on Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) looks beyond King's eloquence as a charismatic orator who inspired masses of people to nonviolently protest segregation in America. We now appreciate more fully King's religious background in sustaining his leadership. More importantly, we see multiple ways in which King was shaped and inspired by larger movements for racial and economic justice around the world. King did not initiate any of the local protest movements for which he became a spokesman and symbol. He was nevertheless a brilliant strategist of protest confrontations, a master at reaching national and international publics and elites through print and broadcast media, a mobilizer who inspired thousands of people to risk life and limb against forces of violence and repression, and, finally, a coordinator and mediator among a range of protest leaders whose power and talents have been overshadowed by King's fame. Recent scholarship has especially focused on King's final years, when his lifelong commitment to opposing the “evil triplets” of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation were most fully put into action. King's final crusades against the Vietnam War, against big-city apartheid, and against poverty and low wages were less successful than the southern movement to dismantle legal segregation. But the full amplitude of King's radical challenge to America's political economy and foreign policy has now become more visible.