MIM Notes No. 202      January 15, 2000

Mao on the King assassination

Excerpts from a statement by Mao Zedong "in support of the Afro-American 
struggle against violent oppression:"

Some days ago, Martin Luther King, the Afro-American clergyman, was 
suddenly assassinated by the U.S. imperialists. Martin Luther King was an 
exponent of nonviolence. Nevertheless, the U.S. imperialists did not on 
that account show any tolerance toward him, but used counter-
revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood. This has taught the 
broad masses of the Black people in the United States a profound lesson. 
It has touched off a new storm in their struggle against violent 
repression sweeping well over a hundred cities in the United States, a 
storm such as has never taken place before in the history of that 
country. It shows that an extremely powerful revolutionary force is 
latent in the more than twenty million Black Americans. 

The storm of Afro-American struggle taking place within the United States 
is a striking manifestation of the comprehensive political and economic 
crisis now gripping U.S. imperialism. It is dealing a telling blow to 
U.S. imperialism, which is beset with difficulties at home and abroad.

In 1963, in the "Statement Supporting the Afro-Americans in Their Just 
Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism," I said that 
the "the evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with 
the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely 
come to its end with the complete emancipation of the Black people." I 
still maintain this view. 

At present, the world revolution has entered a great new era. The 
struggle of the Black people in the United States for emancipation is a 
component part of the general struggle of all the people of the world 
against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world 
revolution. I call on the workers, peasants, and revolutionary 
intellectuals of all countries and all who are willing to fight against 
U.S. imperialism to take action and extend strong support to the struggle 
of the Black people in the United States! People of the whole world, 
unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive 
against our common enemy, U.S. imperialism, and its accomplices! It can 
be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, 
imperialism, and all systems of exploitation, and the complete 
emancipation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are 
not far off.

--16 April 1968