My gut feeling has always been that MLK,Jr was doing God's work; that his path was preordained. The fact that he lied, plagiarized and cheated is very disappointing, and it's difficult to reconcile the two things.
I am positive that some of the people who surrounded MLK were not noble people. I bet you anything there was jealously, lies, manipulations and people full of contradictions and bad motives, who followed him around~ esp. when he hit celebrity.
I have no doubt that Dr. King knew he was going to die for making his stand- and he still made his stand and he was murdered. That tells me something.
Most likely he was communicating over most peoples heads, including people in his own community- so he was hated and maligned- and by some people who had the same color skin as he had and for many sick reasons, at that. For those reasons I am leery to believe all of the tales of terrible behavior on his part.
I am not so sure that he is guilty of many of the things he is accused of.
No matter what, I am glad that I live in a country where people have equal oppurtunties-do the ends justify the means? I think on rare occasions they do. That could be Gods way as well,perhaps the message is not yet complete.
We will never know the whole story- and that is why I feel it is best to let God have it all.
MLK was not a saint, that we know for sure. I just choose to appreciate the good work that he did and I teach my children about MLKs amazing ability to motivate people~ Now that cat was an activist! :]