Gray Dorrien teaches at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, but he grew up as a lower-class white youth in Michigan.

In his article about Martin Luther King Jr (“Redeeming the Soul of America,” Plough, Spring, 2018), Dorrien discusses King’s sometimes forgotten struggles against both militarism and capitalist excess. King opposed the Vietnam conflict. In addition, he called for a halt to extreme economic inequality.

Some of King’s mentors in his seminary studies believed “black Americans would never be free as long as large numbers of whites were oppressed by poverty.”

Donald Trump’s candidacy for president, Dorrien believes, “would not have been so successful among working-class whites had Democrats been known for caring about their plight. . . . Poor and working-class white Americans believe by overwhelming margins that the federal government is their adversary.”

The growing income gap between working class and the wealthy will haunt race relations unless addressed. Trump’s election was a wake-up call.