Hey all, I'm doing a History extension major which analyses different representations of Martin Luther King Jr. However, I am struggling to find any historians who held any bias towards King, or thoroughly disapproved of his character or legacy. Anything would help and would be much appreciated!
While we wait for a bona fide 20th Century US Historian to arrive, I'll chime in.
I don't know of any professional historian who ultimately disapproves of MLK's legacy. His leadership, bravery, eloquence, and non-violent activist principles in the African-American Freedom Struggle inspire almost universal admiration.
There are a few issues, of course, for which historians criticize King. Here are three of the more famous. (Admittedly, the first two are relatively trivial.)
King had a tendency to borrow a bit too freely from other writers, without giving what most would consider sufficient credit. The most troubling instance of this is during his grad work at Boston College, where he plagiarized sections of papers. King also plagiarized major portions of his dissertation. Ralph E Luker is one of several historians who have written on this issue.
MLK seems to have had numerous extra-marital affairs. This claim was originally made as part of an FBI smear campaign against King. But it has largely been accepted by King's biographers, including David Garrow in Bearing the Cross.
Numerous historians have criticized King's legacy as overshadowing the real work of bringing more freedom to African-Americans. While King provided inspiring rhetoric and visible leadership, his efforts would have meant nothing without things like grass-roots voting rights campaigns. Historians like Charles Payne in I've Got a Light of Freedom argue that the SNCC organization and female leaders like Ella Baker and Septima Clark deserve more credit than King. How much King was at fault for actively "hogging" credit and not honoring the work of grassroots workers and women is up for debate.
This last point is biggest issue that I can think of for modern historians of King. It's one raised in Steven Lawson's classic article on the historiography of the Civil Rights Movement: "Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement," The American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 456-471. If you have access, that's a great article to read.
I'm not sure what you are looking for. He was never considered to be a historian, but rather a politician. Historical discourse is -ideally- not concerned with political agendas. Maybe there were historians who were very vocal about Martin Luther King, but I don't really know any. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of American politics would know.
If you are trying to gauge how his "compensation" plea would fare when confronted with historical discourse, I'd wager it wouldn't fare well. It's a very dangerous path to argue for compensation based on historical events and widely considered to be an ahistorical and anachronistic perspective. My own opinion? It's hardly beneficial to argue against a dichotomy in rights according to race, only to turn around and use this very same dichotomy as a basis for future policies.
It's a beneficial and understandable mode of action for short-term improvements, but it holds the promise of stabilizing and enforcing racial seggregation in the long-term.