Martin Luther King Jr.

===Compensation===
{{See also|Reparations for slavery debate in the United States}}
King stated that black Americans, as well as other disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. In an interview conducted for ''[[Playboy]]'' in 1965, he said that granting black Americans only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. King said that he did not seek a full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of $50&nbsp;billion over ten years to all disadvantaged groups.{{sfn|Washington|1991|p=366}}

He posited that "the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils."{{sfn|Washington|1991|pp=365–67}} He presented this idea as an application of the [[common law]] regarding settlement of unpaid labor but clarified that he felt that the money should not be spent exclusively on blacks. He stated, "It should benefit the disadvantaged of ''all'' races."{{sfn|Washington|1991|pp=367–68}}