"In other words, provide leadership and a voice to people who had been suffering too long..."
No, those are your words. What he did, he did because he was annointed by the national media - not because of his personal moral merit. Today's annointed leadership in the persons of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are products of the same machine.
Ask yourself this question: Why was the party of Jim Crow, the KKK, lynchings and all of the repression you speak about so closely allied with that age and movement in spite of their historic crimes and their actual resistence (Against CRA: %D's > %R's) to change?
Somehow Democrats and black leadership were able to conceal all of that history and baggage and transform traditionally Republican voting blacks into a stable of state dependent wards. Today, after nearly $6 trillion dollars spent in erradicating poverty and the supposed ills of racial injustice, we now have a legacy of more poor, greater social disintegration and demographics amongst black America that they may never recover from. All, I might add, as direct products of the "dream" as it was actualized by King and his fellow crusaders.
So he sat on his ass until the media said, "Go launch a bus boycott in Birmingham?" The media said, "Go march in Chicago to protest discrimination in housing. Getting hit in the head with a brick will provide us a great new story. Is that what you're trying to tell us?
All, I might add, as direct products of the "dream" as it was actualized by King and his fellow crusaders.
King's 'dream' was equal opportunity and equal rights for all regardless of their race. Sorry if that upsets you so.