Pinback button promoting Martin Luther King, Jr. for president, 1968. A.G. Trimble, Pittsburgh.
In 1967, less than a year before his assassination, Dr. King was nominated at the National Conference for New Politics over Labor Day weekend in Chicago. According to William F. Pepper's Orders to Kill, however, the conference was broken up by agents provocateur working for the government. King never actively campaigned for president, and was killed the following spring. Thus only a handful of buttons promoting King's candidacy in 1968 were produced, and all are scarce.
