At the time of his murder in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. had become the proverbial prophet without honor in his own land. A survey by the Harris Poll found that the 39-year-old civil rights leader appeared to have lost his grip on the American imagination. Three out of 4 white respondents said they disapproved of King’s work after his turn against the war in Vietnam. More striking, roughly half of all black Americans also disapproved.

Only a few years earlier, King had been at a zenith: In 1964, he was Time magazine’s Man of the Year and the youngest person to date to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His success in seeing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into law was followed by the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

But 1968: This scant time later, King was widely criticized, even by his peers in the civil rights movement. African American leaders admonished him not to bring his protests to their cities. Of black leaders such as Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-N.Y.) of Harlem, King lamented: “Their point is . . . Martin Luther King is dead; he’s finished; his nonviolence is nothing. No one is listening to it.”

And from leaders of the rising Black Power movement came other criticisms. King’s philosophy of peaceful protest was weak and servile; some derided his churchly bearing by calling him, behind his back, “De Lawd.” (Even at the height of King’s influence, Malcolm X attacked him as a “modern Uncle Tom.”) As one left-wing writer declared of King’s final, underwhelming effort, the Poor People’s Campaign: “The failure of the campaign is the kiss of death” for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Friends of King remarked on his dejection during his last months, historian David Garrow says in “Bearing the Cross.” “He was just a different person,” said stalwart ally the Rev. Ralph Abernathy. “He was sad and depressed.”

King wondered whether his work was having any impact and noted the animosity aimed at champions of unfulfilled hopes. “The bitterness is often greater toward that person who built up the hope, who could say ‘I have a dream,’ but couldn’t produce the dream because of the failure and the sickness of the nation to respond to the dream,” King said.

By Chris Tomlinson | Houston Chronicle |

Reasonably or not, more and more Americans expect businesses to do more than offer a quality product at a reasonable price; they also want companies to do good by society.

Customers have long expected business people to contribute to their community. And it makes sense because no business can thrive if their customers do not. But after decades of businesses prioritizing shareholder returns over everything else, a backlash is underway.

A company’s reputation for social good can affect its revenues, recruitment and expansion, according to research by Harris Poll and public relations firm Finn Partners.

Since 1999, The Harris Poll has surveyed perceptions of the 100 most well-known companies in the U.S. The 2018 poll of 25,880 people generated what Harris calls a reputation quotient, which gives executives a sense of how consumers feel about them.

Harris asked people to rate companies on their products and services, emotional appeal, social responsibility, vision and leadership, financial performance and workplace environment.

A company with a solid reputation finds it easier to attract top talent and investment, researchers found. Companies with a lousy reputation must work harder to achieve their business goals.

On the 100-point scale, a quotient of 80 or above is considered excellent, while anything below 70 is fair to poor. Only two Texas companies ranked excellent in 2017: San Antonio-based H-E-B and Austin-based Whole Foods.

Many Texas companies, though, scored below 70: AT&T, J.C. Penney, Exxon Mobil, American Airlines and Halliburton. Also near the bottom was BP, which has its U.S. headquarters in Houston.

Companies that sell us food spend a lot of time building customer trust, which makes sense. Down the list, Exxon Mobil and BP are responsible for major oil spills, AT&T and American Airlines have had customer service problems and J.C. Penney’s bankruptcy and failed reboot ruined its reputation.

Harris and Finn researchers, though, dove deeper and found that people judge companies on visible values, ethical stewardship and civic-mindedness. These are things CEOs can influence.

“Those three areas together are the new yardstick that the public uses, and remember, the public are voters, the public are future talent, the public are the people who are going to say whether you can put your name on a baseball stadium, or not,” said Wendy Salomon, managing director of corporate reputation at Harris.

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