Were it not for the novel coronavirus pandemic, the National Civil Rights Museum would be teeming with visitors peering at the balcony where, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. took his last breath.

But King wouldn't have wanted people to risk their lives to honor his.

That's why, instead of commemorating King with a ceremony in front of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel on Saturday, the museum is doing a virtual program on his life at 6:01 p.m. That was the exact time he was shot; the hour that the pain of his loss began to reverberate around the nation.

Yet while King was killed 52 years ago, the upheaval caused by novel coronavirus is resurrecting a main idea he laid out to battle poverty and the fragility of capitalism.

That idea? A universal basic income.

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While Andrew Yang, former contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, made that a cornerstone of his campaign — he advocated that each American get $1,000 a month largely to stave off displacements caused by technology — King called for the same thing years ago.

But in Memphis, where the hospitality industry is a major job engine, layoffs and furloughs have beset workers in restaurants, hotels and bars, where tourists go. Beale Street and Graceland have been closed because the crowds could spread a virus that could kill them in their search for food, fun and selfies.

Workers in that industry, as well as others, haven't been displaced by robots doing their jobs, but by a virus disrupting their workplaces and demolishing their livelihoods.

Yet King, who called his idea a guaranteed income, viewed it as a means of giving all Americans a way to avoid descending into poverty if they lost their incomes, or if the incomes they earned kept them impoverished. That income would help them take care of basics, such as food and housing.

In his 1967 book, "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?" King wrote: "I’m now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."

He further wrote:

"Earlier in the century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility ... Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people to idleness and bind them into constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent.

"We also never know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty."

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Right now, at least, fewer Americans are looking at the idea of a guaranteed income with ridicule. Most polls and surveys on the idea have been split between favorable and unfavorable.

A September 2019 Hill-HarrisX survey, for example, found that 51% of registered voters opposed the idea, while 49% supported it.

That 51%, however, represented a drop of six points from February of 2019 — while 72% of registered voters aged 18 to 34 supported the idea.

To be sure, others, such as economist Milton Friedman, laid out the idea of a universal basic income before King.

However, King's advocacy of it was rooted mostly in the elimination of poverty and inequality that, along with discrimination and segregation, disproportionately dogged African-Americans.

Obviously, the issue is complicated. But what's not complicated is this: People who aren't worried about how they are going to pay for food, housing and health care are in more of a position to innovate and to create, and to move the nation forward.

They won't have to, in the midst of a pandemic, force themselves to go to work sick and possibly sicken others, when they need to stay home.

In other words, they can focus on thriving and not surviving.

So, once again, King's words about what America should be doing to bring prosperity and justice ring prophetic. They always do.

It's just sad that, 52 years after his assassination, it may take a COVID-19 body count to make people listen.

For more information on the National Civil Rights Museum's MLK Jr. digital commemoration, go to www.civilrightsmuesum.org.

You can reach Tonyaa Weathersbee at 901-568-3281, tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com or follow her on Twitter: @tonyaajw