Answer: I would contend that King wanted America to be a true homeland for African-Americans, as well as a safe, peaceful, healthy and integral place for all its inhabitants.
Explanation: In this excerpt from his speech "Beyond Vietnam" (April 1967), King is resorting to a passage from one of Langston Hughes poems in order to expound his rejection of the Vietnam War. In that poem, Hughes had said: "America never was America to me [...] and yet [...] America will be." It was this hopeful belief in a different America that inspired King, who was trying to respond to those who thought that he was "just" a Civil Rights leader. Apart from being indeed a Civil Rights Movement leader, King was a pacifist, and he publicly declared that he was against the Vietnam War, which was being fought when he gave this speech in New York. Like Hughes, King believed that America could be America for him and for many of his fellow countrymen, but not until it truly became an egalitarian nation, where everyone without exception could have life, liberty and happiness.
