"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State and Revolution Link
Literally the first person I think of when reading that opener to State and Revolution is MLK. But it goes double for the likes of Malcolm X and Fred Hampton.
Oh absolutely, MLK was pretty much the first person to pop into my head when I first read it too.