MLK gets the remembrance because people followed him, and listened to him, more than Randolph. Just like generals get the credit for ideas that unnamed staff advisors originate.
Sure it's right and cool to publicize the less well known efforts of nonbelievers obviously, but I doubt they are only less well known BECAUSE they were nonbelievers. Nonspecialists are ignorant of dozens of movers and shakers in the civil rights movement, of all levels of religiosity.
It's not the dismissal of atheists who worked in unsung roles that irks me, as long as the role would have been unsung regardless of the incumbent's faith. Instead it is the differential treatment and publicity of two people in the exact same role where the atheist is the one ignored. There is not one in ten remotely news-savvy liberals over 30 who does not know that Mathew Shepard was brutally killed because he was a despised minority, and wasn't spurred on to stand against that hate because of it. There is not one in ten of the same group who DOES know that so was Larry Hooper, and who reacted equally. That's the problem, not the fact that both Randolph and, say, Andrew Young are neither quite household names.
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