Thinking about people who say, “Dr. King said …”

In the beginning of news coverage in the late 1950s, Martin Luther King, Jr., was referred to as "The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr." Somewhere in the line of changing times since, "The Rev." went away, replaced by "Dr. King." It is as though some aspect of higher learning represented by "Dr." became more important than "The Rev." Or more likely, the liberal brethren did not want to be bothered by a preacher, not even a dead one.