Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968)

If you're not familiar with King's actual writings and (especially) speeches, you will not regret anything you do to rectify that. 50 years later, we tend to hold a pretty abstract notion of the man, as a kind of saint or—as Cornell West is fond of saying—a Santa-Claus figure. We are aware that he gave at least one important speech, possibly even more than one. But as you listen to these speeches, what you will become aware of is King's piercing intellect, and his devotion to the cause show more of uplifting the American nation and its people. You will see a man fully committed to nonviolence, aware of both its power and its difficulty. I was enraptured over and over again as I listened.

To be sure, this is not a biography. You will see few if any of King's faults and foibles as a human being here. The introductions, while well written and compelling, stick fairly closely to a vision of MLK as a moral and political leader. Which he certainly was. Feel free to look elsewhere if you are looking for a narrative of his life. But you could do worse than to start here if you are looking for an understanding of his spirit and his legacy. show less

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. reflects on the events of 1955-1956 surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott and his part in it.

King begins with how he came to Montgomery as a minister and what the city was like, mentioning Claudette Colvin's arrest and that there were some talks but that nothing came of them. The groundwork laid, we then get his account of Rosa Parks' arrest and the protest itself. He spends a whole chapter discussing the several writers who influenced his thoughts on nonviolent show more protest, including Henry David Thoreau, Reinhold Neibuhr, and of course Gandhi. We then get the contrast of that method with that of the opposition, who used violence, intimidation, and misinformation to try to get the protest to end. One of the most fascinating parts of it, for me, were how organized they were and how different that time was from our own. Yes, I know, I should have expected it - I know there were no smart phones and Internet in 1958. But they did so much with phone calls and newspapers, getting the word out and having mass meetings, keeping their message clear and on point. And their goals, in retrospect, were not really asking for much: "(1) a guarantee of courtesy; (2) a white reserved section at the front of the bus, and a Negro reserved section at the rear, with first-come, first-served obtaining for the unreserved, middle section; (3) special, all-Negro buses during the rush hours" (124). (That third goal shifted to the bus company being willing to hire Black drivers.) Throughout the year of protest, King describes the escalation of violence against him and other leaders, and his own moments of doubt and fear, but most of all his faith and why it was central to him as a Christian to insist on justice for all.

If my history classes touched on Civil Rights (most years we ended soon after World War 2), events of the 1950s and 1960s were sort of smooshed together and you'd think that there was a clean line from the Supreme Court rulings on desegregation to Southern resistance to finally Civil Rights workers, Black and white, resisting and demanding justice in all areas of life. But the reality, as Dr. King shows in his memoir, was much more complicated than that. It was not a quick and steady progress to justice, but long battles where even the people protesting didn't always agree on how to protest or how much to ask for. In 1958, when the book was published close on the heels of the bus boycott, the protesters gained a victory but still didn't expect folks to be so integrated as to share the same bench, let alone intermarry or have equal voting rights. And as I read the final chapter, "Where do we go from here?" I couldn't help but be saddened that there are still so many who would like to see us go right back to the 1950s in the oppression of others and demand for white privilege. Ever more necessary reading that I can't recommend highly enough. show less

Coretta Scott King says of this collection of sermons that it is the most requested and read of the books produced from King’s life. Interesting, that King himself was reluctant to put the collection together, worrying that the reading of the sermons would lose something. But they are powerful essays on social justice and how religious faith should inspire the best in us, not the worst. And they read as important to the chaotic and mean-spirited world of today as they were when he preached show more them as sermons during the Civil Rights Movement. In reading them, it feels that we haven’t come very far, but King would quibble with that conclusion, and actually does in one of the sermons, even then. As he often said, the arc of the moral universe may be long – sometimes painfully long – but it tends toward justice.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended, especially for today. show less

An incredible collection, covering the wide-ranging scope of King's thinking and analysis, most of which we never hear about since he has been restricted to being a Civil Rights leader only, an important role but much narrower than what he was actually doing. King reflected and commented on the economic system, the U.S. international role, the development of other nations, etc., and his thinking remains germane today.

The only criticism I have of this book is that it needed a thicker show more editorial layer. For instance, many of the texts of his speeches are variations of each other. It would have been useful to have an essay at the beginning of such "chunks" that described the main points he was making, and how and why the speeches were modified for different situations or as his thinking changed. show less