I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World
by Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Contains Martin Luther King Jr.'s twenty most memorable writings and speeches.Tags
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As I read this book, I came to appreciate the work of Martin Luther King Jr.. While he was alive, I lived too far away from the South to know what he was about. Now I have met a few people of his race, which made this book much more meaningful.
The part that impressed me the most was his talk criticizing the involvement of the United States in fighting in Vietnam. He made it very clear how wrong what we were doing there was. The following two quotations are from that chapter.
"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing oriented Society to a person oriented Society." (Page 148)
"We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of History are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of show more hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of Nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating Paths of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice [of] life and good against the damning choice of death and Evil." (page 150) show less
The part that impressed me the most was his talk criticizing the involvement of the United States in fighting in Vietnam. He made it very clear how wrong what we were doing there was. The following two quotations are from that chapter.
"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing oriented Society to a person oriented Society." (Page 148)
"We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of History are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of show more hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of Nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating Paths of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice [of] life and good against the damning choice of death and Evil." (page 150) show less
Despite all the falsehoods or truths about the man...his message was clear and timeless. His Letters from a Birmingham Jail leapt into my life and changed me. If you have kids...awaken them to his writings. Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus, and a few others all had a similar message for us. We should try to listen. This is a good intro to Mr. King Jr's writings.
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Author Information
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Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 into a middle-class black family in Atlanta, Georgia. He received a degree from Morehouse College. While there his early concerns for social justice for African Americans were deepened by reading Henry David Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience." He enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary and show more there became acquainted with the Social Gospel movement and the works of its chief spokesman, Walter Rauschenbusch. Mohandas Gandhi's practice of nonviolent resistance (ahimsaahimsa) later became a tactic for transforming love into social change. After seminary, he postponed his ministry vocation by first earning a doctorate at Boston University School of Theology. There he discovered the works of Reinhold Niebuhr and was especially struck by Niebuhr's insistence that the powerless must somehow gain power if they are to achieve what is theirs by right. In the Montgomery bus boycott, it was by economic clout that African Americans broke down the walls separating the races, for without African American riders, the city's transportation system nearly collapsed. The bus boycott took place in 1954, the year King and his bride, Coretta Scott, went to Montgomery, where he had been called to serve as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Following the boycott, he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate civil rights organizations. Working through African American churches, activists led demonstrations all over the South and drew attention, through television and newspaper reports, to the fact that nonviolent demonstrations by blacks were being suppressed violently by white police and state troopers. The federal government was finally forced to intervene and pass legislation protecting the right of African Americans to vote and desegregating public accommodations. For his nonviolent activism, King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. While organizing a "poor people's campaign" to persuade Congress to take action against poverty, King accepted an invitation to visit Memphis, Tennessee, where sanitation workers were on strike. There, on April 4, 1968, he was gunned down while standing on the balcony of his hotel. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards
Notable Lists
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World
- People/Characters
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Important places
- Alabama, USA; Washington, D.C., USA
- Important events
- African-American Civil Rights Movement
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Politics and Government, General Nonfiction, History, Biography & Memoir, Teen
- DDC/MDS
- 323.092 — Society, government, & culture Political science Civil Rights & Liberties/ Human Rights Civil Rights Biography And History Biography
- LCC
- E185.97 .K5 .A25 — History of the United States United States Elements in the population Afro-Americans Biography. Genealogy
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 723
- Popularity
- 39,073
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.47)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 6
