Through this collection of sermons there is struck again and again the note that it is the obligation of Christians to love their enemies, and to pray for those who persecute them. Non-violent, passive resistance to the indignities and injustices imposed upon blacks is the sober counsel of the Rev. Martin Luther King, their leader in the constant struggle for integration and their full rights …
More as citizens. These sermons of Dr. King are earnest and moving, with insights into the meaning of the Bible which greatly illuminate the struggle of the African Americans for recognition of their cause and freedom, and relate their destiny to that of all of God’s children. In fact, omitting the references to the travail and aspirations of his own people they are sermons to speak to every man in his own condition before God, regardless of class or race.  Well constructed and graciously phrased, they truly communicate the Word of God as spoken in Jesus Christ. Compared to any collection of sermons they are well above the ordinary. Coretta Scott King said of this work by King: “I believe…this book best explains his belief in a divine, loving presence that binds all life.”

Why We Can’t Wait
Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. launched the Civil Rights movement and demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. Why We Can’t Wait recounts not only the Birmingham campaign, but also examines the history of the civil rights struggle and the tasks that future generations had to accomplish to bring about full equality for African Americans. Dr. King’s eloquent analysis of these events propelled the Civil Rights movement from lunch counter sit-ins and prayer marches to the forefront of the American consciousness. In this remarkable book, Dr. King offers an eloquent and penetrating analysis of the events and pressures that propelled the Civil Rights movement from lunch counter sit-ins and prayer marches to the forefront of American consciousness.

Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King’s penultimate book provides a snapshot of where we were in 1967. Two turning points had been reached. First, his program of nonviolent direct action was clearly winning the struggle against old fashioned southern segregation, and Dr. King was looking toward the next step. He believed that the next logical step toward setting people free was a massive government program addressing the problem of poverty. He saw need to address poverty as an issue of class not race. Second, within the Civil Rights movement, a “black power” mentality was gaining prominence. Some argued that whites should be excluded from the civil rights movement, and that nonviolence should be abandoned. Dr. King insisted that this approach would only balkanize our country, having disastrous effect, especially on blacks. As with his other books, the King’s brilliance, his scholarship, and his Christian love all come through.

To The Mountaintop
Stewart Burns

To The Mountain is a spiritual history of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement-a history of King’s “sacred mission to save America.” This book reads like a novel and will captivate the reader.  Thoroughly researched, Burns chronicles an extraordinary period in American History. He highlights the spiritual drama which came to define the Civil Rights movement and twentieth–century America. King’s saga of triumph and tragedy, of nobility in the face of despair, of courageous perseverance against all odds, vividly captured in To The Mountaintop, is what heroes are made of and one of the many reasons King has been elevated to sainthood. King and the Movement’s faith in the righteousness of their cause is a testimony to the human will and carries a much-needed message and lesson which is vital in today’s embattled world.

Moreover, To The Mountaintop is more than a story of Marin Luther King; it is the history of transformative decade that changed the course of American and world history. Burns forms his narrative around King, walking the reader through King’s intellectual and spiritual journey from a cautious preacher to a radical moral leader.  King, however, is not portrayed as a lone exalted hero, but as the heart of a fabric of principled leadership that stretches from his closest colleagues to the movement’s foot soldiers.  In brief, To The Mountaintop stresses the shaping of King by other leaders-heroic figures such as Bayard Rustin, Ella baker, James Bevel, bob Moses, and Marin Wright Edelman.

A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Clayborne Carson

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the Civil Rights movement, inspiring generations of Americans and transforming the future of the United States. In his speeches, Dr. King expressed his hope that one day all people, regardless of race or nationality, would be accepted. His belief that nonviolent protest is the key to democracy and his assertion that all humans are created equal are as timeless and powerful today as they were nearly 50 years ago. This collection includes the text of Dr. King’s best-known oration, “I Have a Dream,” his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, and “Beyond Vietnam,” a compelling argument for ending the ongoing conflict. Each speech has an insightful introduction on the current relevance of Dr. King’s words by such renowned defenders of civil rights as Rosa Parks, the Dalai Lama, and Ambassador Andrew Young, among others.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Clayborne Carson

This history-making autobiography is Martin Luther King in his own words: the mild-mannered, inquisitive child and student who chafed under and eventually rebelled against segregation; the dedicated young minister who continually questioned the depths of his faith and the limits of his wisdom; the loving husband and father who sought to balance his family’s needs with those of a growing, nationwide movement; and the reflective, world-famous leader who was fired by a vision of equality for people everywhere.

In original writing and recordings, here at last is Martin Luther King’s unforgettable chronicle of his life and his legacy. Years in the making, and woven together from thousands of recordings and documents, including letters to his family and diary entries, this book is a unique compilation which includes King delivering many rare  sermons, speeches, lectures, and addresses. Highlights include “I Have a Dream,” “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and “The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech.”

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Death And How It Changed America
Michael Eric Dyson

On April 4, 1968, at 6: 01 PM, while he was standing on a balcony at a Memphis hotel, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and fatally wounded. Only hours earlier King, the prophet for racial and economic justice in America, ended his final speech with the words, “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”

Acclaimed public intellectual and best-selling author Michael Eric Dyson uses the fortieth anniversary of King’s assassination as the occasion for a provocative and fresh examination of how King fought, and faced, his own death, and we should use his death and legacy. Dyson also uses this landmark anniversary as the starting point for a comprehensive reevaluation of the fate of Black America over the four decades that followed King’s death. Dyson ambitiously investigates the ways in which African-Americans have in fact made it to the Promised Land of which King spoke, while shining a bright light on the ways in which the nation has faltered in the quest for racial justice. He also probes the virtues and flaws of charismatic black leadership that has followed in King’s wake, from Jesse Jackson to President Barack Obama.
Always engaging and inspiring, “April 4, 1968″ celebrates the prophetic leadership of Dr. King, and challenges America to renew its commitment to his deeply moral vision.

I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr.
Michael Eric Dyson

As the saying goes, there is always a gap between heroes as celebrated and historical reality, but Michael Eric Dyson’s lively and penetrating book I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr. is guaranteed to shock and as well as surprise many readers, revealing a King that has been suppressed and whitewashed with his brilliant analysis of the gap (and the complex reasons for it) as well as the man. The most prominently distorted picture of King is promoted by conservatives, taking a scant 34 words out of context from his “I Have a Dream” speech and using the words to cast King as an opponent of affirmative action. This is easily refuted, since King often endorsed the need for compensatory programs to achieve eventual equality. But Dyson isn’t content with refuting lies; he aims to resurrect a complex and challenging truth in their place.

Dyson reveals King’s plans for the Poor People’s Campaign, a militant non-violent march on Washington aimed at disrupting and shutting down the normal functioning of the federal government until the poor received jobs or income guarantees. Closely related, Dyson states correctly how the more mature King supported and actively advocated for reparations, especially for the black poor. Further substantiating the legacy of King’s agreement with another contemporary fight, Dyson documents the Civil Rights leader’s staunch support for Affirmative Action.

Similarly, in his last three years, as Dyson notes, King moved from exposing a minority of white supremacists to a trenchant declaration that the majority of white Americans are unconscious racists. Consequently, King called for a non-violent revolution of social and economic structures–a shift from reformist integration to full integration into reconfigured systemic power in America. In the international arena, Dyson reveals additional interpretive insight when we discover that King’s anti-Viet Nam war position resulted from his listening to similar voices coming from the black poor.  Finally, the new humanity and the new society, for King, would manifest itself in a Christian-motivated democratic socialism.

King’s Dream
Eric J. Sundquist

“I have a dream” is the refrain by which the speech is known — better known to Americans today than any other speech, even the Gettysburg Address. (In 2008, according to one study, 97 percent of American teenagers recognized the words as King’s.) But for all its familiarity and indisputable greatness, the origins and larger meaning of the speech are not generally understood.

The speech and all that surrounds it — background and consequences — are brought magnificently to life in Eric Sund­quist’s new book, “King’s Dream.” A professor of literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, Sundquist has written about race and ethnicity in American culture. In this book he gives us drama and emotion, a powerful sense of history combined with illuminating scholarship.

A remarkable fact is that the last third of the speech — the part about the dream — was extemporized by King. He had a text, completed the night before. But as he was addressing the crowd, protesting the indignities and brutalities suffered by blacks, he put the prepared speech aside, paused for a moment and then introduced an entirely new theme. The sources of that last third of the speech, fascinatingly explored by Sund­quist, include King’s own previous speeches, Negro spirituals, the Bible. We hear Handel’s “Messiah” when he says, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted.” But of course the words come from the book of Isaiah.

“Speaking suddenly from the heart,” Sundquist writes, “he delivered a speech elegantly structured, commanding in tone, and altogether more profound than anything heard on American soil in nearly a century. In the midst of speaking, King rewrote his speech and created a new national scripture.”

I have a Dream: Writing and Speeches That Changed The World
James M. Washington

In this book, Martin Luther King’s twenty most memorable writings and speeches are presented in a concise and convenient package.  Among the famed civil rights leader’s most influential words included here are the keynote address of the 1963 mach on Washington: the “I Have a Dream’ speech, “Letter form a Birmingham Jail, the essay “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence”, and “I See the Promise Land, ” the sermon he preached the night before he was assassinated.

James M. Washington, the editor of this brilliant work, arranges the selections chronologically, providing headnotes for each selection that give a running history of the Civil rights movement and related events. In his introduction, Washington assesses King’s time and significance.  As Coretta Scott King points our in her Forward, “with the publication of this edition of I Have A Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World, we now have an accessible, yet representative anthology of Martin Luther King’s writings.