In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Resources We’re Sharing With Our Teams
“The racial issue that we confront in America is not a sectional but a national problem. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Therefore, no American can afford to be apathetic about the problem of racial justice.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. remains one of the most influential Black leaders in history. But for far too long many of us as Americans have celebrated a whitewashed interpretation of him that was grounded in an illusion that his anti-racism work was done. King was a lawbreaker, a protester—challenging norms and speaking about resistance and strength just as often as he preached love. By studying his words, we can learn how to truly advocate for social justice. In turn, we can pay tribute to him through action.
This Monday, January 18th, is Martin Luther King Jr. Day (his actual birthday is Friday January 15th). Here, we pay tribute to him by sharing ways to listen, watch, and learn—all of which we learned from him.
Watch + Listen + Read
Freedom's Ring: "I Have a Dream" Speech
“Freedom’s Ring” is an especially powerful resource because it presents the entirety of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech in an interactive, multimedia format. An audio recording of the speech is complemented by illustrated text that highlights certain passages. There are also links in the text that lead to all sorts of rich resources that we, as students, can use to gain a better understanding of the speech’s content.
“Freedom’s Ring” was supported by the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford, which is run by Dr. Clayborne Carson. Dr. Carson has been the director since 1985 and was personally chosen by King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, to run the Martin Luther King Papers Project. For teachers, the King Institute also has lesson plans, the Liberation Curriculum, the Martin Luther King Encyclopedia, as well as the King Papers, all of which are accessible online.
Listen
A podcast inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., and his vision of a just and peaceful world. Listen to Dr. Clayborne Carson, director of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, and Dr. Mira Foster, director of the Liberation Curriculum, as they talk about anything and everything related to Martin Luther King Jr. and the freedom struggles he inspired.
A collection of some speeches compiled on Spotify:
Racism and Injustice,- Martin Luther King, from the Civil Rights Leader album
His Final Speech from April 3, 1968
Civil Rights vs. Social Privilege
Read
Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, by US Department of State, marked with CC PDM 1.0
“Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.”
Coretta Scott King was a lifelong advocate for oppressed and underrepresented people the world over who is deserving of recognition in its own right. She was a mother, a wife, a civil rights activist, a passionate speaker, and an organizer.
Her son, Martin Luther King Jr. III spoke of her conviction and strength following his father’s assassination:
“In 1968 Dad was killed on April 4th, which was a Thursday, and on April 8th, which was a Monday, he was to have led a march in Memphis, Tennessee. My mother took the 3 older ones of my siblings—my older sister Yolanda, Dexter, and I—and went to Memphis and she led that march. We came back home on the 9th to have my father’s funeral. Now what’s amazing about that is that no one had been apprehended for killing Dad, it was a very turbulent time, over 100 cities had gone up in flames after my Dad was killed and yet my Mom stayed diligent and was courageous enough to go to Memphis and lead that march. To me that is most incredible because her husband had just been killed.”
In 1983, Coretta Scott King saw her 15 years of lobbying finally come to fruition with an Act of Congress that made the third Monday of every January Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”