Customer Reviews

The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

When looking for some words of tribute to use at a church function, I recalled the copy of the book sitting amongst others in my home library. No better orator could have been selected than the revered civil rights leader. My presentation went off without and hitch and for that, I thank Dr. King.

This collection is divided into ten sections, with notable commentary by Dr. King:

1. The Community of Man
2. Racism
3. Civil Rights
4. Justice and Freedom
5. Faith and Religion
6. Nonviolence
7. Peace
8. "I've Been to the Mountain Top" (excerpt)
9. "I Have a Dream" (excerpt)
10. Proclamation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by then-President Ronald Reagan

The book begins with a foreward by King's widow, Coretta, and ends with a chronology and sources of the works printed.

I was perusing through my bookshelf today, and stumbled across a very old edition of this book, "The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr."
Well I'd always noticed it here and there - but today I actually read it.

It's fantastic. It's something else. He was a genius before his time - yet he managed to stand up, at the right time.

Each excerpt makes you think. Very deep and moving.

Powerful. I highly recommend this book.

After having read quite abit by and About King over the years, I would recommend this book to anyone, whether they were new to King's philosophies and ideas or a veteran of the movement he helped to create within this country and the world.

This book is a small compilation of quotes from Dr. King's writings and speeches. It's never a bad idea to honor the civil rights leaders and martyrs by reading literature that would again remind us of their struggle.
Through his words we will be reminded of how far we have come:
"I can foresee the Negro vote becoming consistently the decisive vote in national elections." - chapter on Justice and Freedom
Through his words we will be reminded of how far we haven't come:
"...wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." - chapter on Peace

In one sitting, you could read this book in its entirety. As benefactors of his sacrifice, we should spare a few moments of our time to reflect on Dr. King and his enduring legacy.

I thought this would be a collection of his speeches, but it turns out to be something more surprising. This is a collection of words owned by King, and which are rented out to the general public on a yearly basis. The vast estate all of the royalties amount to yearly is said to be vast, and an estate... amounted yearly.
I write the above silliness because King's words, and works, are some of the best there is, period. I believe, maybe wrongfully, that everyone is aware of that, making a review of this book silly in a way.
King was a brilliant writer. His sense of "essay" fantastic.

A remarkable man that gave his life fighting for equality for African Americans in the U.S., Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. His wife, Coretta Scott King, wrote the introduction and selected nearly 120 quotes that chronicle his fight for freedom. There are excerpts from his "I Have A Dream" speech that always brings tears to my eyes. Then the other quotes will make you think about how far have we really come. After reading you will thank God for such a compilation of words. I'm encouraged and ready to volunteer for freedom.

Every family, especially with young children, should have this little book in its home. I thought and read a lot about Martin Luther King (MLK) Jr. and his ideas. Still, as I read this little book, I could not stop wondering what I would have been able to accomplish had I read the messages of this book when I was younger. Regrets aside, I feel so calmly inspired to do something good for someone else! After all, "Life's most persistent and urgent question is, `What are you doing for others?' . " Moreover, to serve others "you only need a heart full of grace, [and] a soul generated by love" (p. 17).

All seven chapters of the book are insightful, and the introduction and chronology of events before and after the death of Dr. King, Jr are equally valuable reading. It is hard, very hard ,to read the `I've been to the mountain top' and `I have a dream' speeches without a lump of sadness in one's throat. But in reading the "Proclamation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1986" as a national public holiday by President Ronald Reagan , one gets a sense that America has finally turned into a more inclusive direction for all its people. The election of Barrack Obama to the US Presidency is a further step in the same direction. A fascinating, inspirational, some time very deep reading. Highly recommended!

Amavilah, Author
Modeling Determinants of Income in Embedded Economies
ISBN: 1600210465

ISBN: 1600210465
Quotable Arthur Schopenhauer
ISBN: 9781430324959

Concerned Retrospection

This is a unique collection of Dr. King's most penetrating insights. It tracks his moral progression and intellectual maturity from when he was mostly concerned about the injustices in the South, to larger and deeper concerns about racism and poverty in America more generally, and in the world at large. It is well known that towards the end of his life he had also embraced the peace movement and became a force for ending the Vietnam War. In this collection one will also see how his views on the war had begun to coalesce and gel with his other humanitarian concerns. Dr. King was no lightweight. He drank deep and kept his moral compass on alert at all times.

Reading Mrs Coretta Scott King's excellent introduction and summary of the major events in Dr. King's life, which itself encompasses the whole of the Civil Rights era, brought back uncertain memories and raised new questions about the goals and tactics of the Civil Rights movement of the past era, including the non-violent aspects of it. In my family only my Grandmother, Mrs. Lula Brown, and I participated in the sit-ins at the local Pine Bluff, Arkansas Woolworth's Lunch Counter. The non-violent movement was coordinated through St. James AME Methodist Church, which was about 8-10 blocks from downtown. Each day, the cowardly "good old boys" knowing that they could throw acid from the backs of their pickups with impunity never failed to show up from the countryside to do so. That is until, violating the non-violent protocol I had been so carefully taught, I snatched one of them off the bed of the truck and began to plummet him. He was terrified, as well he should have been. At great embarrassment, I was kicked out of the non-violent movement.

But the point of this story is that neither my Grandmother nor I ever ate at the Woolworth's lunch counter once it was "integrated." And that is the nature of my concerned retrospection: All the symbolism aside, why, when discrimination in jobs, education, etc. were so much more important, were we getting acid throw in our faces to eat at a place from which, none of us would elect to eat in any case? Even 50 years later, the utter narrowness of the goals we had set for ourselves in the sit-in movement still seems to betray a serious commitment (beyond symbolism) to what our collective community needs really were. This mismatch between means and ends has bothered me ever since being kicked out of the movement.

One can argue that sit-ins were the straw that broke the back of segregation. But was it? Arguably, the forces of resistance simply move the front lines back a few yards and turned their resistance in to a much more serious political movement. The "old Southern Dixicrats" are now called "conservative Republicans." In the mean time Dr. King has been assassinated and we are left singing his praises with no programs, no movement, put plenty of lunch counters to eat at.

Three Stars.