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A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Here, in the only major one-volume collection of his writings, speeches, interviews, and autobiographical reflections, is Martin Luther King Jr. on non-violence, social policy, integration, black nationalism, the ethics of love and hope, and more.
702 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Martin Luther King Jr.
408 books3,419 followersMartin Luther King, Jr. was one of the pivotal leaders of the American civil rights movement. King was a Baptist minister, one of the few leadership roles available to black men at the time. He became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957), serving as its first president. His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Here he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.
King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a national holiday in the United States in 1986. In 2004, King was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.
King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a national holiday in the United States in 1986. In 2004, King was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 125 reviews
September 30, 2007
i hadn't read 90% of these before. it's too bad that really the only thing most people have heard from King is his "I Have a Dream Speech", because although historically important, there are so many even better things that he wrote and spoke about.
especially good were many of the writings that he did near the end of his life. King did not shrink from deeply questioning capitalism, poverty, and the U.S. military's campaigns around the world. King's campaigns in these areas were just beginning to take off during the last few years of his life. i wonder what impact he could have had on poor people's movements and labor movements were he not killed so early in his life.
these speeches are important reading not just for people who want to get to know King's mind more thoroughly, but also for those of us who really need some inspiration as both the right and left continue to disappoint us. many of his writings are sadly relevant as we face many of the same social and political challenges today.
especially good were many of the writings that he did near the end of his life. King did not shrink from deeply questioning capitalism, poverty, and the U.S. military's campaigns around the world. King's campaigns in these areas were just beginning to take off during the last few years of his life. i wonder what impact he could have had on poor people's movements and labor movements were he not killed so early in his life.
these speeches are important reading not just for people who want to get to know King's mind more thoroughly, but also for those of us who really need some inspiration as both the right and left continue to disappoint us. many of his writings are sadly relevant as we face many of the same social and political challenges today.
January 25, 2025
Martin Luther King's Testament Of Hope
First published in 1986, "A Testament of Hope" remains the most comprehensive single-volume edition of the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. The book consists of 57 selections from King's books, essays,sermons, speeches, and interviews, all of which work to give a broad picture of the thinking and accomplishments of this great American civil rights leader.
The book includes works of King that many readers will find familiar including the "I have a Dream" speech delivered in August, 1963 on the Washington Mall, but it includes many writings that remain difficult to find, even in more recent anthologies.
The work is divided into five broad parts, with King's writings arranged chronologically within each part. Part I covers King's philosophy and is divided into three sections, the first of which includes King's thoughts on religion and on nonviolence as a means of social activism and as a way of life. The second section of the part includes King's thoughts on social philosophy, centering on the struggle for integration and on the crucial factor of human dignity. The third section is devoted to political themes, including the pace and nature of the civil rights movement in both North and South and on black nationalism. An essay new to me that I learned from was "Hammer on Civil Rights" (1964) which offers a history of civil rights action and stresses the need for continued vigorous activity in the North as well as in the South.
Part II of the volume includes 13 famous speeches King delivered between 1957 and 1968 on many subjects ranging from the right to vote, the dignity of labor, the "I have a Dream" speech, King's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, his "Drum Major Instinct" speech and his passionate, impromptu speech "I have seen the Promised Land" delivered on April 3, 1968, the evening before his assassination.
Part III consists of three important essays, including 1963's "Letter from Birmingham City Jail", an extended consideration of the Black Power movement, and "A Testament of Hope", which gives the title to this volume, a lengthy essay not published until after King's death.
Part IV of the book includes four illuminating interviews which are not easily accessible elsewhere. The selections include a lengthy, revealing discussion King had with interviewers from "Playboy" magazine in 1965.
The book's final section includes substantial excerpts from each of King's own five published books, "Stride Toward Freedom", "The Strength to Love", "Why We Can't Wait", Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?", and "The Trumpet of Conscience".
In addition to the breadth of the selections, this book features an introduction by the volume's editor James M Washington, formerly Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary and Adjunct Professor of Religion at Columbia University. Washington wrote many works on the history of African American religious experience. His introduction to this anthology of Martin Luther King stresses the historical role African American religion played in King's thought. Washington stresses eloquently King's "monumental contribution to the moral, social, political, and spiritual history of the twentieth century."
This volume on King's "Testament of Hope" is an excellent way to explore King's thinking and action in the areas of social justice, freedom, human dignity, and religion.
Robin Friedman
First published in 1986, "A Testament of Hope" remains the most comprehensive single-volume edition of the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. The book consists of 57 selections from King's books, essays,sermons, speeches, and interviews, all of which work to give a broad picture of the thinking and accomplishments of this great American civil rights leader.
The book includes works of King that many readers will find familiar including the "I have a Dream" speech delivered in August, 1963 on the Washington Mall, but it includes many writings that remain difficult to find, even in more recent anthologies.
The work is divided into five broad parts, with King's writings arranged chronologically within each part. Part I covers King's philosophy and is divided into three sections, the first of which includes King's thoughts on religion and on nonviolence as a means of social activism and as a way of life. The second section of the part includes King's thoughts on social philosophy, centering on the struggle for integration and on the crucial factor of human dignity. The third section is devoted to political themes, including the pace and nature of the civil rights movement in both North and South and on black nationalism. An essay new to me that I learned from was "Hammer on Civil Rights" (1964) which offers a history of civil rights action and stresses the need for continued vigorous activity in the North as well as in the South.
Part II of the volume includes 13 famous speeches King delivered between 1957 and 1968 on many subjects ranging from the right to vote, the dignity of labor, the "I have a Dream" speech, King's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, his "Drum Major Instinct" speech and his passionate, impromptu speech "I have seen the Promised Land" delivered on April 3, 1968, the evening before his assassination.
Part III consists of three important essays, including 1963's "Letter from Birmingham City Jail", an extended consideration of the Black Power movement, and "A Testament of Hope", which gives the title to this volume, a lengthy essay not published until after King's death.
Part IV of the book includes four illuminating interviews which are not easily accessible elsewhere. The selections include a lengthy, revealing discussion King had with interviewers from "Playboy" magazine in 1965.
The book's final section includes substantial excerpts from each of King's own five published books, "Stride Toward Freedom", "The Strength to Love", "Why We Can't Wait", Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?", and "The Trumpet of Conscience".
In addition to the breadth of the selections, this book features an introduction by the volume's editor James M Washington, formerly Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary and Adjunct Professor of Religion at Columbia University. Washington wrote many works on the history of African American religious experience. His introduction to this anthology of Martin Luther King stresses the historical role African American religion played in King's thought. Washington stresses eloquently King's "monumental contribution to the moral, social, political, and spiritual history of the twentieth century."
This volume on King's "Testament of Hope" is an excellent way to explore King's thinking and action in the areas of social justice, freedom, human dignity, and religion.
Robin Friedman
May 7, 2016
Martin Luther King Jr. has been sanitized. White-washed. Reduced to a single, ostensibly innocuous phrase that fails to make privileged folks uncomfortable. As Cornel West has said many times before, American political society, and particularly white political society, has sterilized the radically love-oriented philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so that his legacy is palatable and, one might say, unthreatening. As Keith Miller succinctly states in his book, Martin Luther King’s Biblical Epic, “Through some strange alchemy, many now remember the most controversial figure of the 1960s—a decade overflowing with controversies—little more than a walking marble statue or an African American Santa Claus.” The King who spoke of the triple-evils of racism, materialism, and militarism, who quite publicly denounced the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War, who organized the Poor People’s Campaign just months prior to his death, and who called for a universal basic income to alleviate poverty, has nearly been forgotten. This is problematic, not merely because such sanitization fails to reflect accurate history, but, more importantly, because King’s vision of beloved community, his principled stance on nonviolence resistance, and the social justice strategies he endorsed and implemented can, if properly understood, be of the utmost use to contemporary social justice advocates and movements. “Studying King is valuable for anyone,” Miller says, but “comprehending King’s oratory is particularly important for organizers undertaking other large-scale mass movements aimed at, for example, preventing genocide, dismantling nuclear weapons, ending global warming, halting ill-conceived wars, feeding masses of starving children, preserving endangered species, or stopping HIV-AIDS.” A Testament of Hope, the most comprehensive—and affordable—collection of Martin Luther King’s speeches, essays, interviews, and book excerpts, offers the burgeoning social justice advocate and serious scholar of King almost all of the necessary tools for beginning to understand “the most controversial figure of the 1960s” and his involvement in the civil rights movement.
James Washington divides A Testament of Hope into five major sections: “Philosophy,” “Famous Sermons and Public Addresses,” “Historic Essays,” “Interviews,” and “Books,” the last of which includes considerable portions of King’s monographs like Stride Toward Freedom, The Strength to Love, and Where Do We Go From Here. Thus, A Testament of Hope provides readers with a glimpse into King’s more academic musings, the brilliant rhetoric of his sermons, his keen speaking ability, and his carefully constructed arguments for social justice. Before each selection, Washington incorporates brief introductions that contextualize King’s writings both historically and politically, so that one never misses whom King is speaking to or what’s his purpose. Moreover, Washington includes a handy bibliography at the end of the book that one can plumb successfully for secondary literature on King. Unfortunately, Washington occasionally excerpts considerable portions of some of King’s most notable speeches. For instance, he quite unnecessarily extracts King’s historical analysis explaining the root causes of Jim Crow segregation in “Our God is Marching On,” delivered on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery after the Selma march. Sometimes, King’s speeches are transcribed poorly as well. In that same speech, Washington has King say, “The arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” when he most certainly said “arc,” not “arm.” Nevertheless, despite these minor flaws, Washington has completed a colossal academic task with A Testament of Hope, one that will serve both admirers of King and serious scholars alike.
Some reviewers, like Mike Tierce of West Georgia College, have lamented the extensive repetition found in A Testament of Hope. After all, King delivered thousands of speeches, many of which included similar themes, or even the same words King used in published essays and articles. These same themes and phrases typically made their way into King’s books as well, so that readers encounter whole paragraphs two, three, or even four times over in A Testament of Hope. While Washington could have cut down on this repetition, it nevertheless serves an important purpose. As a publicly renown social justice advocate, King needed to consistently stay on message in order to reach as many people as possible. At a time when social media was essentially non-existent, this was critically important to the success of the civil rights movement. So, despite King’s own irritation with this practice—“It is a great frustration to have to rehash old stuff again and again”—he understood its utility. Even now, when a tweet, Facebook status, or YouTube video can reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people within a few days, keeping one’s social justice message consistent in front of varied audiences is still valuable, and even necessary, for raising awareness and influencing legislation. Reading the same arguments—and they’re good arguments, which is why he kept using them—made by King over the course of the civil rights movement makes this apparent.
When one studies the essays, speeches, and sermons found in A Testament of Hope, one cannot help but recognize the wide range of issues with which Dr. King concerned himself intimately. Even in the first months of the Montgomery bus boycott, King spoke not only of racial injustice, but economic empowerment: “We are aware that Montgomery’s white businessmen have tried to ‘talk sense’ to the bus company and the city commissioners . . . We have a new respect for the proper use of our dollar.” It should come as no surprise, then, that King spoke and wrote more on the moral economy and the indignities of material deprivation in the last half-decade of his life. In Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, King’s last book, he even goes so far as to call for a guaranteed livable income, “pegged to the median income of society,” which he contends should replace our current welfare system. In this, he predates prominent libertarians like Philippe Van Parijs and Milton Friedman, both of whom have called for a similar, if less radical, basic income for all. A Testament of Hope also includes a number of selections in which King criticizes the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, which he characterizes as an unjust, imperialist “adventure” that channels funds away from anti-poverty programs, disproportionately affects African Americans, and terrorizes the Vietnamese people. While King’s opposition to the Vietnam War was well-noted and controversial in his lifetime, school textbooks hardly touch upon it now. Finally, King’s unequivocal advocacy for nonviolent resistance features prominently throughout A Testament of Hope. Rooted in the concept of agape, one of the Greek words for love that King describes as “understanding, creative, [and] redemptive good will for all men,” nonviolent resistance stood at the center of the civil rights movement for many years, as it was favored by King’s Southern Christian Leadership Council and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In fact, he was so committed to nonviolence that he even saw it as a viable alternative to armed conflict on the international stage. Where’s that in the textbooks?
Perhaps more than anything else, King’s Christianity has been effectively erased from elementary school discussions, celebrations on Martin Luther King Day, and political discourse that references his ideals and vision. Like his stance on poverty, the Vietnam War, and nonviolent resistance, King’s Christianity is radical—by conservative, evangelical standards, at least—insofar as it reflects the radical love espoused by Jesus in the synoptic Gospels and the prophetic vision of the Jewish prophets in the Hebrew Testament. The erasure of this radical, love-oriented worldview is particularly egregious because it stands at the heart of everything King wrote, said, and did. “Deeply woven into the fiber of our religious tradition,” he says, “is the conviction that men are made in the image of God, and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value.” This is what gives people dignity, and this is why we are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Arguably, one cannot truly comprehend King, his philosophy, or his social justice strategies without first understanding his thoroughly Christian conception of love. A Testament of Hope offers the material needed for such an endeavor, as it appropriately features a number of speeches and sermons in which King’s Christianity is on full display. As such, A Testament of Hope will stand as the foremost anthology of Martin Luther King’s thought for some time. Its selections really are “essential,” as they serve to re-invigorate the revolutionary legacy left behind by one of the most influential preachers, social justice advocates, philosophers, theologians, and Christians in world history.
James Washington divides A Testament of Hope into five major sections: “Philosophy,” “Famous Sermons and Public Addresses,” “Historic Essays,” “Interviews,” and “Books,” the last of which includes considerable portions of King’s monographs like Stride Toward Freedom, The Strength to Love, and Where Do We Go From Here. Thus, A Testament of Hope provides readers with a glimpse into King’s more academic musings, the brilliant rhetoric of his sermons, his keen speaking ability, and his carefully constructed arguments for social justice. Before each selection, Washington incorporates brief introductions that contextualize King’s writings both historically and politically, so that one never misses whom King is speaking to or what’s his purpose. Moreover, Washington includes a handy bibliography at the end of the book that one can plumb successfully for secondary literature on King. Unfortunately, Washington occasionally excerpts considerable portions of some of King’s most notable speeches. For instance, he quite unnecessarily extracts King’s historical analysis explaining the root causes of Jim Crow segregation in “Our God is Marching On,” delivered on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery after the Selma march. Sometimes, King’s speeches are transcribed poorly as well. In that same speech, Washington has King say, “The arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” when he most certainly said “arc,” not “arm.” Nevertheless, despite these minor flaws, Washington has completed a colossal academic task with A Testament of Hope, one that will serve both admirers of King and serious scholars alike.
Some reviewers, like Mike Tierce of West Georgia College, have lamented the extensive repetition found in A Testament of Hope. After all, King delivered thousands of speeches, many of which included similar themes, or even the same words King used in published essays and articles. These same themes and phrases typically made their way into King’s books as well, so that readers encounter whole paragraphs two, three, or even four times over in A Testament of Hope. While Washington could have cut down on this repetition, it nevertheless serves an important purpose. As a publicly renown social justice advocate, King needed to consistently stay on message in order to reach as many people as possible. At a time when social media was essentially non-existent, this was critically important to the success of the civil rights movement. So, despite King’s own irritation with this practice—“It is a great frustration to have to rehash old stuff again and again”—he understood its utility. Even now, when a tweet, Facebook status, or YouTube video can reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people within a few days, keeping one’s social justice message consistent in front of varied audiences is still valuable, and even necessary, for raising awareness and influencing legislation. Reading the same arguments—and they’re good arguments, which is why he kept using them—made by King over the course of the civil rights movement makes this apparent.
When one studies the essays, speeches, and sermons found in A Testament of Hope, one cannot help but recognize the wide range of issues with which Dr. King concerned himself intimately. Even in the first months of the Montgomery bus boycott, King spoke not only of racial injustice, but economic empowerment: “We are aware that Montgomery’s white businessmen have tried to ‘talk sense’ to the bus company and the city commissioners . . . We have a new respect for the proper use of our dollar.” It should come as no surprise, then, that King spoke and wrote more on the moral economy and the indignities of material deprivation in the last half-decade of his life. In Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, King’s last book, he even goes so far as to call for a guaranteed livable income, “pegged to the median income of society,” which he contends should replace our current welfare system. In this, he predates prominent libertarians like Philippe Van Parijs and Milton Friedman, both of whom have called for a similar, if less radical, basic income for all. A Testament of Hope also includes a number of selections in which King criticizes the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, which he characterizes as an unjust, imperialist “adventure” that channels funds away from anti-poverty programs, disproportionately affects African Americans, and terrorizes the Vietnamese people. While King’s opposition to the Vietnam War was well-noted and controversial in his lifetime, school textbooks hardly touch upon it now. Finally, King’s unequivocal advocacy for nonviolent resistance features prominently throughout A Testament of Hope. Rooted in the concept of agape, one of the Greek words for love that King describes as “understanding, creative, [and] redemptive good will for all men,” nonviolent resistance stood at the center of the civil rights movement for many years, as it was favored by King’s Southern Christian Leadership Council and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In fact, he was so committed to nonviolence that he even saw it as a viable alternative to armed conflict on the international stage. Where’s that in the textbooks?
Perhaps more than anything else, King’s Christianity has been effectively erased from elementary school discussions, celebrations on Martin Luther King Day, and political discourse that references his ideals and vision. Like his stance on poverty, the Vietnam War, and nonviolent resistance, King’s Christianity is radical—by conservative, evangelical standards, at least—insofar as it reflects the radical love espoused by Jesus in the synoptic Gospels and the prophetic vision of the Jewish prophets in the Hebrew Testament. The erasure of this radical, love-oriented worldview is particularly egregious because it stands at the heart of everything King wrote, said, and did. “Deeply woven into the fiber of our religious tradition,” he says, “is the conviction that men are made in the image of God, and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value.” This is what gives people dignity, and this is why we are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Arguably, one cannot truly comprehend King, his philosophy, or his social justice strategies without first understanding his thoroughly Christian conception of love. A Testament of Hope offers the material needed for such an endeavor, as it appropriately features a number of speeches and sermons in which King’s Christianity is on full display. As such, A Testament of Hope will stand as the foremost anthology of Martin Luther King’s thought for some time. Its selections really are “essential,” as they serve to re-invigorate the revolutionary legacy left behind by one of the most influential preachers, social justice advocates, philosophers, theologians, and Christians in world history.
July 19, 2011
I'm really enjoying getting to know Martin Luther King, Jr. better. This has also given me a better understanding of the non-violent, passive resistance movement. It is reinforcing my feelings that somehow we need to find a solution to our class problems here in the US. It also reminded me of the fact that although legislation declares rights, it doesn't deliver them. I'm so glad that people, leaders and forces came together in the 60's to start a long-needed movement for civil rights for blacks.
It's interesting to compare Martin Luther King's desire for complete integration with the black movement following his martyrdom--that of black equality, but separatism. It's all such a complicated subject!
One other item . . . reading this made me think of what would have happened if Martin Luther King had not been killed. For a number of reasons--his anti-Viet Nam sentiment among them--he was falling out of favor in the black community, even among his own Southern Leadership Christian Conference. Once martyred, he ascended into immortality. If he hadn't become a martyred hero, would he be as well known today? I'd know about him, but would my children? Other than as a small part of the civil rights movement? Would we have MLK Day? Or just a civil rights day? Or none? Interesting to think about.
It's interesting to compare Martin Luther King's desire for complete integration with the black movement following his martyrdom--that of black equality, but separatism. It's all such a complicated subject!
One other item . . . reading this made me think of what would have happened if Martin Luther King had not been killed. For a number of reasons--his anti-Viet Nam sentiment among them--he was falling out of favor in the black community, even among his own Southern Leadership Christian Conference. Once martyred, he ascended into immortality. If he hadn't become a martyred hero, would he be as well known today? I'd know about him, but would my children? Other than as a small part of the civil rights movement? Would we have MLK Day? Or just a civil rights day? Or none? Interesting to think about.
July 12, 2025
I've read his inspirational autobiography several times, particularly at moments of difficulties. After a recent setback, I read again "The Strength to Love" and "A Testament of Hope." MLK's mastery over words revived my love and restituted my hope. Everyone deserves a second chance. What works for me, in all of MLK's writings, is this: his words grab my heart, talk to my brain, appeal to my senses.
March 6, 2023
I read an essay by June Jordan on Martin Luther King recently, and I realized that I haven't read a proper book by him. Of course, I have read words spoken by him and have seen others quote him, but I haven't read a book by him. So I looked around and found this book and picked it up, and I've been reading it for the past few weeks. I finished reading it yesterday. I read it for #BlackHistoryMonth
'A Testament of Hope' is a collection of Martin Luther King's important essays, speeches, interviews, and excerpts from his books. It has something of everything and it seemed to be the best one-volume collection out there and is a beautiful introduction to his work. The first part of the book has essays by King in which he describes his philosophy of nonviolent protests. It has one of the most beautiful descriptions of the philosophy of nonviolent protests that I've ever read. He talks about the three words for love in Greek, eros, philia, and agape, and it made me smile, because it took me back in time, to my teenage years, when I first encountered these three words. King also talks about how Gandhi pioneered the use of nonviolent methods to fight against oppression. There is even an essay on his trip to India, which was insightful to read. Throughout this part of the book, King also talks about the struggle against segregation, the fight for integration, and how equality can be achieved by peaceful, nonviolent means. One of my favourite essays of his was 'Letter from Birmingham City Jail'.
The second part of the book has many of his famous speeches and sermons. I think all his famous speeches are there, including 'I Have a Dream', 'The Drum Major Instinct', and 'I See the Promised Land'. Martin Luther King was a powerful speaker, and all his speeches were inspiring. My favourites were 'The American Dream', 'The Drum Major Instinct', and 'A Time to Break Silence', his famous protest and condemnation of the American government for its role in the Vietnam war. One of the things I was looking forward to, while reading his speeches and other parts of the book, was to find where his most famous lines made their first appearance. My most favourite quote of his, and probably the most famous lines he ever spoke, is 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice'. I found it in many places, in his essays, speeches, book excerpts. It was lots of fun to spot it.
There were five interviews in the interviews section of the book, and my favourite out of them was the Playboy interview. Playboy is a magazine which is famous for its centrefold pictures, but Playboy also has a serious side, and it has featured wonderful interviews with important people. This interview was very detailed and insightful and beautiful.
The book section had excerpts from all his books. My favourite was 'Stride Toward Freedom', which was about the Montgomery bus protests. 'The Strength of Love' is a collection of sermons and there was one sermon in it called 'A Knock at Midnight' which was incredibly beautiful.
One of the things I loved about Martin Luther King was that he didn't shy away from difficult questions and didn't try to sweep things below the carpet. He answered these questions precisely and clearly. In one of the interviews, he is asked about whether nonviolence will continue to be effective as in recent times protestors have started resorting to violence after being influenced by the Black Power movement. The reply he gives to that is one of the best defences of the nonviolent movement that I've read. In another interview, a Jewish Rabbi asks him about why some of the black leaders are anti-Semitic and whether the overall African-American community is anti-Semitic. The answer he gives to this tricky question (in cricket parlance, it was a total bouncer or a googly) is one of the best parts of the book. As we say in cricket, Well played, MLK! 😊
I loved 'A Testament of Hope'. It is one of the most important books I've read in my life, and definitely one of my favourite books of the year. It was 700 pages of pure inspiration which gave me goosebumps all the time. I read it from the first page to the last, like a regular book, but I feel now that it is a book which is best read a few pages at a time, one essay at a time, with time spent after that in thinking and contemplation. I think that is the best way to get the maximum pleasure and learning out of the book. The book has a beautiful introduction by the editor James Melvin Washington, which talks about Martin Luther King and his life, and puts this book in context.
Martin Luther King was a soft-spoken, gentle preacher who suddenly emerged as a civil rights leader in 1955 during the Montgomery bus protests. He was 26 years old at that time and he was virtually unknown. In the space of a little more than a year, he emerged as a national and international icon and as a leader who fought for the rights of the oppressed through peaceful means. Fame, awards, and glory followed, including the Nobel Peace Prize, which he was the youngest to win. He didn't rest on his laurels and continued his crusade and fought for the rights of his people, gently and nonviolently. He died when he was 39, when a mad man shot him, when he was planning a new nonviolent crusade the next day. He was still so young, with a rich future ahead. It is amazing to contemplate on the unbelievable things that he accomplished in this short span of 13 years. It also feels sad to contemplate on what he might have accomplished if he had lived a long life. Out of the three great nonviolent crusaders of the 20th century who fought against oppression and for the rights of their people – Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela – two were assassinated by mad men. I don't know why people hate gentle souls who favour peace over war, and love over hate. Only Nelson Mandela survived as he managed to come out of prison and see off the apartheid era and take his country to a new age.
It is hard to believe that once upon a time a gentle soul like Martin Luther King walked on this earth, spread the message of peace and love while fighting for the oppressed, and accomplished great things. We are in his debt.
It is hard to choose a few favourite passages from a book like this, because the whole book was so beautiful and inspiring. As John Updike once said, "Just as the impossibly ideal map would be the same size as the territory mapped, the ideal review would quote the book in its entirety, without comment." This is that kind of book. But I can't inflict it on you and quote the whole book to you. So I'm just sharing some of my favourite passages here. Hope they'll inspire you to read the book.
Quotes from 'A Testament of Hope' by MLK
Three Kinds of Love
"Now when the students talk about love, certainly they are not talking about emotional bosh, they are not talking about merely sentimental outpouring; they're talking something much deeper, and I always have to stop and try to define the meaning of love in this context. The Greek language comes to our aid in trying to deal with this. There are three words in the Greek language for love; one is the word eros. This is a beautiful type of love, it is an aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal in his Dialogue, the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. It has come to us to be a sort romantic love, and so in a sense we have read about it and experienced it. We've read about it in all the beauties of literature. I guess in a sense Edgar Allen Poe was talking about eros when he talked about his beautiful Annabelle Lee, with the love surrounded by the halo of eternity. In a sense Shakespeare was talking about eros when he said "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove; O'no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken, it is the star to every wandering bark." (You know, I remember that because I used to quote it to this little lady when we were courting; that's eros.) The Greek language talks about philia which was another level of love. It is an intimate affection between personal friends, it is a reciprocal love. On this level you love because you are loved. It is friendship.
Then the Greek language comes with another word which is called the agape. Agape is more than romantic love, agape is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive, good will to all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. So that when one rises to love on this level, he loves men not because he likes them, not because their ways appeal him, but he loves every man because God loves him. And he rises to the point of loving the person who does an evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. I think this is what Jesus meant when he said "love your enemies." I'm very happy that he didn't say like your enemies, because it is pretty difficult to like some people. Like is sentimental, and it is pretty difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights. But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemp- tive, creative, good will for all men. And it is this idea, it is this whole ethic of love which is the idea standing at the basis of the student movement."
On Being Maladjusted
"There are certain technical words which tend to become stereotypes and cliches after a certain period of time. Psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word "maladjusted." In a sense all of us must live the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the inequalities of an economic system which takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence.
It may be that the salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted. The challenge to us is to be maladjusted – as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, "Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream"; as maladjusted as Lincoln, who had the who had the vision to see that this nation cannot survive half slave half free; as maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out in words lifted to cosmic proportions. "All men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit Happiness"; as maladjusted as Jesus who could say to the men and women of his generation, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you."
The world is in desperate need of such maladjustment. Through such courageous maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom justice."
Roget's Thesaurus
"Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seem ugly and degrading. In Roget's Thesaurus there are 120 synonyms for blackness and at least sixty of them are offensive, as for example, blot, soot, grim, devil and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity and innocence. A white lie is better than a black lie. The most degenerate member of a family is a "black sheep." Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced teach the black child sixty ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of inferiority, and the white child 134 ways to adore himself, and thereby perpetuating his false sense of superiority."
The Bootstrap Philosophy
"Now there is another myth that still gets around; it is a kind of overreliance on the bootstrap philosophy. There are those who still feel that if the African-American is to rise out of poverty, if the African-American is to rise out of slum conditions, if he is to rise out of discrimination and segregation, he must do it all by himself. And so they say the African-American must lift himself by his own bootstraps.
They never stop to realize that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. The people who say this never stop to realize that the nation made the black man's color a stigma; but beyond this they never stop to realize the debt that they owe a people who were kept in slavery 244 years.
In 1863 the African-American was told that he was free as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation being signed by Abraham Lincoln. But he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful. It was something like keeping a person in prison for a number years and suddenly discovering that that person is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. And you just go up to him and say, "Now you are free," but you don't give him any bus fare to get to town. You don't give him any money to get some clothes to put on his back or to get on his feet again in life.
Every court of jurisprudence would rise up against this and yet this is the very thing that our nation did to the black man. It simply said, "You're free," and left him there penniless, illiterate, not knowing what to do. And the irony of it all is that at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the black man – through an act Congress it was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest – which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.
But not only did it give the land, it built land-grant colleges to teach them how to farm. Not only that, it provided county agents to further their expertise in farming; not only that, as the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms. And to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every year not to farm. And these are so often the very people who tell African-Americans that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps. It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps."
On the Vietnam War
"And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think if them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know them and to hear their broken cries.
They must see the Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people weren't ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned international atmosphere for so long.
For nine years following 1945 we vigorously supported the French in their abortive attempt to recolonize Vietnam. After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva Agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops, who came help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown, they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us – not their fellow Vietnamese – the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know that they must move or be destroyed by our bombs, and they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops, and they wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American fire power to one Viet-Cong inflicted injury. They wander into the towns and see thousands of children homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think, as we ally ourselves with the landlords, and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions : the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in crushing one of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political forces, the United Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators!
Now there is little left to build on – save bitterness. And soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these; could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them, and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers."
Have you read 'A Testament of Hope'? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite Martin Luther King quote?
'A Testament of Hope' is a collection of Martin Luther King's important essays, speeches, interviews, and excerpts from his books. It has something of everything and it seemed to be the best one-volume collection out there and is a beautiful introduction to his work. The first part of the book has essays by King in which he describes his philosophy of nonviolent protests. It has one of the most beautiful descriptions of the philosophy of nonviolent protests that I've ever read. He talks about the three words for love in Greek, eros, philia, and agape, and it made me smile, because it took me back in time, to my teenage years, when I first encountered these three words. King also talks about how Gandhi pioneered the use of nonviolent methods to fight against oppression. There is even an essay on his trip to India, which was insightful to read. Throughout this part of the book, King also talks about the struggle against segregation, the fight for integration, and how equality can be achieved by peaceful, nonviolent means. One of my favourite essays of his was 'Letter from Birmingham City Jail'.
The second part of the book has many of his famous speeches and sermons. I think all his famous speeches are there, including 'I Have a Dream', 'The Drum Major Instinct', and 'I See the Promised Land'. Martin Luther King was a powerful speaker, and all his speeches were inspiring. My favourites were 'The American Dream', 'The Drum Major Instinct', and 'A Time to Break Silence', his famous protest and condemnation of the American government for its role in the Vietnam war. One of the things I was looking forward to, while reading his speeches and other parts of the book, was to find where his most famous lines made their first appearance. My most favourite quote of his, and probably the most famous lines he ever spoke, is 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice'. I found it in many places, in his essays, speeches, book excerpts. It was lots of fun to spot it.
There were five interviews in the interviews section of the book, and my favourite out of them was the Playboy interview. Playboy is a magazine which is famous for its centrefold pictures, but Playboy also has a serious side, and it has featured wonderful interviews with important people. This interview was very detailed and insightful and beautiful.
The book section had excerpts from all his books. My favourite was 'Stride Toward Freedom', which was about the Montgomery bus protests. 'The Strength of Love' is a collection of sermons and there was one sermon in it called 'A Knock at Midnight' which was incredibly beautiful.
One of the things I loved about Martin Luther King was that he didn't shy away from difficult questions and didn't try to sweep things below the carpet. He answered these questions precisely and clearly. In one of the interviews, he is asked about whether nonviolence will continue to be effective as in recent times protestors have started resorting to violence after being influenced by the Black Power movement. The reply he gives to that is one of the best defences of the nonviolent movement that I've read. In another interview, a Jewish Rabbi asks him about why some of the black leaders are anti-Semitic and whether the overall African-American community is anti-Semitic. The answer he gives to this tricky question (in cricket parlance, it was a total bouncer or a googly) is one of the best parts of the book. As we say in cricket, Well played, MLK! 😊
I loved 'A Testament of Hope'. It is one of the most important books I've read in my life, and definitely one of my favourite books of the year. It was 700 pages of pure inspiration which gave me goosebumps all the time. I read it from the first page to the last, like a regular book, but I feel now that it is a book which is best read a few pages at a time, one essay at a time, with time spent after that in thinking and contemplation. I think that is the best way to get the maximum pleasure and learning out of the book. The book has a beautiful introduction by the editor James Melvin Washington, which talks about Martin Luther King and his life, and puts this book in context.
Martin Luther King was a soft-spoken, gentle preacher who suddenly emerged as a civil rights leader in 1955 during the Montgomery bus protests. He was 26 years old at that time and he was virtually unknown. In the space of a little more than a year, he emerged as a national and international icon and as a leader who fought for the rights of the oppressed through peaceful means. Fame, awards, and glory followed, including the Nobel Peace Prize, which he was the youngest to win. He didn't rest on his laurels and continued his crusade and fought for the rights of his people, gently and nonviolently. He died when he was 39, when a mad man shot him, when he was planning a new nonviolent crusade the next day. He was still so young, with a rich future ahead. It is amazing to contemplate on the unbelievable things that he accomplished in this short span of 13 years. It also feels sad to contemplate on what he might have accomplished if he had lived a long life. Out of the three great nonviolent crusaders of the 20th century who fought against oppression and for the rights of their people – Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela – two were assassinated by mad men. I don't know why people hate gentle souls who favour peace over war, and love over hate. Only Nelson Mandela survived as he managed to come out of prison and see off the apartheid era and take his country to a new age.
It is hard to believe that once upon a time a gentle soul like Martin Luther King walked on this earth, spread the message of peace and love while fighting for the oppressed, and accomplished great things. We are in his debt.
It is hard to choose a few favourite passages from a book like this, because the whole book was so beautiful and inspiring. As John Updike once said, "Just as the impossibly ideal map would be the same size as the territory mapped, the ideal review would quote the book in its entirety, without comment." This is that kind of book. But I can't inflict it on you and quote the whole book to you. So I'm just sharing some of my favourite passages here. Hope they'll inspire you to read the book.
Quotes from 'A Testament of Hope' by MLK
Three Kinds of Love
"Now when the students talk about love, certainly they are not talking about emotional bosh, they are not talking about merely sentimental outpouring; they're talking something much deeper, and I always have to stop and try to define the meaning of love in this context. The Greek language comes to our aid in trying to deal with this. There are three words in the Greek language for love; one is the word eros. This is a beautiful type of love, it is an aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal in his Dialogue, the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. It has come to us to be a sort romantic love, and so in a sense we have read about it and experienced it. We've read about it in all the beauties of literature. I guess in a sense Edgar Allen Poe was talking about eros when he talked about his beautiful Annabelle Lee, with the love surrounded by the halo of eternity. In a sense Shakespeare was talking about eros when he said "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove; O'no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken, it is the star to every wandering bark." (You know, I remember that because I used to quote it to this little lady when we were courting; that's eros.) The Greek language talks about philia which was another level of love. It is an intimate affection between personal friends, it is a reciprocal love. On this level you love because you are loved. It is friendship.
Then the Greek language comes with another word which is called the agape. Agape is more than romantic love, agape is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive, good will to all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. So that when one rises to love on this level, he loves men not because he likes them, not because their ways appeal him, but he loves every man because God loves him. And he rises to the point of loving the person who does an evil deed while hating the deed that the person does. I think this is what Jesus meant when he said "love your enemies." I'm very happy that he didn't say like your enemies, because it is pretty difficult to like some people. Like is sentimental, and it is pretty difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights. But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemp- tive, creative, good will for all men. And it is this idea, it is this whole ethic of love which is the idea standing at the basis of the student movement."
On Being Maladjusted
"There are certain technical words which tend to become stereotypes and cliches after a certain period of time. Psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word "maladjusted." In a sense all of us must live the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the inequalities of an economic system which takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence.
It may be that the salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted. The challenge to us is to be maladjusted – as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, "Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream"; as maladjusted as Lincoln, who had the who had the vision to see that this nation cannot survive half slave half free; as maladjusted as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out in words lifted to cosmic proportions. "All men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit Happiness"; as maladjusted as Jesus who could say to the men and women of his generation, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you."
The world is in desperate need of such maladjustment. Through such courageous maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom justice."
Roget's Thesaurus
"Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seem ugly and degrading. In Roget's Thesaurus there are 120 synonyms for blackness and at least sixty of them are offensive, as for example, blot, soot, grim, devil and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity and innocence. A white lie is better than a black lie. The most degenerate member of a family is a "black sheep." Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced teach the black child sixty ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of inferiority, and the white child 134 ways to adore himself, and thereby perpetuating his false sense of superiority."
The Bootstrap Philosophy
"Now there is another myth that still gets around; it is a kind of overreliance on the bootstrap philosophy. There are those who still feel that if the African-American is to rise out of poverty, if the African-American is to rise out of slum conditions, if he is to rise out of discrimination and segregation, he must do it all by himself. And so they say the African-American must lift himself by his own bootstraps.
They never stop to realize that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. The people who say this never stop to realize that the nation made the black man's color a stigma; but beyond this they never stop to realize the debt that they owe a people who were kept in slavery 244 years.
In 1863 the African-American was told that he was free as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation being signed by Abraham Lincoln. But he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful. It was something like keeping a person in prison for a number years and suddenly discovering that that person is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. And you just go up to him and say, "Now you are free," but you don't give him any bus fare to get to town. You don't give him any money to get some clothes to put on his back or to get on his feet again in life.
Every court of jurisprudence would rise up against this and yet this is the very thing that our nation did to the black man. It simply said, "You're free," and left him there penniless, illiterate, not knowing what to do. And the irony of it all is that at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the black man – through an act Congress it was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest – which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.
But not only did it give the land, it built land-grant colleges to teach them how to farm. Not only that, it provided county agents to further their expertise in farming; not only that, as the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms. And to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every year not to farm. And these are so often the very people who tell African-Americans that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps. It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps."
On the Vietnam War
"And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think if them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know them and to hear their broken cries.
They must see the Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people weren't ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned international atmosphere for so long.
For nine years following 1945 we vigorously supported the French in their abortive attempt to recolonize Vietnam. After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva Agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops, who came help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown, they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us – not their fellow Vietnamese – the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know that they must move or be destroyed by our bombs, and they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops, and they wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American fire power to one Viet-Cong inflicted injury. They wander into the towns and see thousands of children homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think, as we ally ourselves with the landlords, and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions : the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in crushing one of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political forces, the United Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators!
Now there is little left to build on – save bitterness. And soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these; could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them, and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers."
Have you read 'A Testament of Hope'? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite Martin Luther King quote?
December 10, 2015
I started reading A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. after I was halfway through the autobiography of Malcolm X. It was an interesting contrast. Whereas Malcolm's book is about 450 pages, this one is over 700 pages.
This is a great book. Although I often enjoy books even when I'm not sure yet how to think about them, I generally agree with his attitude and his ways of looking at the world. Although Martin was a Baptist preacher, it was simple for me to consider his words in light of reason rather than merely belief. He was truly deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded for his contributions and commitment to non-violence.
Since this book is a collection of speeches and writings, it can be quite repetitive. This might put some people off but I was happy to read his words again and again. His most controversial speech was about the Vietnam war. Many people that I know will be unfamiliar with it though it was one of my favorites; a must read. There is a collection of sermons given at the church he co-pastored with his father. One of these sermons was incredibly striking in its frankness about religion and belief, and how we shouldn't approach religion and beliefs blindly but rather realistically with eyes wide open. I would have enjoyed going to his church.
This book also includes his five books. My favorite of these is entitled, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" is both heartbreaking and inspiring. It was his last book written with the backdrop of riots from Watts to Detroit to New York. It explores anger of much of the black community and his continued faith in non-violence.
The last contribution is an interview done 10 days before his murder. As always he is frank yet loving in his words.
It never ceases to amaze that such a fine, albeit human, leader lived, preached and wrote during my own lifetime. His later words are perhaps more timely today than they were back then.
This is a great book. Although I often enjoy books even when I'm not sure yet how to think about them, I generally agree with his attitude and his ways of looking at the world. Although Martin was a Baptist preacher, it was simple for me to consider his words in light of reason rather than merely belief. He was truly deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded for his contributions and commitment to non-violence.
Since this book is a collection of speeches and writings, it can be quite repetitive. This might put some people off but I was happy to read his words again and again. His most controversial speech was about the Vietnam war. Many people that I know will be unfamiliar with it though it was one of my favorites; a must read. There is a collection of sermons given at the church he co-pastored with his father. One of these sermons was incredibly striking in its frankness about religion and belief, and how we shouldn't approach religion and beliefs blindly but rather realistically with eyes wide open. I would have enjoyed going to his church.
This book also includes his five books. My favorite of these is entitled, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" is both heartbreaking and inspiring. It was his last book written with the backdrop of riots from Watts to Detroit to New York. It explores anger of much of the black community and his continued faith in non-violence.
The last contribution is an interview done 10 days before his murder. As always he is frank yet loving in his words.
It never ceases to amaze that such a fine, albeit human, leader lived, preached and wrote during my own lifetime. His later words are perhaps more timely today than they were back then.
March 1, 2020
Spending time with King's writings and speeches is always time well spent. There are so many moments in here that are moving and thought provoking. One of the aspects that stood out to me was how many parallels there are to situations today -- in particular, there is an area where he talks about the strength of his convictions and not going along with something just because it is politically expedient. Another element that stuck out to me was how King approached ideas or ideologies that he didn't necessarily agree with. The dialogue he engages in on these areas is respectful and thoughtful, but it is clear where he stands. He doesn't engage in name calling or exaggeration, he isn't boastful or derogatory to those who take a different approach. He is able to articulate that he understands why they feel the way they do or why they advocate a different approach and still advocate for his own beliefs and perspectives. At times, he is deliberate and methodical in looking at both sides of an issue and digging in, point by point. Today, it seems like debate or discussion is so often limited to sound bites and headlines - King was exceptionally good at a long form approach. We could use more of that today.
April 18, 2020
One of the best books from one of the best minds. This collection of speeches, theory, books, and interviews with Dr. King highlights his understanding of the relationship between inequities and social systems that require radical change, not on the grounds of ideology, but moral purpose, which to King means an ethics of love. A call to action and a profound legacy preserved.
January 15, 2018
This book is a great example of why star ratings are so problematic for me. I read a lot of books that I think deserve 4 or 5 star ratings, but there are always a few outliers who are so terrific that it feels unfair to lump them in with the others. This is such a book.
I decided last year to just buy this book and use it as a devotional of sorts, reading a few pages per night. This is one of the best decisions I've made recently. There is SO MUCH WISDOM to be found in these pages. Most of these essays are well over 50 years old but they continue to be extremely timely, sometimes almost reading as prophetic in terms of the detailed way King predicted current events. There are so many concrete tools and paths of action that would be very helpful to organizing a movement such as BLM today to make it truly effective, and really a lot of this should just be required reading. Few writers have struck so directly at the moral heart of America (the only others I can think of even including in this group being Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin and of course Malcolm X), and I think reading a grouping of each of these writers together really paints the fullest picture of America's racial past and how to solve the present.
I am not one to make or use marginalia but I have fully scribbled, underlined, starred and exclaimed through every page of this magnificent book. Yes it's long, yes some of the theory can be a titch dry, but it's one of the most important things I have ever read and it's a must for anyone who is concerned about current race relations. I will be revisiting this often and it's one of the best purchases I've made in the last year. I think we could all use a little more of Dr. King's philosophy in our lives; do not hesitate to pick this book up and learn more about Dr. King direct from the source, not some tainted fantasy that someone spouts off on television today with no historical basis. The true Dr. King was a real, unapologetic revolutionary for all people, and it is dishonorable to ever forget how strongly he condemned our political and religious systems. I will stop gushing but seriously: read. this. book.
I decided last year to just buy this book and use it as a devotional of sorts, reading a few pages per night. This is one of the best decisions I've made recently. There is SO MUCH WISDOM to be found in these pages. Most of these essays are well over 50 years old but they continue to be extremely timely, sometimes almost reading as prophetic in terms of the detailed way King predicted current events. There are so many concrete tools and paths of action that would be very helpful to organizing a movement such as BLM today to make it truly effective, and really a lot of this should just be required reading. Few writers have struck so directly at the moral heart of America (the only others I can think of even including in this group being Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin and of course Malcolm X), and I think reading a grouping of each of these writers together really paints the fullest picture of America's racial past and how to solve the present.
I am not one to make or use marginalia but I have fully scribbled, underlined, starred and exclaimed through every page of this magnificent book. Yes it's long, yes some of the theory can be a titch dry, but it's one of the most important things I have ever read and it's a must for anyone who is concerned about current race relations. I will be revisiting this often and it's one of the best purchases I've made in the last year. I think we could all use a little more of Dr. King's philosophy in our lives; do not hesitate to pick this book up and learn more about Dr. King direct from the source, not some tainted fantasy that someone spouts off on television today with no historical basis. The true Dr. King was a real, unapologetic revolutionary for all people, and it is dishonorable to ever forget how strongly he condemned our political and religious systems. I will stop gushing but seriously: read. this. book.
January 21, 2013
Excellent book! This literary composition entail speeches and interview transcripts such as Pilgrimage to Nonviolence (1960), Who Speaks for the South? (1958),If Negro Wins, Labor Wins (1962), Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (1964) and Meet the Press interview (1966)
January 20, 2020
I wore out my pencil underlining magnificent sentences.
There is a lot of repetition because he was trying to get his message to many people. Therefore I took my time reading this compilation, almost five years, and that worked out great.
There is a lot of repetition because he was trying to get his message to many people. Therefore I took my time reading this compilation, almost five years, and that worked out great.
July 20, 2019
You will not find a greater testament to Martin Luther King’s ideals of equality, justice, and peace than this tome of his writings and speeches. A Testament of Hope is the book I wish I had been required to read in school. Better late than never I suppose.
Read one speech or one section or every word. No matter how much of this book you read, you will get to know a man whose powers of persuasion and sense of morality are unmatched. Every line feels like a gut punch or a resounding call to action. Every conviction is delivered with the intelligence of a scholar and the thunderous might of a preacher. Martin Luther King was a radical who could ruthlessly and expertly criticize Jim Crow, segregation, white liberals, world leaders, the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, hell, even CAPITALISM while remaining a pillar of love and nonviolence. How could one man inspire such change in the world?
I can’t explain why, I can only provide some of his insights in his own words, many of which still apply to problems we see in our country today:
“It must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight.” (17)
“There is more power in socially organized masses on the march than there is in guns of a few desperate men. Our enemies would prefer to deal with a small armed group rather than with a huge, unarmed but resolute mass of people. However it is necessary that the mass-action method be persistent and unyielding… never let them rest.” (33)
“Our Congress is determined not to stifle the initiative of the poor (thought they clamor for jobs) through welfare handouts. Handouts to the rich are given more sophisticated nomenclature such as parity, subsidies, and incentives to industry.” (71)
“From a purely moral point of view, an unjust law is one that is out of harmony with the moral law of the universe. More concretely, an unjust law is one in which the minority is compelled to observe a code that is not binding on the majority. An unjust law is one in which people are required to obey a code that they had no part in making because they were denied the right to vote.” (164)
“I’m concerned about justice. I’m concerned about brotherhood. I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.” (249)
“Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was ‘well-timed,’ according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the words ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’” (292)
Probably my favorite quotes are King’s comments about “enlightened” centrists and platitude-spouting, anti-conflict moderate liberals:
“The negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” (295)
“White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change of the status quo.” (314)
There is so much wisdom and brilliance packed into these pages that you absolutely need to read for yourself. In these troubling political times, King offers a beacon of light to generate the power of hope in anyone who will take his message to heart. Read A Testament of Hope. Receive that message. Join a cause. We can change the world. Dr. King has given us the blueprint!
Read one speech or one section or every word. No matter how much of this book you read, you will get to know a man whose powers of persuasion and sense of morality are unmatched. Every line feels like a gut punch or a resounding call to action. Every conviction is delivered with the intelligence of a scholar and the thunderous might of a preacher. Martin Luther King was a radical who could ruthlessly and expertly criticize Jim Crow, segregation, white liberals, world leaders, the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, hell, even CAPITALISM while remaining a pillar of love and nonviolence. How could one man inspire such change in the world?
I can’t explain why, I can only provide some of his insights in his own words, many of which still apply to problems we see in our country today:
“It must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight.” (17)
“There is more power in socially organized masses on the march than there is in guns of a few desperate men. Our enemies would prefer to deal with a small armed group rather than with a huge, unarmed but resolute mass of people. However it is necessary that the mass-action method be persistent and unyielding… never let them rest.” (33)
“Our Congress is determined not to stifle the initiative of the poor (thought they clamor for jobs) through welfare handouts. Handouts to the rich are given more sophisticated nomenclature such as parity, subsidies, and incentives to industry.” (71)
“From a purely moral point of view, an unjust law is one that is out of harmony with the moral law of the universe. More concretely, an unjust law is one in which the minority is compelled to observe a code that is not binding on the majority. An unjust law is one in which people are required to obey a code that they had no part in making because they were denied the right to vote.” (164)
“I’m concerned about justice. I’m concerned about brotherhood. I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.” (249)
“Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was ‘well-timed,’ according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the words ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’” (292)
Probably my favorite quotes are King’s comments about “enlightened” centrists and platitude-spouting, anti-conflict moderate liberals:
“The negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” (295)
“White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change of the status quo.” (314)
There is so much wisdom and brilliance packed into these pages that you absolutely need to read for yourself. In these troubling political times, King offers a beacon of light to generate the power of hope in anyone who will take his message to heart. Read A Testament of Hope. Receive that message. Join a cause. We can change the world. Dr. King has given us the blueprint!
July 6, 2020
I didn't read all of this because it is LONG and very comprehensive. But these are great essays and speeches, I do recommend reading it if you want to dive deeper into his work.
Some key messages that come through in his speeches:
1. Nonviolent resistance is necessary, but it is no passive thing. It requires intense effort and dedication. It is not for the fainthearted.
2. The time for equality is now. Every day that passed without positive change, every white person or powerful institution who asked for patience and to slow down in the dismantling of racism, was wrong.
3. Dr. King often wrote about class, labor, and the economic system during his time. He didn't necessarily come to a strong conclusion about it, but he recognized that poor economic standing was hurting Black Americans greatly. He mused about better systems that would provide for the basic needs of all.
4. Dr. King really believed that a better future was possible, and he believed that we all deserved to go there. It's a common thread throughout his work.
Some key messages that come through in his speeches:
1. Nonviolent resistance is necessary, but it is no passive thing. It requires intense effort and dedication. It is not for the fainthearted.
2. The time for equality is now. Every day that passed without positive change, every white person or powerful institution who asked for patience and to slow down in the dismantling of racism, was wrong.
3. Dr. King often wrote about class, labor, and the economic system during his time. He didn't necessarily come to a strong conclusion about it, but he recognized that poor economic standing was hurting Black Americans greatly. He mused about better systems that would provide for the basic needs of all.
4. Dr. King really believed that a better future was possible, and he believed that we all deserved to go there. It's a common thread throughout his work.
February 15, 2021
This book was recently gifted to me by one of my dearest friends. It is a collection of speeches, essays, sermons, interviews, and books written by MLK. It highlights his commitment to non-violence, and also shows the importance he gave to the working class, whose plight he compared to Black people in America.
When it comes to resistance, my opinions have been largely influenced by my religion (Islam), which teaches us that we cannot idly stand by while injustice is ongoing around us. If people are being oppressed and their rights are not being respected, we must fight. This is why I have gravitated toward revolutionaries like Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, who did not tone down or compromise their beliefs to make others comfortable. “We are peaceful people. We are loving people. We are non-violent with people who are non-violent with us”, said Malcolm X in one of his speeches.
I personally don’t believe in turning the other cheek toward racists, which is why reading this book was really challenging for me. MLK repeatedly advocated for non-violence no matter what. Even after he was jailed multiple times, had his house bombed, got shot, attended the funerals of innocent Black children who died at the hands of white racists, he continued to advocate for non-violence. I was in awe at his “love your enemy” politics, because it takes a LOT to have that level of forgiveness in your heart (can’t relate!!!).
This book really challenged my perspectives, and it was also an excellent example of the way faith and spirituality can inform our politics.
When it comes to resistance, my opinions have been largely influenced by my religion (Islam), which teaches us that we cannot idly stand by while injustice is ongoing around us. If people are being oppressed and their rights are not being respected, we must fight. This is why I have gravitated toward revolutionaries like Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, who did not tone down or compromise their beliefs to make others comfortable. “We are peaceful people. We are loving people. We are non-violent with people who are non-violent with us”, said Malcolm X in one of his speeches.
I personally don’t believe in turning the other cheek toward racists, which is why reading this book was really challenging for me. MLK repeatedly advocated for non-violence no matter what. Even after he was jailed multiple times, had his house bombed, got shot, attended the funerals of innocent Black children who died at the hands of white racists, he continued to advocate for non-violence. I was in awe at his “love your enemy” politics, because it takes a LOT to have that level of forgiveness in your heart (can’t relate!!!).
This book really challenged my perspectives, and it was also an excellent example of the way faith and spirituality can inform our politics.
July 1, 2021
After ordering this book online, I was a bit dismayed to learn it was 670 pages long, thinking I’d never be able to read it all. To the contrary, MLK Jr enthralled, challenged and inspired me—frankly, his intellectual prowess wowed me. For someone who grew up learning about MLK Jr in school, I knew remarkably little about him, especially his deep rooting in the Christian faith. Lots has been said about MLK Jr, but not nearly enough has been heard from his own mouth. Read this.
November 1, 2024
Make no mistake, reading this book is a serious undertaking in time and consideration. It is an amazing and extensive collection of Dr. King’s writings, sermons, speeches and interviews. All are brilliant and important and deserving of continued study and contemplation. What struck me most, however, was how little progress has been made regarding the basic points that he wrote and spoke about so honestly and eloquently. So many times the points he was making in the writings seemed as timely today as they were and have been since first voiced. I come away inspired nonetheless and highly recommend this book to others - especially those who consider themselves people of faith. The changes needed most are those that could and should begin in our predominately white churches.
August 21, 2021
A truly remarkable collection of essays, interviews and book extracts. These words are impassioned, eloquent and insightful and tragically still relevant today. One thread that runs through this is that the poor white people are as disadvantaged as black people but the racism blinds them to it. Also disappointing is how few white clergymen rose to the cause, echoing Ghandi's assessment of "I like your Christ, but not your Christianity." although I would like to think that Rev. King's hero would've approved of his Christianity.
January 16, 2025
“that’s what i’m talking about. that’s why he’s the MVP. that’s why he’s the GOAT, the GOAT
November 7, 2017
Should be required reading for all high school students. One might not agree with everything Dr. King says, but his arguments are clear and worth engaging with in order to develop critical thinking
August 3, 2020
Wow wow wow wow wow. The greatest person the USA has ever produced, and I say that as an atheist about a minister. I'm shocked more than anything by how wide-ranging his knowledge was- philosophy, arts, politics, sociology, history. There's never a misplaced word or phrase. What a guy.
March 13, 2022
This compilation of speeches, essays, interviews, and book chapters is the go-to resource that MLK scholar and pastor Mika Edmondson recommended starting with to learn from MLK.
Takeaways:
1. King's advocacy of nonviolent direct action as an application of the sermon on the mount is the consistent theme throughout his public ministry.
"Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; toughness begets a greater toughness. It is all a descending spiral, and the end is destruction – for everybody. Along the way of life, someone must have enough sense and morality to cut off the chain of hate by projecting the ethics of love into the center of our lives."
– The Current Crisis in Race Relations (1958)
"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals."
– Why we can’t wait (1963)
2. Throughout his writing he goes out of his way to carefully explain and offer nuance.
"Government action is not the whole answer to the present crisis, but is an important partial answer. Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin. We must depend on religion and education to alter the errors of the heart and mind; but meanwhile it is an immoral act to compel a man to accept injustice until another man’s heart is set straight."
– Stride towards Freedom (1958)
3. He understood that anyone who cares about love, also should care about power distribution.
"What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."
– Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community (1967)
“When I speak of integration, I don’t mean a romantic mixing of colors, I mean a real sharing of power and responsibility.”
– A Testament of Hope
4. King viewed his work as standing against systemic evil from the very beginning:
"I came to see that what we were really doing was withdrawing our cooperation from an evil system, rather than merely withdrawing our economic support from the bus company."
"The best way to solve any problem is to remove its cause. It is both rationally unsound and sociologically untenable to use the tragic effects of segregation as an argument for its continuation."
– Stride towards freedom (1958)
5. One of the recurring themes is an indictment of the white church.
"In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, ‘Those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern’, and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular."
– Letter from Birmingham City Jail (1963)
6. He had many positive ideas for what the church can do:
"There are several specific things that the church can do. First, it should try to get to the ideational roots of race hate, something that the law cannot accomplish…. [Second] the church can also do a great deal to reveal the true intentions of tho Negro – that he is not seeking to dominate the nation, but simply wants the right to live as a first-class citizen, with all the responsibilities that good citizenship entails…. [Third] another thing the church can do to make the principle of brotherhood a reality is to keep men’s minds and visions centered on God. [Fourth], a further effort that the church can make in attempting to solve the race problem is to take the lead in social reform… the church must remove the yoke of segregation from its own body."
– Stride towards Freedom (1958)
7. At the end of his life, he thought that America had a long way to go towards addressing racism:
"Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains? The majority of white Americans- consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity."
– Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community (1967)
Takeaways:
1. King's advocacy of nonviolent direct action as an application of the sermon on the mount is the consistent theme throughout his public ministry.
"Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; toughness begets a greater toughness. It is all a descending spiral, and the end is destruction – for everybody. Along the way of life, someone must have enough sense and morality to cut off the chain of hate by projecting the ethics of love into the center of our lives."
– The Current Crisis in Race Relations (1958)
"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals."
– Why we can’t wait (1963)
2. Throughout his writing he goes out of his way to carefully explain and offer nuance.
"Government action is not the whole answer to the present crisis, but is an important partial answer. Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin. We must depend on religion and education to alter the errors of the heart and mind; but meanwhile it is an immoral act to compel a man to accept injustice until another man’s heart is set straight."
– Stride towards Freedom (1958)
3. He understood that anyone who cares about love, also should care about power distribution.
"What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."
– Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community (1967)
“When I speak of integration, I don’t mean a romantic mixing of colors, I mean a real sharing of power and responsibility.”
– A Testament of Hope
4. King viewed his work as standing against systemic evil from the very beginning:
"I came to see that what we were really doing was withdrawing our cooperation from an evil system, rather than merely withdrawing our economic support from the bus company."
"The best way to solve any problem is to remove its cause. It is both rationally unsound and sociologically untenable to use the tragic effects of segregation as an argument for its continuation."
– Stride towards freedom (1958)
5. One of the recurring themes is an indictment of the white church.
"In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, ‘Those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern’, and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular."
– Letter from Birmingham City Jail (1963)
6. He had many positive ideas for what the church can do:
"There are several specific things that the church can do. First, it should try to get to the ideational roots of race hate, something that the law cannot accomplish…. [Second] the church can also do a great deal to reveal the true intentions of tho Negro – that he is not seeking to dominate the nation, but simply wants the right to live as a first-class citizen, with all the responsibilities that good citizenship entails…. [Third] another thing the church can do to make the principle of brotherhood a reality is to keep men’s minds and visions centered on God. [Fourth], a further effort that the church can make in attempting to solve the race problem is to take the lead in social reform… the church must remove the yoke of segregation from its own body."
– Stride towards Freedom (1958)
7. At the end of his life, he thought that America had a long way to go towards addressing racism:
"Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains? The majority of white Americans- consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity."
– Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community (1967)
December 13, 2022
I read this like a devotional, an essay or sermon each day. Many of these I'd never read, which was a delight because I really felt I got to better know the man as prophet and priest. Each night, I felt an unclenching of the world, a resistance to the pseudo-capitalist, racist, dehumanizing institution. I can't be moderate in a world like this but I can be wise and see through the filters and illusions of the powers and principalities. MLK still speaks today.
December 26, 2014
It is fitting that I've read this book on Christmas, the day that promotes "Peace on Earth" and "Goodwill to men", two messages that Dr. King always strived for. I've always been a fan of Dr. King's work, and have read a great deal of it before reading A Testament of Hope. I look over to my bookshelf as I write this and I see Why We Can't Wait. However, I've never taken the opportunity until now to read a book that covers the essential writings and speeches of Dr. King. A Testament of Hope delivers on everything it promises and then some.
Some of Dr. King's best speeches on topics such as nonviolence, integration, democracy, and black nationalism are contained in this book. Any reader unfamiliar with Dr. King's philosophy or work will quickly become acquainted. It always stood out to me that despite being a victim of violence himself multiple times (eventually leading to his death), Dr. King stuck with his message of nonviolence in the face of it all. Dr. King also has some great speeches in this book about the Vietnam War, the Labor Movement, and the not mentioned enough Poor People's Campaign.
Some quotes that stood out to me while reading this book:
"True peace is not merely the absence of some negative force - tension, confusion of war; it is the presence of some positive force - justice, good will, and brotherhood."
"We must never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was 'legal'."
"The policy of the federal government is to play russian roulette with riots."
"We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work. It would also guarantee an income for all who are not able to work."
"But there comes a time when people get tired. There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression."
"Through our scientific genius we have made this world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual development we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools. We must come to see that no individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We must all live together, we must all be concerned about each other."
Definitely read this book.
Some of Dr. King's best speeches on topics such as nonviolence, integration, democracy, and black nationalism are contained in this book. Any reader unfamiliar with Dr. King's philosophy or work will quickly become acquainted. It always stood out to me that despite being a victim of violence himself multiple times (eventually leading to his death), Dr. King stuck with his message of nonviolence in the face of it all. Dr. King also has some great speeches in this book about the Vietnam War, the Labor Movement, and the not mentioned enough Poor People's Campaign.
Some quotes that stood out to me while reading this book:
"True peace is not merely the absence of some negative force - tension, confusion of war; it is the presence of some positive force - justice, good will, and brotherhood."
"We must never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was 'legal'."
"The policy of the federal government is to play russian roulette with riots."
"We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work. It would also guarantee an income for all who are not able to work."
"But there comes a time when people get tired. There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression."
"Through our scientific genius we have made this world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual development we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools. We must come to see that no individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We must all live together, we must all be concerned about each other."
Definitely read this book.
December 12, 2018
A Testament of Hope:
The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr
Editor: James M Washington
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publishing Date:1986
Edition/Volume: 1st
Pgs: 702
Dewey: 973.923 KIN
Disposition: Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary: Martin Luther King’s thoughts on nonviolence, social policy, integration, black nationalism, ethics, hope, and more, in his own words. Sermons, interviews, speeches, writings, essays, and books, quotes from many sources, Reverend King’s own words speaking to the reader today.
_________________________________________________
Genre:
African American Studies
Civil Rights
United States
History
Race Relations
Christian
Ministry
Evangelism
Education
Teaching
Politics
Social Sciences
Demographics
Why this book:
Why not this book? We all need to take a long hard look at ourselves and our country at times. We all need to have a mirror held up to us and really look at what is staring back at us. I’ve been wanting to read the sermons and speeches of MLK for many years. The way I looked at the world changed when I first heard and truly paid attention to the I Have a Dream speech. If I offend someone with my commentary here, please know that I am merely reaching for my own understanding and wrestling with my conscience of the history of my own people, our shared existence, and the human condition. I’m not trying to racesplain. I’m trying to look in the mirror as an American, a human, and a 50-something year old Caucasian. My thoughts, my struggle, my need to understand the deep and abiding truth of a great man’s soul.
_________________________________________________
Character I Most Identified With:
Reading this and trying not to play the “look at how woke I am” game with myself. People who fall into that trap seem idiotic to me. And I don’t want to be an idiot. But I can see it’s attraction. Everybody wants people to think they are awesome.
The Feel:
There are so many juicy, crunchy ideals, morals, and concepts here that if I tried to quote everything that made me sit up and take notice, I’d be writing the entire book into my review.
Favorite Scene / Quote/Concept:
“...the important thing about a man is not his specificity but his fundamentum...not the texture of his hair or the color of his skin, but the quality of his soul.” ---Amen.
“Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate.” ---Jesus turned the other cheek. But Jesus was exceptional. We carry grudges. We mire ourselves in our pettiness. Though to us, it may not seem petty. It is hard to see beyond what is gnawing at you and/or blocking your view.
The victory of small steps.
Rosa Parks was asked why. “It was a matter of dignity; I could not have faced myself and my people if I had moved.” --Those moments in life do define you beyond yourself. The great majority of us haven’t had or ever will have a moment like Ms Parks, but we all have our moments. Live up to yours.
The I Have A Dream speech and the I Have Seen The Promised Land speech are 2 of the most powerful oratorical markers in our lifetimes.
Hmm Moments:
I believe that MLK’s beloved community does exist. But, in juxtaposition, I, also, believe that there are far more people with no shame than he ever expected.
I wonder if MLK resonates with modern people or if his teachings have become like Ben Franklin and Plato et al. Important historical figures who spoke to their times and have messages for modernity, but aren’t vibrantly part of everyday life.
“...in the question of ends and means...Machiavelli...the end justified the means...Lenin...Lies, deceit, and violence are justifiable...principle of nonviolence...the means represent the ideal in the making.” ---Often it seems that nonviolence is easily ignored in today’s world. With the 86,400 seconds a day news cycle, a story about a nonviolent protest blips up on the national consciousness and is gone.
Wisdom:
“Privileged groups rarely give up their privileges without strong resistance.” ---Too true. Though whether we all want to share in the privileges denied us or truly take them away from another is a semantic point. The unjust privilege should be removed. The just privilege extant between human beings equal in the eyes of society should be shared. As I said, semantics.
Life and Americanism isn’t praising Congress and the Supreme Court when we agree and accusing of overreach when we don’t. Too many of us think of it as a line where we are trying to advance, or a mountain we are trying to climb, when actually it’s a tapestry and all the pieces aren’t even and equal.
Juxtaposition:
“In your struggle for Justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you.” --And there in a MLK Jr sermon from Montgomery, Alabama in 1956 is how the closeted racist on a pulpit, on a courthouse bench, wearing a badge, or in a Congressional or Senatorial seat or even in the White House plays on the fear that the African American is going to do to the Caucasian American what was done to them. It is a powerful lever to move people, fear.
“...the Old South has gone forever...futile attempt by White South to maintain a system...under a feudalistic plantation system...that cannot survive in a democratic age.” ---MLK would be so disappointed in us.
The Unexpected:
Leaves me to wonder at the impact of the Oligarchy on maintaining the status quo and lessening the power of religion. The evangelical awakening in politics seems to be more an oligarchial tool rather than having anything to do with the Word.
Missed Opportunity:
I believe that, as surely, as we have, largely, moved away from using the word Black, we should phase out the word White. Caucasian American should be the term used. We’re all from someplace. We’re not the colors of our skin. Maybe Caucasian people recognizing that in themselves would change minds. Or maybe I’m playing semantical games with myself as this book has pulled me deep into my own navel gazing retrospection.
I read this and I realize that we would be such a disappointment to Martin Luther King.
_________________________________________________
Last Page Sound:
Not enough has changed. Too much one step forward and two steps back in race relations in America.
Editorial Assessment:
Essential should have been boiled and distilled down further.
Knee Jerk Reaction:
Glad I read it.
_________________________________________________
The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr
Editor: James M Washington
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publishing Date:1986
Edition/Volume: 1st
Pgs: 702
Dewey: 973.923 KIN
Disposition: Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
_________________________________________________
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary: Martin Luther King’s thoughts on nonviolence, social policy, integration, black nationalism, ethics, hope, and more, in his own words. Sermons, interviews, speeches, writings, essays, and books, quotes from many sources, Reverend King’s own words speaking to the reader today.
_________________________________________________
Genre:
African American Studies
Civil Rights
United States
History
Race Relations
Christian
Ministry
Evangelism
Education
Teaching
Politics
Social Sciences
Demographics
Why this book:
Why not this book? We all need to take a long hard look at ourselves and our country at times. We all need to have a mirror held up to us and really look at what is staring back at us. I’ve been wanting to read the sermons and speeches of MLK for many years. The way I looked at the world changed when I first heard and truly paid attention to the I Have a Dream speech. If I offend someone with my commentary here, please know that I am merely reaching for my own understanding and wrestling with my conscience of the history of my own people, our shared existence, and the human condition. I’m not trying to racesplain. I’m trying to look in the mirror as an American, a human, and a 50-something year old Caucasian. My thoughts, my struggle, my need to understand the deep and abiding truth of a great man’s soul.
_________________________________________________
Character I Most Identified With:
Reading this and trying not to play the “look at how woke I am” game with myself. People who fall into that trap seem idiotic to me. And I don’t want to be an idiot. But I can see it’s attraction. Everybody wants people to think they are awesome.
The Feel:
There are so many juicy, crunchy ideals, morals, and concepts here that if I tried to quote everything that made me sit up and take notice, I’d be writing the entire book into my review.
Favorite Scene / Quote/Concept:
“...the important thing about a man is not his specificity but his fundamentum...not the texture of his hair or the color of his skin, but the quality of his soul.” ---Amen.
“Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate.” ---Jesus turned the other cheek. But Jesus was exceptional. We carry grudges. We mire ourselves in our pettiness. Though to us, it may not seem petty. It is hard to see beyond what is gnawing at you and/or blocking your view.
The victory of small steps.
Rosa Parks was asked why. “It was a matter of dignity; I could not have faced myself and my people if I had moved.” --Those moments in life do define you beyond yourself. The great majority of us haven’t had or ever will have a moment like Ms Parks, but we all have our moments. Live up to yours.
The I Have A Dream speech and the I Have Seen The Promised Land speech are 2 of the most powerful oratorical markers in our lifetimes.
Hmm Moments:
I believe that MLK’s beloved community does exist. But, in juxtaposition, I, also, believe that there are far more people with no shame than he ever expected.
I wonder if MLK resonates with modern people or if his teachings have become like Ben Franklin and Plato et al. Important historical figures who spoke to their times and have messages for modernity, but aren’t vibrantly part of everyday life.
“...in the question of ends and means...Machiavelli...the end justified the means...Lenin...Lies, deceit, and violence are justifiable...principle of nonviolence...the means represent the ideal in the making.” ---Often it seems that nonviolence is easily ignored in today’s world. With the 86,400 seconds a day news cycle, a story about a nonviolent protest blips up on the national consciousness and is gone.
Wisdom:
“Privileged groups rarely give up their privileges without strong resistance.” ---Too true. Though whether we all want to share in the privileges denied us or truly take them away from another is a semantic point. The unjust privilege should be removed. The just privilege extant between human beings equal in the eyes of society should be shared. As I said, semantics.
Life and Americanism isn’t praising Congress and the Supreme Court when we agree and accusing of overreach when we don’t. Too many of us think of it as a line where we are trying to advance, or a mountain we are trying to climb, when actually it’s a tapestry and all the pieces aren’t even and equal.
Juxtaposition:
“In your struggle for Justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you.” --And there in a MLK Jr sermon from Montgomery, Alabama in 1956 is how the closeted racist on a pulpit, on a courthouse bench, wearing a badge, or in a Congressional or Senatorial seat or even in the White House plays on the fear that the African American is going to do to the Caucasian American what was done to them. It is a powerful lever to move people, fear.
“...the Old South has gone forever...futile attempt by White South to maintain a system...under a feudalistic plantation system...that cannot survive in a democratic age.” ---MLK would be so disappointed in us.
The Unexpected:
Leaves me to wonder at the impact of the Oligarchy on maintaining the status quo and lessening the power of religion. The evangelical awakening in politics seems to be more an oligarchial tool rather than having anything to do with the Word.
Missed Opportunity:
I believe that, as surely, as we have, largely, moved away from using the word Black, we should phase out the word White. Caucasian American should be the term used. We’re all from someplace. We’re not the colors of our skin. Maybe Caucasian people recognizing that in themselves would change minds. Or maybe I’m playing semantical games with myself as this book has pulled me deep into my own navel gazing retrospection.
I read this and I realize that we would be such a disappointment to Martin Luther King.
_________________________________________________
Last Page Sound:
Not enough has changed. Too much one step forward and two steps back in race relations in America.
Editorial Assessment:
Essential should have been boiled and distilled down further.
Knee Jerk Reaction:
Glad I read it.
_________________________________________________
January 2, 2013
I loved this book! As I read, I uncovered wonderful gems of wisdom spoken so many years ago that have withstood the test of time. I lived through the turbulent years of the civil rights movement. Unfortunately, I was too young and too insulated and isolated (living where I do) to fully comprehend what was going on at the time. The most troubling aspect for me is that although civil rights "progress" has been made through understanding and legislation, we still live in a country where those who are in the minority continue to be marginalized. For example, the poor, both black and white, continue to suffer while many political leaders ignore their plight in favor of advancing the causes of those who have. Additionally, students who are minorities are bullied because of their traditions and language. I ask myself, will it ever end?
February 2, 2009
One of the most treasured books in my library, 'A Testament of Hope' is a challenging, provocative, and hopeful anthology of writings from the pen of Martin Luther King Jr. 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' is included, along with excerpts from 'Why We Can't Wait,' popular speeches, and interviews with various publications.
King's capacious mind and fierce courage remain unmatched. His understanding of Christianity was transcendent in all the ways that matter. Today's Evangelicals remain clueless. A white person can never really understand the black struggle, but I don't think anyone who confronts it can diminish the importance of emancipation, equality, and a continuuing program of civil rights for all.
King's capacious mind and fierce courage remain unmatched. His understanding of Christianity was transcendent in all the ways that matter. Today's Evangelicals remain clueless. A white person can never really understand the black struggle, but I don't think anyone who confronts it can diminish the importance of emancipation, equality, and a continuuing program of civil rights for all.
December 25, 2014
I've read several of King's books. All of them have been profoundly life changing for me. A Testament of Hope is the ultimate collection of King's writing and speeches in a single book, weighing in at 679 pages.
Despite having read several of his books, I hadn't realized King's full spectrum for social and spiritual freedom until reading this book. It's perfect for anyone who interested in in the man's life and believes that love can change the world. Even for readers who are skeptical about love as a real force for change, this book will challenge their views. This has the be the most enlightening book I've ever read.
Despite having read several of his books, I hadn't realized King's full spectrum for social and spiritual freedom until reading this book. It's perfect for anyone who interested in in the man's life and believes that love can change the world. Even for readers who are skeptical about love as a real force for change, this book will challenge their views. This has the be the most enlightening book I've ever read.
December 6, 2008
It is easy to know Dr. King as simply an icon, a hero, a figure from the past, but reading his essays, speeches, sermons, and memoirs is a powerful reminder that he was a truly great and extraordinary man, a spiritual leader, a visionary, an unrelenting proponent of nonviolent social transformation, and an advocate for love and justice in all forms. His writing has moved me to tears on more than one occasion. If you are unfamiliar with either his deeds or his writings, stop what you are doing and read this collection.
August 1, 2011
I admire the insight this man had into social problems, namely segregation of race and the integration of black America into the norm of everyday life. His work shows a firm command of useful language around the concepts of equality, non-violent resistance, and social organization.
One could translate all his written work on racial inequality from the 20th century directly into Economic Inequality of the world today, and the language, outcomes and values in his writing would be perfectly applicable right now.
One could translate all his written work on racial inequality from the 20th century directly into Economic Inequality of the world today, and the language, outcomes and values in his writing would be perfectly applicable right now.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 125 reviews