In His Own Words | April 4, 1967 | Beyond Vietnam

In this address King makes a connection between the beginning of his pastorate and his speaking out against the Vietnam War. In addition to stating five actions he believed that the United States government should undertake to begin to disengage from the war, he lists “seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of [his] moral vision.”

Click here to see all videos in the In His Own Words series, part of our 2022 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.

In His Own Words | December 10, 1964 | Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. takes the opportunity to argue that “nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time—the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression."

Click here to see all videos in the In His Own Words series, part of our 2022 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.

In His Own Words | March 22, 1959 | Palm Sunday Sermon on Mohandas K. Gandhi

For much of the month and a half preceding this sermon, King had been traveling, spending much of that time in India. This sermon, delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, moves through space and time and ties Gandhi’s story to King’s own faith tradition while also underlining the argument for nonviolence.

Click here to see all videos in the In His Own Words series, part of our 2022 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.

 

In His Own Words | September 1958 | “Advice for Living” Column in Ebony Magazine

From September 1957 until December 1958, King wrote a monthly advice column for Ebony Magazine. In “Advice for Living” he responded to a variety of reader questions ranging from the personal to the political. This quote is exempted from his response to this reader question:

“Last Sunday my preacher did something that disturbed me. He mixed a lot of worldly things in his sermon. My question is this: Should God and the NAACP be mixed in the pulpit?”

In His Own Words | December 5, 1955 | “The Montgomery Bus Boycott”

King delivered The Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, one of his earlier major addresses, to a crowd of approximately 5,000 people, four days after the arrest of Rosa Parks. Here, he urges his audience to commit to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which would ultimately last over a year, ending when the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public busses is unconstitutional.

Click here to see all videos in the In His Own Words series, part of our 2022 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.

 

In His Own Words | July 19, 1952 | Letter to Coretta Scott

This quote comes from a letter that King wrote to Coretta Scott, then a woman he had begun dating a few months prior. This letter shows King as a young man in love. The piece, however, moves beyond the poetic language that describes King's romantic feelings for Scott. Here, he shares his mind, how he thinks on topics such as the utopian novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, and how he intended to approach his role as a preacher.

In His Own Words | August 6, 1946 | Letter to the Editor, the Atlanta Constitution

This quote is from a letter to the Editor of the Atlanta Constitution that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote as college sophomore at Morehouse College. The letter criticizes the tendency of "a certain class of people" to encourage a sense of fear about social intermingling and intermarriage between the races, and asserts that these specific issues aren't particularly relevant. Instead, King lists several rights and opportunities that Black people aimed to achieve as the appropriate matters upon which to focus.

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