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

The few snippets of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech that are dutifully trotted out every January give little indication of his incredible ability to communicate and inspire. To me, the only way to experience the power of King's word is to hear them as he preached them. His slow, halting starts; his slow build ups; his hoarse, shouting, growling and resonant voice; ideas that are recombined and developed from speech to speech; King's evident weariness, outrage and persistence; and the enthusiastic, rapturous response of his audiences come across infinitely better on audio than they do on the printed page. "A Call to Conscience" highlights King at his best. His erudition and breadth of knowledge were astounding; his ability to apply the words of Jesus and Gandhi to the civil rights struggle connected abstract principles of religion and civil disobedience to real life suffering; his commitment to end segration and discrimation by non-violent means was awe-inspiring; his desire to build a loving brotherhood of all races was visionary; his willingness to suffer without bitterness at the hands of his enemies sets him high and apart from many in the human race. Each speech is introduced by someone involved with King and the struggle for equality. Speeches are often followed by gospel music sung during the movement. Taken together, these elements comprise an elegant and moving tribute to a man whose words and actions propelled America out of self-imposed hypocrisy, and toward a world in which all are measured by the content of our character, and not the color of our skins.

Reviewer: Mark Lamendola,... author of over 3500 articles.Inspiring, informative, and soul-stirring, this tape brings to life the original recordings of Martin Luther King, Jr.Having grown up in the era of the Vietnam war and civil rights demonstrations, I got this tape thinking it would help me remember some of the key issues of the time and compare them to where we are now.What I was not expecting was the emotional and spiritual journey this tape took me on--it was a journey at a speed that made me look for my seat belt.Let me interject a personal note here. I am not an African American. I am not black, but neither am I white. My family name is an "Americanized" version of a Sicilian name. While my family did not emerge from slavery on southern plantations, it did emerge from near slave conditions in Sicily. I would also like to note that Sicily was invaded by the African Moors, as is evident by the curly hair and nose structure of modern Sicilians--and by the fact we get sickle cell anemia (whites do not get this disease).Italian-Americans, who make up 6% of the USA population also underwent an era of extreme prejudice and discrimination--as did African-Americans, who make up 13% of the American population.Some people malign Dr. King as "that nigger who riled up all the niggers." Others said he was moving too fast. Others said he was asking for too much. And on and on. What these people fail to realize is Dr. King wasn't riling up anybody. He was not an agitator. He made a call to love. When you listen to his speeches, this all becomes very clear. I am not comparing King the Man to Christ the Lord, but to condemn his call to love does compare him to Christ and does condemn both King the man and Christ the Lord. To my mind, that is hypocritical and presumptuous.In his speeches, Dr. King presented such concepts as:*African-American slaves are not rightful property and never were. These people were kidnapped from their homes in the area of the Gold Coast.*The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declared all men (grammatical convention makes the pronoun gender-neutral in this context) equal. Yet, 100 years later, American people of color had actually moved backwards in relation to "white people." King presented incontrovertible evidence of the nullification of the Emancipation Proclamation and the abandonment of law and order that allowed suppression and oppression of an entire race of people.*The segregation movement was part of a "divide and conquer" strategy to keep poor whites--especially poor Southern whites in their place by creating an even lower class.*As a unit, African-Americans have more wealth than most countries--including France!*No violent uprising has ever succeeded, unless it had the support of the general population. African-Americans did not have, and could not possibly have, such support in the USA.*A violent uprising by African-Americans could never come to any possible good. At the outset, it would increase fear and mistrust. T

The best thing about this book is that it shows that Dr. King was about much more than "The Dream Speech" and Rosa Parks. It shows, in the Selma Alabama Speech, his ability to explain the root causes of segregation (which all Americans should understand), it shows his courage in being able to stand up to the powers that be in his Vietnam speech, and it shows his amazing ability to improvise amazing speeches in the 1955 Bus Boycott speech. In short, it shows the genius of Dr. King and I have used this book in class to teach my students that Dr. King was about more than dreaming dreams.

As the introduction to this book says, 'this is a unique way to read and understand history: from its primary sources.' The book is valuable, even essential, for two reasons.First, the complete text of eleven of MLK's speeches is collected in one volume. Previous anthologies have offered extracts and snippets, but here we can read complete transcripts, audience participation and all:'Well, I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. (Amen) But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. (Yeah) [Applause] And I don't mind. [Applause continues]'Second, each speech is introduced by significant contemporaries of King - Rosa Parks, Aretha Franklin, the Dalai Lama (like King, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient), Edward Kennedy and others. These prefaces help to set the speeches in their historical context, and to highlight the continuing importance of King's legacy.As I write this review I have taken a few moments to reread King's last speech, 'I've been to the mountaintop' - Thirty three years on, it still has the power to move me to tears. As Andrew Young writes:'They killed the dreamer at thirty-nine years of age, but the dream will live on into the new millennium, when men and women must still learn to resolve their problems with the force of truth, the power of love, and faith in the Spirit to lead us all into a new promised land.'

Stanford University Professor Clayborne Carson compiles some of the great speeches by Dr. King that stirred the world into positive social activity. Most of the entries are famous such as the "I Have A dream", a personal favorite not just solely because of the moving address. I shared a row in coach on a plane from Hartsfield to Reagan with Congressman Lewis who still has butterflies from that landmark moment in history any time he flies into DC. The introductions to each oration provide additional perspectives on eleven of the "landmark speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.". This is a wonderful collection that takes the reader back to a time of turmoil in which a prophet arose to awaken a generation into believing not just dreaming that justice and equality needs to be the American way.Harriet Klausner