It's been 52 years since Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to preach peace and equality for all men and women in his most famous speech, and today we celebrate a man whose work is far from done. With racial profiling and police brutality taking over the headlines for much of 2014, many plan to attend rallies and marches that continue to bring attention to everything Dr. King worked for.
Across the web today there are fantastic long reads, audio recordings and more to learn about what Dr. King stood for. Here are a few of our favorites:
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
A long-lost audio recording of a 50-year-old speech delivered at UCLA by the late civil rights leader was unearthed in a storage room in the communication studies department, who put it online. "Listening to his booming voice and confidence, it struck me that the wisdom seeping out of him was something you’d expect from someone in his 60s or 70s," said archivist Derek Bolin, who found the recording. "But he was only 36. That was really impressive to me.”
What we're taught about Dr. King — and what his life actually was like — are two very different things, and this timeline and quotes highlight his later focus on economic justice and protesting the Vietnam war.
This opinion piece in The New York Times challenges the common belief that honoring of Martin Luther King Jr. means the same thing to all Americans, asking "What, to the Black American, is MLK Day?"
Read an essay and listen to a new song from poet and performer Saul Williams. "The sooner we understand this without brandishing overtly blind-siding terms like 'terrorist' 'lazy' the sooner we realize that we are all, in fact, on the same team and that the movement towards a more educated, better fed society."
Ferguson is the new Selma. Representative André Carson (D-Ind.) linked the protests in Ferguson to the civil rights movement of the 1960s during a visit to the city on Sunday. "Ferguson is the new Selma," said Carson, The Associated Press reports. "It's time, in Ferguson."
Spotify created a pretty comprehensive playlist of Dr. King's speeches.
This powerful and painful image by artist Alfredo Jaar lays bare the racial divide in America during Dr. King's funeral.