A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., told a crowd gathered at Memphis’s Clayborn Temple on April 3, 1968. “But it really doesn’t matter to me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop. . . . And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.” These prohetic words , uttered the day before his assassination, challenged those he left behind to see that his “promised land” of racial equality became a reality; a reality to which King devoted the last twelve years of his life. These words and other are commemorated here in the only major one-volume collection of this seminal twentieth-century American prophet’s writings, speeches, interviews, and autobiographical reflections. A Testament of Hope contains Martin Luther King, Jr.’s essential thoughts on nonviolence, social policy, integration, black nationalism, the ethics of love and hope, and more. Roger Wilkins, writing in the New York Times Book Review, declared that “this book richly demonstrates . . . [that] King had a piercing intellect.” Wilkins acknowledged Washington as “a minister and an authority on Afro- American religious history, ” and he observed that A Testament of Hope is “lovingly edited.” Table of Contents Part I/ Philosophy Religious: Nonviolence Social: Integration Political: Wedged Between Democracy and Black Nationalism Part II/ Famous Sermons and Public Addresses Part III/ Historic Essays Part IV/ Interviews Part V/ Books Read Less