MLK: Three Landmark Speeches

Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., during the March on Washington where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963. (AFP/Getty Images)

Three key speeches of American civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Junior are excerpted and commented on by two leading King scholars.

Peace Talks Radio producer Paul Ingles interviews two leading King scholars, asking each to pick speeches from those years to focus on.

You’ll hear from the late Dr. Vincent Harding, Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado and a personal friend and speech writing colleague of Dr. King in the 1960’s. (Dr. Harding died in May of 2014 about 6 months after this interview) Also mixed into our program, you’ll hear Dr. Clayborne Carson, who at Coretta Scott King’s request, has been directing the King Papers Project since 1985. Dr. Carson established the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in 2005.

The speeches these scholars chose were: King’s last address, the night before his assassination in Memphis in April, 1968. Also, the speech he made a year to the day before he was killed, called “Beyond Vietnam,” in which Dr. King came out publicly and explicitly in opposition to the Vietnam War. And from March of 1965, Dr. King’s remarks that he made at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery marches, considered a turning point in the struggle for Voting Rights and equality for African Americans.