Suggested Holiday Resources

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

If you're looking for information on Dr. King's career and the post- World War II history of the civil rights movement in the United States, you'll find an embarrassment of riches. I'll begin with printed sources for King's life and for his career as a leader of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s:

Printed biographical sources of special interest are:
    Abernathy, Donzaleigh. Partners to History: Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and the Civil Rights Movement. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2003).

    Burns, Stewart. To the Mountaintop: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Sacred Mission to Save America, 1955-1968. (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004).

    Frady, Marshall. Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Penguin Group, 2002).

    Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (New York: W. Morrow, 1986).

    King, Martin Luther, Jr. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Clayborne Carson, senior ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992- ). Five volumes to date. The King editors have produced not only these volumes of King's papers at large, but also volumes of selected letters, speeches, and other documents of special interest to classroom teachers, including:

      The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Clayborne Carson, ed. (New York: Intellectual Properties Management, Inc. in association with Warner Books, 1998).

      A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Clayborne Carson, ed. (New York: Intellectual Properties Management in association with Warner Books, 2001).
    Ling, Peter J. Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Routledge, 2002).

    Ralph, James. Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Here are two good starting points on the Internet:
    The National Park Service's Martin Luther King National Historic Site in Atlanta, which includes information on King's birthplace and childhood home and the Ebenezer Baptist Church Museum, has done itself proud in its website:

    http://www.nps.gov/malu/

    You'll find the lesson plans on "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Legacy of Racial and Social Justice: A Curriculum for Empowerment" especially valuable. They're geared for grades kindergarten through eight and include sections on the March on Washington. These are the work of the Alonzo Crim Center and George State University

    http://www.nps.gov/malu/documents/curriculum.htm

    The Martin Luther King Papers Project at Stanford University has a website with an excellent "Liberation Curriculum" section, which includes lesson plans based on King documents, and a very helpful "Teaching King" bibliography. These materials are all for grades nine through twelve.

    http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/liberation_curriculum/index.htm

    Of more specialized interest is a pair of websites with superb material on the Sweet Auburn neighborhood where King spent his childhood. The following website also has excellent links:

    http://www.friendsofsweetauburn.com/newhome.html

    "Sweet Auburn Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia USA, A History from 1880-1960," a website mounted by Georgia 3D Studios, is a bit complicated to navigate, but it's well worth the effort - images of houses, people, and documents; searchable text; and wide-ranging links:

    http://www.ga3d.net/sweetauburn/intro.htm
Printed resources on the broader movement for equal rights for African Americans include:
    Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).

    ______. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.)

    ______. At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.)

    Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press: 1981).

    Jonas, Gilbert. Freedom's Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle against Racism in America, 1909-1969. (New York: Routledge, 2005).

    Levy, Peter B. The Civil Rights Movement. (Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 1998). Part of Greenwood's series of guides to historic events of the twentieth century.

    Murray, Paul T. The Civil Rights Movement: References and Resources. (New York: G.K. Hall, 1993). A good book-length bibliography.

    Weisbrot, Robert. Freedom Bound: A History of America's Civil Rights Movement. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990).
The famed "Eyes on the Prize" series of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) traces the history of the mid-twentieth-century United States civil rights movement, 1954-1965. The series' website provides excellent lesson plans and resources for teachers:

http://pbsvideodb.pbs.org/resources/eyes/index.php

Be sure to look at the series in conjunction with its print companion:
    Carson, Clayborne et al., eds. Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader. (New York: Viking, 1991).
To begin a study of the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech given on that day, you may want to use PBS's "News Hour" website, which has an excellent segment on the March and its impact.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/teachers/lessonplans/history/dream2_8-20.html

Print resources for these topics include:
    Barber, Lucy G. Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

    Bass, Patrick Henry. Like a Mighty Stream: The March on Washington, August 28, 1963. (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002).

    Hansen, Drew W. The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech That Inspired a Nation. (New York: Ecco, 2005).

    Garrow, David J. "King: The Man, the March, the Dream." American History 38, no.3 (2003): 26-35. Background on and discussion of the motivation for the March on Washington.
The timeline provided by the Martin Luther King Center's website gives an excellent chronological framework for the fight for the recognition of Martin Luther King Day as a federal holiday and its celebration:

http://www.thekingcenter.org/holiday/kho_chronology.html

The following authors examine the process by which King's birthday became a federal holiday and the ways in which it has been observed:
    Garrow, David J. "The Helms Attack on King." Southern Exposure 12, no. 2 (1984): 12-15. Jesse Helms' role in the 1983 Senate debate on the King holiday.

    Lewis, Mary C. "Origins: How the Holiday Was Born." American Visions 1, no. 1 (1986): 44-9.

    Shields, Thomas J. "The 'Tip Of The Iceberg' in a Southern Suburban County: The Fight for a Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday." Journal of Black Studies 33, no 4 (2003): 499-519. Struggle of the local African American community and other leaders in Henrico County, Virginia to force the school board to observe King's birthday in public schools.

    Williams, Clarence G., ed. Reflections of the Dream, 1975-1994: Twenty Years Celebrating the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1995. A compilation of speeches delivered at MIT over twenty years of annual observances of King's birthday.


© The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005. All Rights Reserved.