1 - King's Mountaintop Speech

In this lesson you will read Dr. Martin Luther King’s final speech entitled “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” which he delivered to an audience in Memphis on the evening before his assassination. In this speech, Dr. King imagines reasons why people might choose between helping and not helping someone when they observe something that seems unjust or unfair.

Warm-up

Write about a time when you observed something you thought was unjust or unfair, and you were not sure how to respond. What did you think and feel? What did you do? (You will not be sharing these.)

Add ideas to the warm-up chart on the Google Doc (use the copy in Classroom) for this lesson.

First Reading

We will be reading Dr. Martin Luther King’s final speech, which he delivered on April 3, 1968, at the Memphis Mason Temple Church on the evening before his assassination. Dr. King was in Memphis to lend his voice and support to the sanitation workers’ strike, which started on February 12, 1968, when about 1,000 of the city’s 1,100 sanitation workers began to strike for job safety, better wages and benefits, and union recognition.

1300 Men_ The Memphis Strike '68.mp4

The Memphis Strike (6:30)

With that background in mind, we will read excerpts from the speech together to get a sense of the speech before we read and study it a bit more carefully.

Martin Luther King_s final speech_ 'I've been to the mountaintop'.mp4

Excerpt from King's Mountaintop Speech

Second Reading

Reread the speech to yourself. As you read, annotate it, particularly thinking about the following:

Mark and note things that strike you as you reread the poem.
What questions does the poem raise for you? (Tough Questions)
What thoughts or "aha moments" do you have as you reread the poem?
Mark places in the speech where Dr. King talks about why people don’t always respond to injustice.

Discussion

What did King mean by “a dangerous unselfishness”? What did King try to teach his audience about empathy through the story of the Good Samaritan? What does he mean by the great man’s ability to project the “I” into the “thou”? What does it take to help people see a situation from someone else’s perspective?
How did King justify his decision to violate the federal injunction against the planned demonstrations? What democratic traditions did he cite in defense of civil disobedience?
What was King’s charge to the religious community in the struggle for social justice? According to King, when is it the role of the clergy to side with the poor?
What did “the promised land” stand for in his speech? What do you think King meant when he said he had seen “the promised land”?

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