Five Course Lectures on MLK's Letter To a Birmingham Jail

In the online World Views and Values course that I developed - and still teach on occasion - for Marist College, the thinker who I chose to close out the 10-week class with was Martin Luther King, Jr.. The course, by design, centered on issues such as the human person, moral norms and development, politics and society, culture and education, freedom and fate, inequalities and equality, as well as the nature of the greater reality within which the entire human sphere is situated.

I chose to make the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" the central text for that final week's study, supplemented by the "I Have a Dream" speech.  These selections were deliberate, not only because both documents articulate key themes and arguments of King's overall critical approach to American racism and justice, but also for a different reason.  They're both widely referenced, and occasionally quoted from, but (at least in my experience) rarely read by the current crop of students in the present.