Videos

American Experience: Citizen King

Two hour documentary on Martin Luther King Jr., Produced in 2004

On a steamy afternoon in August 1963, the thirty-four- year-old minister, Martin Luther King Jr., gave a speech that enthralled a crowd of more than two hundred thousand people gathered at Washington's Lincoln Memorial, and millions more across the country who watched on television. With passion and precision, he proclaimed his vision of a nation free of racism, declaring, "Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children." What came to be known as the "I Have A Dream" speech was a high point in the public career of Martin Luther King, Jr. But it was also a turning point in his personal life, as he embarked on a controversial, often lonely struggle to redefine and redirect the movement he had helped lead. The quest would not end until his untimely death five years later.

CITIZEN KING explores the last five years in King's life by drawing on the personal recollections and eyewitness accounts of friends, movement associates, journalists, law enforcement officers, and historians.

CITIZEN KING traces King's effort to recast himself by embracing causes beyond the civil rights movement -- to "transform and re-structure the whole of American society" as he put it. In this brief, five-year span, his decision would alienate many of his closest friends and further inflame his enemies. He and his family were harassed daily with threats against his life and theirs. He questioned the values of his country and its preoccupation with material gain, and was distraught by the silence of a great many of his fellow Christian clergy. Yet through it all, he remained steadfast in his profound spiritual commitment to the human rights of all people and to the way of non-violence and creative peacemaking.

As he began to speak out against the war in Vietnam and refashion himself as the leader of a crusade on behalf of the poor and dispossessed in America, King was accused of abandoning his mission. But for King, the change heralded a return to his roots as a preacher and provided a welcome relief from the public persona he had reluctantly taken on years before. He traveled to big cities and small towns not to speak to poor people, but to listen to the testimony of their lives, promising them that through him a nation would hear their voices.

In April 1968, in defiance of his closest advisors, King took a side trip from his Poor People's Campaign and traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to show his support of a tense, unpredictable strike of garbage workers. He was determined to fulfill his pledge that the needs of poor and working-class people were the causes to which he must dedicate his life. His fateful decision brought about the collision of a nation's hopes and fears, as King's prophetic voice was abruptly silenced by an assassin's bullet.

Rights: We have educational rights only, permitting the use of this video in front of groups providing no admission is charged for viewing. This video cannot be broadcast or duplicated.