Martin Luther King Jr Delivering His Last Speech at Mason Temple in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968
This week marks the 54th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The night before his death, Dr. King delivered his last speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis, TN. The speech is commonly known as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” referring to the final sentences in which Dr. King had what seemed to be a premonition of his death:
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
Yet Dr. King’s last speech was about more than the mountaintop. He spoke of the trajectory of his life throughout the Civil Rights Movement right up to that present moment in Memphis. He expressed gratitude to God for being alive during that tumultuous period of our nation’s history. In response to an imaginary scenario of God granting him the choice of when to live in human history, Dr. King said:
Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.” Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.
Dr.King’s description of the world and our nation in the 1960’s sounds amazingly similar to life in the 2020’s. Are we capable of giving thanks to God for living in these troubled times? Following Dr. King’s lead, we can be grateful based on our faith in God and committing ourselves to God’s will of love and justice for all people. In that same speech, Dr. King summed up the purpose of the Civil Rights Movement in general and the Sanitation Workers Strike in Memphis in particular:
And that’s all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying — We are saying that we are God’s children. And that we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.
Fifty four years after Dr. King’s death, we are still engaged in the struggle to live in a world and a nation that value all people as beloved children of God. During these difficult times of division, polarization, and violence; it is easy to give into cynicism or despair. Yet the words that Dr. King shared on the night before his death remind us to be grateful for being alive at this time in history and to commit ourselves to God’s will for our lives, our nation, and our world. Click here to read and/or listen to the whole speech. It makes the famous “mountaintop” conclusion even more powerful.