MLK Day 2025: Titles for Adults | Oak Park Public Library

Author

Description

In this fast-paced and immersive adaptation of Jonathan Eig's groundbreaking New York Times bestseller readers will meet a Dr. King like no other: a committed radical whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime, a minister wrestling with his human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government.

2) Letters to Martin: meditations on democracy in Black America

Author

Jelks, Randal Maurice

Description

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Letters to Martin contains twelve meditations on contemporary political struggles for our oxygen-deprived society. Evoking Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," these meditations, written in the form of letters to King, speak specifically to the many public issues we presently confront in the United States-economic inequality, freedom of assembly, police brutality, ongoing social class conflicts, and geopolitics. Award-winning author...

3) Alabama v. King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the criminal trial that launched the Civil Rights Movement

Author

Abrams, Dan

Description

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"The defense lawyer for Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, the Selma marchers, and other civil rights heroes reveals the true story of the historic trial that made Dr. King a national hero. Fred D. Gray was just twenty-four years old when he became the defense lawyer for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a young minister who had become the face of the bus boycott that had rocked the city of in Montgomery, Alabama. In this incredible history, Gray takes...

4) We refuse: a forceful history of Black resistance

Author

Jackson, Kellie Carter

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"Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolence and Malcolm X's "by any means necessary." In We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women. The dismissal of "Black violence" as an illegitimate form of resistance...

5) What things cost: an anthology for the people

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"By 1968, most Americans felt that the War on Poverty had been lost, cast out to the shadows of the Vietnam War. That same year, the Poor People's Campaign marched on Washington in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination, motivated by King's desire for economic justice. The campaign was a multiracial effort that aimed to alleviate poverty for African Americans, white Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Indigenous people. In...

6) Civil rights queen: Constance Baker Motley and the struggle for equality

Author

Brown-Nagin, Tomiko

Description

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"Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP's Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs....

7) The invaders

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The documentary follows the rise and fall of a militant black power group based in Memphis, TN in the late '60s, from its creation, to its final negotiations with Martin Luther King Jr. minutes before his assassination.

8) MLK/FBI

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Based on newly declassified files, Sam Pollard's resonant film explores the US government's surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr.

9) Interview with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

Series

David Susskind archives

Description

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David Susskind's historical, long and intimate interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. originally aired on June 9, 1963. Now, restored by The Paley Center, this broadcast has not been seen in full since its original airing. Among the subjects discussed were the current state of the American Civil Rights Movement and the then-recent events in Birmingham, Alabama.

10) I Am MLK Jr

Author

Lewis, Rep. John

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I Am MLK Jr. celebrates the life and explores the character of American icon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Following his journey across the mountaintops and valleys while capturing the Civil Rights Movement at large, the film provides intimate, first hand insights on Dr. King, exploring moments of personal challenge and elation, and an ongoing movement that is as important today as when Dr. King first shone a light on the plight of his fellow African...