Why We Cant Wait, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Why We Cant Wait, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Why We Can't Wait

Author: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Narrator: JD Jackson

Unabridged: 6 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/09/2018


Synopsis

Dr. King’s best-selling account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963

On April 16, 1963, as the violent events of the Birmingham campaign unfolded in the city’s streets, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., composed a letter from his prison cell in response to local religious leaders’ criticism of the campaign. The resulting piece of extraordinary protest writing, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” was widely circulated and published in numerous periodicals. After the conclusion of the campaign and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, King further developed the ideas introduced in the letter in Why We Can’t Wait, which tells the story of African American activism in the spring and summer of 1963. During this time, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States, but the campaign launched by King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and others demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action.

Often applauded as King’s most incisive and eloquent book, Why We Can’t Wait recounts the Birmingham campaign in vivid detail, while underscoring why 1963 was such a crucial year for the civil rights movement. Disappointed by the slow pace of school desegregation and civil rights legislation, King observed that by 1963—during which the country celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation—Asia and Africa were “moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence but we still creep at a horse-and-buggy pace.”

King examines the history of the civil rights struggle, noting tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equality, and asserts that African Americans have already waited over three centuries for civil rights and that it is time to be proactive: “For years now, I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”

A King Legacy Series Book

About The Author

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), Nobel Peace Prize laureate and architect of the nonviolent civil rights movement, was among the twentieth century’s most influential figures. One of the greatest orators in US history, King also authored several books, including Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, and Why We Can’t Wait. His speeches, sermons, and writings are inspirational and timeless. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.Dorothy Cotton was the educational director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and worked closely with Dr. King on teaching nonviolence and citizenship education.Clayborne Carson, general editorial advisor to the King Legacy, is the founding director of the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Walter on June 26, 2012

This is one of the - if not the - best of King's books, as it details the crucial Birmingham campaign and features at its heart the incredible Letter from Birmingham Jail. Although always positive in tone, it deals with the realities of a campaign that is now viewed as pivotal to the success of the......more

Goodreads review by Jim on February 13, 2013

Wow. How sad is it that I live in Alabama, and I never knew that in 1963, Birmingham was considered to be the most segregated city in America? Martin Luther King, Jr's Why We Can't Wait is an excellent treatise on the race issues still facing our country 50 years ago - 100 years after Lincoln's Eman......more

Goodreads review by robin on January 21, 2025

Martin Luther King's Why We Can't Wait A new anthology on Martin Luther King's political philosophy, "To Shape a New World" (2018) edited by Harvard University professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry has inspired me to read or reread the five books that King published during his life. Published in......more

Goodreads review by Ed on June 19, 2020

This book includes Dr. King's stirring "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." I can't really write a review, so I'll just say I learned a lot of things here on Juneteeth. I was born and raised in segregationist Virginia, so Dr. King's writings have a particular relevance to me and help me to understand be......more

Goodreads review by Paul on January 16, 2023

When reading Why We Can't Wait, one gets a sense of what Martin Luther King Jr. faced at a crucial point in his career as a civil-rights activist; and Dr. King emerges from the pages of this book not as a distant icon, but as a great, and humanly great, individual. He is also a brilliant writer, and......more


Quotes

“No child should graduate from high school without having read this book. In telling the story of the third American Revolution, it is as integral to American history as the Declaration of Independence.”
—Jesse Jackson