A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
by Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We’ve got some difficult days ahead," civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., told a crowd gathered at Memphis’s Clayborn Temple on April 3, 1968. "But it really doesn’t matter to me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop… . 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."These prophetic words, uttered the day before his assassination, challenged those he left behind to see that his "promised land" of racial equality became a reality; a reality to which King devoted the last twelve years of his life.These words and others are commemorated here in the only major one-volume collection of this seminal twentieth-century American prophet’s writings, speeches, interviews, and autobiographical reflections. A Testament of Hope contains Martin Luther King, Jr.’s essential thoughts on nonviolence, social policy, integration, black nationalism, the ethics of love and hope, and more.