Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I've Been to the Mountaintop" (1968)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered this, his last speech, on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. On the following day, he was assassinated. In the speech, King challenges the United States to live up to its ideals and calls for acts of nonviolent protest against institutionalized racism. Toward the end of the speech, King references the possibility of his own untimely death.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. eloquent
    expressing yourself readily, clearly, effectively
    As I listened to Ralph Abernathy in his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.
  2. panoramic
    as from an altitude or distance
    And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?"
  3. heyday
    the period of greatest prosperity or productivity
    I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire.
  4. aesthetic
    characterized by an appreciation of beauty or good taste
    I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man.
  5. vacillating
    uncertain in purpose or action
    I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.
  6. emancipation
    freeing someone from the control of another
    I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.
  7. grapple
    work hard to come to terms with or deal with something
    And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it.
  8. nonviolence
    peaceful resistance to a government
    It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence.
  9. disarming
    act of reducing or depriving of weapons
    We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do.
  10. denomination
    a group of religious congregations with its own organization
    If we were Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed.
  11. injunction
    a judicial remedy to prohibit a party from doing something
    Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we're going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction.
  12. totalitarian
    of a government with an authority exerting absolute control
    If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions.
  13. anoint
    administer an oil or ointment to, often ceremonially
    Somehow the preacher must say with Jesus, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me," and he's anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor."
  14. commend
    express approval of
    And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he's been to jail for struggling; but he's still going on, fighting for the rights of his people.
  15. collective
    done by or characteristic of individuals acting together
    Never stop and forget that collectively — that means all of us together — collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine.
  16. agenda
    a list of matters to be taken up, as at a meeting
    "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you."
  17. theological
    of or relating to or concerning the study of religion
    Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate.
  18. proxy
    a person authorized to act for another
    He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy.
  19. ecclesiastical
    of or associated with a church
    At times we say they were busy going to church meetings—an ecclesiastical gathering—and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting.
  20. causal
    involving an entity that produces an effect
    Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.
  21. parable
    a story told by Jesus to convey his religious message
    And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable."
  22. meander
    move or cause to move in a winding or curving course
    It's a winding, meandering road.
  23. conducive
    tending to bring about; being partly responsible for
    It's really conducive for ambushing.
  24. puncture
    pierce with a pointed object; make a hole into
    And once that's punctured, your drowned in your own blood -- that's the end of you.
  25. longevity
    the property of having lived for a considerable time
    Longevity has its place.
Created on Tue Apr 03 15:48:06 EDT 2018 (updated Tue Jan 21 08:43:54 EST 2020)

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