MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Even as the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was becoming the voice of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, he was serving in another key role as a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Let’s listen to an excerpt of a sermon there from 1968, just two months before his death.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: What is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy. And if something doesn’t happen to stop this trend, I’m sorely afraid that we won’t be here to talk about Jesus Christ and about God and about brotherhood too many more years. If somebody doesn’t bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none of us are going to be around…