Hello colleagues,

Happy New Year! In preparation for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on January 20, which also falls on Inauguration Day this year, Life Stories invites you to use King in the Wilderness (trailer) in your classroom or community. This Emmy-award winning documentary chronicles the last three years of Dr. King's life from 1965 - 1968.

Historian Taylor Branch shared in the making of this film:

“Most teachers and scholars cover Dr. King through the first 10 years of the movement—through Montgomery and Birmingham and Selma—because I think we’re in an era that wants to pigeonhole Dr. King as someone who’s about “I have a dream” and the end of segregation. And it’s a shame because if you really want to know who Dr. King was beyond the fanfare, and who we are as a nation, it’s all laid bare in those three years from 1965 to his assassination.”

If you would like to screen this film:

• Request an Educational Screening
• Access the Discussion Guide and use the Lessons 

And as Director Peter Kunhardt said, "My hope is that our film will serve as a reminder of what leadership looks like at its best. In this regard, there is no better subject than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

Stay tuned for our educational webinar series launching this month with King in the Wilderness.

Sincerely,

Fran

We'd love to hear from you! Respond to this email or contact Fran Sterling, Director of Education at fran@lifestories.org.