The Trumpet of Conscience
January is the beginning of the University of Chicago’s Black Heritage Celebration. The celebration kicks off with the annual MLK Commemoration Service (http://mlk.uchicago.edu/) Friday, January 14th, 2011 at 3:30pm at Rockfeller Chapel.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the one of the biggest advocates in the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. If you are interested in some of Dr. King’s work you can check out some of our resources in our collection at 5710 Woodlawn, including King’s book The Trumpet of Conscience.
One of King’s five books The Trumpet of Conscience, which features a Forward by Coretta Scott King, was a call for a nonviolent revolution and his final statement on racism, poverty, and war. Just before his death, Martin Luther King realized that no threat to human dignity anywhere in the world could be excluded from his crusade. He committed himself to battle all facets of the enemy—racism, poverty, and war. In this, his final statement, the issues remain vital—the impasse in race relations, the neglect of inner cities, the moral deterioration of our society through the war, the corruption of our values by acts of destruction. King argues that protest marches and sit-ins are not powerful enough to uproot entrenched evil and that mass civil disobedience must be the next tactic to force profound and necessary change.
It is this dream of achieving freedom and justice for all people, of a nonviolent but determined revoluation, that constitutes King’s final vision. Concluding with “A Christmas Sermon for Peace,” Dr. King urges us toward the realization of his dream. “It will be a glorious day,” he declares. “
The morning stars will sing together, and the sons of God will shout for joy.”This work as well as others by Dr. King, as well as other authors just as central to the Civil Rights movement, can be found in our Resource Collection at 5710. Stop by and ask one of our interns at the front desk!
Review by Harper & Row, Publishers
