Chose one of the excerpted speeches below and write an original essay of no more than 500 words on the relevance of the speech to contemporary American/global issues.
You may consult external resources while writing your essay; however, you must attribute prior or unoriginal work and ideas to the correct sources.
Through his public speaking, writings and sermons, King educated, inspired, informed and shaped the national and global conscience on a variety of issues. The first three excerpts below highlight King’s approach to questions of poverty, racism and militarism. The others highlight King’s ideals about leadership, excellence and diversity.
Participants grant the Case Western Reserve University Office of Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity non-exclusive right to, at its discretion, announce or reproduce any and all submitted essays by any print, electronic, voice or video media of its choosing.
Essays must be no more than 500 words written in size 12, Times New Roman font.
To submit essay, please visit:
www.surveymonkey.com/s/mlk-essay
The MLK Essay is open from Dec. 15, 2011 to Jan. 12, 2012. All entries must be submitted by 5 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. Entries submitted after the deadline will not be considered for the MLK Essay Contest Prize.
Obie Okuh
MLK Essay Coordinator
216.368.4659
oco@case.edu
"There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty … The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for "the least of these."
“Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual and physical homicide upon the out-group.”
“A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war- 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
“We all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade… And you know, you see people over and over again with the drum major instinct taking them over. And they just live their lives trying to outdo the Joneses… I know a man who used to live in a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house. And other people started building thirty-five-thousand-dollar houses, so he built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house. And then somebody else built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and he built a hundred-thousand-dollar house. And I don't know where he's going to end up if he's going to live his life trying to keep up with the Joneses… But don't give up this instinct. It's a good instinct if you use it right… Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do.”
“So somehow the ‘isness’ of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it… When you come to the point that you look in the face of every person and see deep down within him what religion calls "the image of God," you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.”
Prompt No. 1 Taken from Les Prix Nobel en 1964. The text in the New York Times is excerpted. His speech of acceptance delivered the day before in the same place is reported fully both in Les Prix Nobel en 1964 and the New York Times. Read the full Nobel Peace Prize Lecture online: here »
Prompt No. 2 Excerpted from Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (New York: Harper & Brothers 1967)
Prompt No. 3 Excerpted from: Martin Luther King Jr., Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (April 4, 1967). This speech was delivered by King at a meeting of clergy and laity concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. The full speech is available online: here »
Prompt No. 4 Excerpted from, Martin Luther King Jr., The Drum Major Instict, in A Knock at Midnight (Ed. Clayborne Carson & Peter Holloran, Warner Books 2000). King's "Drum Major Instinct" sermon, given on Feb. 4, 1968, was an adaptation of the 1952 homily "Drum-Major Instincts" by J. Wallace Hamilton, a well-known, liberal, white Methodist preacher. King encouraged his congregation to seek greatness, but to do so through service and love. Available online: here »
Prompt No. 5 Excerpted from "Loving Your Enemies," Nov. 17, 1957, a sermon given at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. Available online: here »
What does a winning essay look like? Past winners of the Martin Luther King Jr. essay contest share their works. Read recent essays.
