Even as Martin Luther King Jr. called upon Americans to shape a beloved community for their children, he also worked with young people to awaken the conscience of the country. He was himself a young person throughout the civil rights movement. This dual role of youth, as inheritors and agents, in the fulfillment of Dr. King's vision for a just society is the focus of this year's Duke University Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration.

Dr. King saw the lives of children as an important reason to make sacrifices necessary to confront segregation, poverty and unjust war. "Our fight, if won, would benefit people of all ages," he wrote in his autobiography. "But most of all we were inspired with the desire to give to our young a true sense of their own stake in freedom and justice."

Dr. King worked closely with young people in civil rights campaigns. “The student movement that was taking place all over the South in the 1960 was one of the most significant developments in the whole civil rights struggle,” he wrote about the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee movement, begun in Raleigh.

Dr. King was not so much older than the students with whom he worked. He was only 26 years old when he helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. In a sermon Rev. King delivered when he was 28 years old, he sounded a call still relevant for us today:

"Moses might not get to see Canaan, but his children will see it. He even got to the mountain top enough to see it and that assured him that it was coming. But the beauty of the thing is that there’s always a Joshua to take up his work and take the children on in."

This is the theme the 2008 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Committee presents: The power of the young -- and young at heart -- to take up the work of Dr. King by learning his legacy and caring for children.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Duke in Page Auditorium Nov. 13, 1964.
Listen to clips from his speech


Download previous MLK commemoration addresses from iTunes U

Persons with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations or who have questions about physical access may contact Sharon Caple at 684-8353.