Martin Luther King Commemorative Collection [VHS]

In good condition This absorbing video is chock-full of interviews and footage of Martin Luther King Jr., and a well-rounded picture of the civil-rights movement, beginning with a conversation with Coretta Scott King, Dr. King's wife, describing how her husband's mission has guided how she lives her life today. Throughout the video are more conversations with Coretta and other friends and colleagues of Dr. King including Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory, Edward Kennedy, Bill Cosby, Andrew Young, Joan Baez, former President Jimmy Carter, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In between the interviews are pockets of historical facts, beginning with how Dr. King developed his views to become, as Dick Gregory describes him, "a giant of a man." It then goes through all the major civil-rights landmarks from the establishment of the Civil Rights Act in 1957 to the guaranteeing of the right for African-Americans to vote in 1964. The raw footage of the 1963 March on Washington is glorious and striking for Dr. King's "Free at Last" speech and the shots of 200,000 people standing beneath the Lincoln Memorial. This documentary does not leave out the violence and atrocities that occurred either. There are objective retellings of the rioting and police brutality that ran rampant throughout the movement. There are also several of Dr. King's most memorable addresses in their entirety such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Civil Disobedience and Nonviolent Struggle, the March on Washington, and his final address in Memphis. Overall The Commemorative Collection is a great teacher about the civil-rights era in history, and is also a wonderful compilation of Dr. King's addresses. --Samantha Allen Storey

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