To the Promised Land

Drawing on a new generation of scholarship about the civil rights era in America, To the Promised Land goes beyond the iconic view of Martin Luther King as an advocate of racial harmony to explore his profound commitment to the poor and working class, and his call for "non-violent resistance" to all forms of oppression, including economic injustice. Phase one of that struggle led to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. In phase two, King organised poor people and demonstrated for union rights, while seeking a "moral revolution" to replace the self-seeking individualism of the rich with an overriding concern for the common good. To the Promised Land asks us to think about what it would mean to truly fulfil King's legacy and move towards what he called "the Promised Land" in our own time.

Michael K. Honey, a former Southern civil rights and civil liberties organizer, is an emeritus Harvard Radcliffe Institute and Guggenheim fellow, with multiple fellowships and book awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy social justice award for Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign. He is emeritus professor at the University of Washington writing freedom, labor movement and nonviolence history. He lives in Tacoma, Washington.