Join us for a special event in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

A screening of the Emmy-winning 2018 documentary King in the Wilderness

King in the Wilderness is a documentary film about Martin Luther King Jr. focusing on the final two years of his life leading up to his assassination on April 4, 196.

The film includes some never-before-seen footage of interviews with some of those closest to King interspersed with historical archives during a period of his life. In addition to upsetting both President Lyndon Johnson and the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as well as numerous other opposition groups, and despite King’s own self-doubts as he was coming to terms with his possible death, he refused to back away from the civil rights and anti-war challenges of his times.

The film focuses on events in King’s life and the civil rights movement such as the Chicago Freedom Movement, the James Meredith march, the anti-Vietnam War protests and King’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech, the 1967 riots, preparation for the Poor People’s Campaign, the Memphis sanitation strike, the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, and King’s assassination and funeral. Among King’s colleagues and friends interviewed in the documentary are Bernard Lafayette, Andrew Young, Diane Nash, Harry Belafonte, John Lewis, Dorothy Cotton, Joan Baez, Xernona Clayton, Jesse Jackson, Mary Lou Finley, Cleveland Sellers, and C. T. Vivian.

One of the films producers is Trey Ellis, playwright and director of our September 2024 Script in Hand playreading, Satchel Paige and the Kansas City Swing.

This event is FREE to the public and part of the 19th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration in conjunction with The Westport Library.