Where Do We Go From Here?

Fifty years ago, America lost its moral lodestar when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), Dr. King examined the direction of the Civil Rights Movement and the need for social and economic justice, as well as an end to the Vietnam War, and argued that America was at a crossroads. Today, America is at a similar crossroads, with mounting internal divisions, growing economic and educational inequality, an epidemic of black deaths at the hands of police, unprecedented incarceration rates that disproportionately affect people of color, and a resurgence of white supremacy. In this discussion, writers Jelani Cobb, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Gregory Pardlo discussed Dr. King’s legacy and pose the same question of our country that he asked then: “Where do we go from here?”

Co-presented with The Brooklyn Museum